You can safely write off Swift, Mono, and Discourse, as all three have succumbed to Social Justice Convergence and adopted SJW Codes of Conduct:
One of my heroes, Miguel de Icaza, happens to have lots of life experience in open sourcing things that were not exactly open source to start with. He applauded the move, and even made a small change to his Mono project in tribute:
When Swift was open sourced today, I saw they had a Code of Conduct. We had to follow suit, Mono has adopted it: https://t.co/hVO3KL1Dn5
— Miguel de Icaza (@migueldeicaza) December 4, 2015Which I also thought was kinda cool.
It surprises me that anyone could ever object to the mere presence of a code of conduct. But some people do.
A weak Code of Conduct is a placebo label saying a conference is safe, without actually ensuring it’s safe.
Absence of a Code of Conduct does not mean that the organizers will provide an unsafe conference.
Creating safety is not the same as creating a feeling of safety.
Things organizers can do to make events safer: Restructure parties to reduce unsafe intoxication-induced behavior; work with speakers in advance to minimize potentially offensive material; and provide very attentive, mindful customer service consistently through the attendee experience.
Creating a safe conference is more expensive than just publishing a Code of Conduct to the event, but has a better chance of making the event safe.
Safe conferences are the outcome of a deliberate design effort.
I have to say, I don’t understand this at all. Even if you do believe these things, why would you say them out loud? What possible constructive outcome could result from you saying them? It’s a textbook case of honesty not always being the best policy. If this is all you’ve got, just say nothing, or wave people off with platitudes, like politicians do. And if you’re Jared Spool, notable and famous within your field, it’s even worse – what does this say to everyone else working in your field?
Mr. Spool’s central premise is this:
Creating safety is not the same as creating a feeling of safety.
Which, actually … isn’t true, and runs counter to everything I know about empathy. If you’ve ever watched It’s Not About the Nail, you’ll understand that a feeling of safety is, in fact, what many people are looking for. It’s not the whole story by any means, but it’s a very important starting point.
I’m not sure which amused me more. The Gamma tell: “Which I also thought was kinda cool” or the idea that a short humor video serves as an adequate rebuttal
Now, it is true that “a feeling of safety” is what many people are looking for. It’s why they should not be permitted to vote in a representative democracy. But (and this would be the only relevant point), “a feeling of safety” is not what people are looking for in technology projects.
As I told Robert Rosario, there is soon going to be a significant movement of talented programmers away from projects that have converged. Perhaps it is time to create a qualification that is awarded to sufficiently skilled and credentialed open source contributors who vow not to work on any open source project with a Code of Conduct, and to fork any open source project that adopts one.
This isn’t my field, but I have a vision for an effective anti-SJW technology force that will benefit greatly from the many open source projects bogging themselves down in social justice. If anyone who is actually in OSS in a signficant way would like to lead a Brainstorm discussion of it, let me know.