If you want to argue about the level of taxation, the right size of government, regulations on business, whether public or private is the most efficient way to accomplish a goal, or myriad other areas of policy like those, go right ahead. Those kinds of things are absolutely reasonable subjects for healthy and reasonable debate. (They're rarely on-topic for a software project, but in some types of communities, or in companies, or in random side conversations, sometimes they are.) Those are almost never the kinds of political opinions that people have in mind when they're suggesting that "political opinions" should be an explicitly protected category, though.
It's funny how the people worried most about whether they'll feel unwelcome for their political opinions are often those whose political opinions revolve around making others unwelcome, or hurting others, or questioning (or asking with superficial politeness about) others' right to exist. Those kind of "political opinions" do not and should not get any protections, in a code of conduct or anywhere else. You're legally allowed to say them, but you should not expect to do so without any consequence.
You list a bunch of self-approved topics that you believe are okay to talk about. How about arguing for stricter immigration laws, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, skepticism on transgender orthodoxy, skepticism about the existence of a female wage gap, anti affirmative action, anti gun control, climate change skepticism etc. Are those not okay?
These are common political opinions that are routinely twisted into "questioning other's right to exist", or denial of basic human rights/decency, or sexist/racist, while they are usually no such thing. Even partial disagreement and skepticism is often elevated to that level. This is the real abuse and weaponization here. I think you'd need to look long and hard to find anyone in open source projects seriously advocating for some group to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Yet these topics are likely to make some uncomfortable, or depending on the person, even unwelcome. So are they verboten? Remember this CoC explicitly states it applies both inside and outside project spaces. Ask Brendan Eich how that turned out.
The problem, put simply, is that very often people will take someone's political opinion, even nuanced disagreement, as a personal attack, regardless of the actual interpersonal relationship. This is why either "political opinion" needs to be protected, or the whole thing scrapped. IMO preferably the latter, then we can once again realize that everybody has opinions that others might consider outrageously wrong and stupid, but can still work together/be friends as long as people are not actively dicks to each other.
> routinely twisted into "questioning other's right to exist", or denial of basic human rights/decency, or sexist/racist
Interesting list. Doesn't take much twisting.
You're providing a good demonstration of the point here. You don't get to feel comfortable advocating those things, at the expense of the people who live those things. Your comfort, versus their lives.
(Forestalling the obvious response: yes, I did intentionally select the most problematic points you raised to respond to, because they demonstrate the primary problem with attempting to protect "political opinion" in a code of conduct.)
> So are they verboten? Remember this CoC explicitly states it applies both inside and outside project spaces.
Inside a project they're almost universally off-topic. In the rare cases where they're not, it's often because a project actually intersects with such issues, such as needing to handle personal data or similar.
As for outside a project, the topics you listed vary greatly. I seriously doubt you'd find anyone's role in a project at risk because of their thoughts on climate change. On the other hand, if you actively campaign against other people's rights, you may well find that people don't want to work with you.
> I think you'd need to look long and hard to find anyone in open source projects seriously advocating for some group to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Not particularly long nor hard, no; I run into them regularly.
> This is why either "political opinion" needs to be protected, or the whole thing scrapped.
Even leaving aside whether there's any problem here at all, since when have the choices been "perfect solution or no solution"?
If you've got a limited amount of water you start by using it on the houses that are on fire, not the ones who want their grass watered.
Should people not be able to feel comfortable discussing such opinions outside of work or project spaces? I'd also like to point out that being against gay marriage is extremely common among devotes of the Abrahamic religions, which is a category that appears in the "protected list".
Opinions such as those have already been used to try to oust (not sure how it turned out) a member of at least one open source project (Opalgate, no CoC needed ironically) speaking entirely unrelated to the project. He was not directly maligning anyone from the project itself, in fact an outsider had to come in to stir drama (and that outsider happened to be the author of the Contributor Covenant. Hmm...).
What people do on their own time that does not personally affect you is their own business. Remember that principle is how gay rights came to be accepted in the first place. And no I don't need a link to the Paradox of Tolerance.
> I seriously doubt you'd find anyone's role in a project at risk because of their thoughts on climate change.
I would not be so sure. As before, often any skepticism of prevailing climate change wisdom is instantly escalated to "science denial". Not a good label to have in a tech project, and besides you'd be advocating for "crippling temperature rises, mass natural disasters, entire cities wiped away by see-level rises, destroying the planet basically". That sounds kinda life changing, if you believe it.
> Not particularly long nor hard, no; I run into them regularly.
Would be really interested to see some examples of this. Not just random twitter twattery, but people actually involved in OSS projects, literally advocating genocide.
> Even leaving aside whether there's any problem here at all, since when have the choices been "perfect solution or no solution"?
Well you said it yourself, there's no problem, thus no need for a solution. The Contributor Covenant is a solution in search of a problem. Are there any examples of the Linux kernel project being bogged down by external social politics (not that this CoC would fix that, much the opposite), or excessive trolling? Far as I can tell the problem was Linus's own abrasive attitude.
And let me tell you, he's hardly alone with that attribute. There's plenty of people out there who are difficult to work with because they are full of themselves and have little tolerance for dissent. At least Linus was upfront about this, rather then preferring to feign politeness then stab you in the back via bureaucratic bullshit, kinda like this CoC encourages.
You misread my comment rather heavily there. Codes of conduct are (one part of) a solution to a very real problem. There's no problem to be solved with "protecting 'political opinions' that hurt people", and even if there were it'd be far lower priority than people's lives.
And to answer your first sentence: people have learned to couch their intolerance in less blatant ways, but that doesn't make them less of an attack on other people's rights. People regularly think, incorrectly, that their discomfort is more important than other people's lives and rights. People push back, point-by-point, on each individual right or ability to exist and thrive in society. And most commonly (though not always), the people saying such things already have their own rights respected.
> Should people not be able to feel comfortable discussing such opinions outside of work or project spaces?
No, they most certainly should not. They should feel about as "comfortable" as people slinging around slurs and advocating segregation. That's nearly unthinkable today; there was a time when it wasn't. People's comfort "discussing" such things comes directly at the cost of the people they're hurting or advocating against. (And in any case, don't overestimate the weight due your opinion if you're not part of the group in question.)
Nobody is being run out of a project over the slightest misstep; the first response to most issues will be communication, not bans. Bans from a project are the last resort, not the first. People who work in projects with codes of conduct don't go around afraid they're going to be booted.
Beyond that: what work do you need to do that you can't possibly accomplish without hurting people? It's really not hard.
In that case "be excellent to each other" should be more than enough.
"Explicit guidelines have demonstrated success in other projects and other areas of the kernel."
Many people do not start out sharing a common understanding on this topic. This HN thread is more than enough evidence for that. Hence writing down a framework to give people that common understanding.
Unfortunately, now you know what HN thinks about gay and trans people having equal rights.
This is the governing philosophy of the Ayatollahs of Iran, who let lay people debate and hold elections, but who reserve real power for themselves. What you've proposed is no different.
It's obviously true to an extent, like for some rhetoric which directly leads to violence, but a lot of people seem to use this concept as justification to suppress all speech they could consider remotely intolerant.
I see a big problem by them omitting protection for people of different political opinions (whereas e.g. religion, which is essentially opinion, is protected).