xdg Digest, Vol 157, Issue 3

[Daniel Stone]

Hi Albert,

On 12 April 2017 at 09:05, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> El dimarts, 11 d’abril de 2017, a les 12:26:09 CEST, Daniel Stone va escriure:
>> Constructive feedback on the specific form and wording of the CoC is
>> more than welcome. What would be even better is if you're able to
>> point to the experiences of other communities, the discussions they've
>> had, and where they landed. The exact wording isn't irreversibly set
>> in stone, and I'm sure we'll want to be tweaking it over time. What is
>> set in stone is that we (the fd.o admins, who unanimously approved
>> this change) are committed to this CoC, and will not be turning back
>> from it.
>
> Can you clarify why do you think the sysadmins have the right to impose such a
> big change on the rest of the community without prior consultation?

freedesktop provides services to communities, including mailing lists,
bug trackers, Git hosting, web hosting, etc etc. We as the admins
already have to intervene to remove legally-impermissible content
(e.g. when someone uploaded third-party proprietary code they weren't
allowed to distribute, or when links to child pornography make it into
mailing list archives) from these services, because the responsibility
falls on fd.o as the provider rather than the more diffuse individual
communities.

Our original plan was to offer the CoC (pre-made template text and a
point of contact) as an opt-in, where projects could contact us and
add it themselves. But, as with the above, behaviour of the individual
communities reflects on fd.o as a whole. We aren't a diffuse/random
hosting site like GitHub, but instead work with individually-selected
projects. With this comes responsibility on both sides: we cannot just
wash our hands of the behaviour of the member communities.

We did discuss this with a number of people, but with over 100 quite
diffuse projects (some active, some stagnant, some abandoned, some
unclear), and running fd.o not being a paid activity (or even the
primary project we work on) for any of us, we weren't able to reach
everyone. My apologies if you/Poppler feel excluded, or imposed upon,
but you have my full attention now. :)

What I'm trying to do over the course of this week is get in touch
with all of the member projects and walk through this with them. Both
seeking their feedback, and establishing points of contact, so the CoC
and enforcement are actually driven by the communities themselves,
rather than being imposed from on high. I know that might seem at odds
with how this has been announced, so again please take my apologies
for that, but we are trying to do the right thing.

The text itself of the CoC is not set in stone, and if you have any
particular issues with the text that is there, it'd be great to get
any feedback so we can work on it. Just as our communities are living
and evolving creatures, so too is the CoC.

Cheers,
Daniel