That's the CoC's entire purpose. Its author (the same person behind the post-meritocracy manifesto) has said that yes, the CoC is a political document.
mjg59 put this far better than I could:
> A reminder that free software is fundamentally about breaking down barriers preventing people from participating in a social endeavour that grants them more control over their computers, and anyone who argues against that process is not helping the cause of free software
> Some of those barriers are technical (DRM, proprietary software, undocumented hardware) and some are social (unwelcoming communities, abusive maintainers). You don't get to focus on one category and deny the other.
> Alleged free software advocates who defend abusive individuals aren't helping the cause of free software by doing so. Push back.
> "If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution" - the GNU manifesto by Richard Stallman, 1985.
The concern is that the CoC itself may be used to abuse individuals.
Asides from the Tso example, there was someone else harassed because, outside of a project, they expressed a sexual preference for male dominant/female submissive roles.
If your other example is Larry Garfield, he's part of a subculture that's controversial even in BDSM circles, and he insisted on bringing elements of that subculture into technical events. Also, the official position seems to be that he didn't actually violate Drupal's code of conduct, but they removed him anyway.
It sounds... opposite from everything I thought we've all been fighting for in the tech community, but I could be wrong? :-S
Author and signatory #1 is the same as the Contributor Covenant, which is the CoC adopted by the Linux Kernel.
Upon my first read, as I frequently find is the case, I either agree or disagree with it, based on unfortunately unspecified context and goals. I feel in general many manifestos, value statements, etc (generally focusing on "how do we accomplish something") would benefit from stating goals ("what are we trying to accomplish").
Once we agree on the goals, we can more objectively (if not perfectly objectively) discuss do these methods and statements move us toward these goals.
In general life, absolutely, I'll agree with most or maybe even all statements. I wouldn't even find them particularly controversial. Communication can be as important as technical skills - sure, I live that every day. We need to understand privilege, and enable everybody - absolutely. True on vast majority of projects in vast majority of contexts I've been part of. Etc
But not all: If (for an extreme example) the context is a small highly proficient working group and goal is an unprecedented technical achievement, majority of these are either unproductive or counterproductive to the goal and the context. If you have three people in the world that understand math to accomplish this project, and your goal is to accomplish this project, you need to involve at least one of the three people in this project - their background, communication skillset, and other aspects notwithstanding.
So stating goals is I find critical in evaluating methods to accomplish those goals.
It's not ideal, but it is what it is. Capitalism rewards meritocracy in the local maxima.
- Ethics are things the overwhelming majority of humans agree on.
- Politics are not.
Edit for 'edent' below due to rate limit:
Were you replying to someone else? My comment mentioned the majority of people agree on ethics. Racial, gender, sexual preference and religious discrimination isn't considered OK in most western countries.
Additionally, you're derailing the discussion by talking about discrimination. The entire reason this thread was started was because there's concern that that the CoC doesn't merely ensure ethics, but (as mentioned in the examples in this thread) has been used to harass people for what most humans would consider ethical behavior.
Putting your hands over your eyes and ears and trying to be "non-political" just means you're accepting the de-facto politics that emerge. It probably also means they're working pretty well, for you.
Of course, none of that means that heavy-handed, oppressive politicking used as a weapon to increase power is good. There are at least two opposites of doing something badly: not doing it at all, or doing it well. I'd argue that you can't _not_ do politics, so you should try to do it well.
There are a whole raft of people who truly believe that black/gay/trans/religious/whatever people are not worthy of treating as equals. That they shouldn't be granted the same rights as "normal" people and, in extreme cases, that they aren't really human.
A CoC says "These are the ethics of our community." It isn't Politics (which party you vote for), but it is necessarily political.
Is being fat or trans a disability? :/
I can sort-of understand this stance if we were talking about FreeBSD for instance (which suffered a similar controversy not long ago) but we're talking about a GPL-licensed codebase here. The GPL is far more political than this CoC we're talking about. You can disagree with it of course, but the mere fact that it's political shouldn't be a problem on its own.
Also I remind the people browsing this thread that a downvote is not a "I disagree" button, I see plenty of "greyed" comments (like the one I'm replying to currently) that IMO do not warrant downvoting.
Looking at it as a 37 year old last week, I'm surprised a grown man needed to be so aggressive. You can destroy the opinion or the behavior using reason without the aggression, which distracts.
I like that Linux is changing this, though I do have concerns about the CoC being used for political purposes (eg, recent harassment of Ted Tso).