Codes of Conduct are all the rage.

Codes of Conduct are generating divisive rage in open source projects. More specifically a Code of Conduct called the Contributor Covenant that is politically charged is causing all sorts of contention.

The name, Contributor Covenant, should give people pause as it uses a word often used in religious contexts to imply a binding law. Furthermore, it’s deeply tied to a particular ideology and thus inherently divisive and exclusive in nature. I’ll get to why this is important later.

Despite implying that it legally binding and the author boasting that it is battle-tested, it lacks a definition of terms and verification that any legal council was part of its creation.

The Harvard Business Review recently published an article that diversity policies rarely make companies fairer. It essentially asserts that diversity policies fall victim to the placebo effect. People believe the policies work because that is what they hear, never bothering to verify the solution. Worse yet, the policy can have an adverse effect.

Here is a quote from that HBR article:

Even when there is clear evidence of discrimination at a company, the presence of a diversity policy leads people to discount claims of unfair treatment.

This begs the question, is the Contributor Covenant effective? I don’t know.

The Contributor Covenant does not provide data and statistics that demonstrates its effectiveness as a tool. The site only mentions that it’s adopted by over 10,000 projects.

The site fails to mention that part of the reason that part of the reason it has such a high number of participating projects is that a tool called Bundlr that pushes developers towards the generation of the Contributor Covenant by default. Default settings can be used to influence the behavior of users.

The Contributor Covenant solely relies on marketing perceived social value and the influence of people who believe that it can create social impact rather marketing on demonstrating actual value.

Contributor Covenant Proponents.

Proponents of the Coven..ant are interesting creatures. They remind me of the moral majority from the 1980s and early 1990s. They are full of righteous anger and hypocritical doctrine, like this person who totally disregards the concept of consent and agreement on your behalf for the greater good. This person also implied that you’re an asshole if you don’t agree with them.

They rely on higher numbers and manipulative tactics:

• labeling people that disagree with broad strokes,
• using weasel words like ratio to hide the fact that more accounts were created to support a Code of Conduct
• Taking things out of context and making libelous allegations to invoke sympathy for the cause.

One way that proponents of the Contributor Covenant market their cause is annoyingly sealion the document in issue trackers with zero regard or respect toward opensource project maintainers.

If an underlying tenant of such a document is to be empathetic towards others, then the approach to promoting such a document must also demonstrate empathy. Otherwise, it just comes across as hollow words of a self-righteous ideologue.

Proponents of the Contributor Covenant are becoming door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses of the open source world. That could be good or bad depending on your point of view.

Naturally, inserting a divisive political document into a technology community that holds a wide array of views is going to cause debate and possibly controversy. Proponents of the Code of Conduct, who initiated the debate and controversy then take to Twitter and use circular reasoning to justify the document.

Proponents that use this tactic erode any trust in their accountability. Accountability is important with codes of conduct. If a person cannot admit nor perceive that they or their cause is responsible for causing drama, why would anyone want them to police other incidents of a sensitive nature?

One of the values and appeals of open source is arguably the freedom from bureaucracy. Codes of Conduct are at odds with this tenant as it often require bureaucracy and committees with authoritative power. Proponents push hard for committees.

If a committee is not properly set up, it can lead to a project’s hostile takeover as evidenced by the Scalaz project.

Proponents of the Contributor Covenant are already talking about spliting leadership in Ruby, a power struggle waiting to happen.

Setting up a committee should not prohibit the adoption of a Code of Conduct, but one should damn well know the consequences and responsibilities of adoption.

Advocates Against

Now let’s talk about some of the advocates against the Contributor Covenant.

Too many of the advocates of focus on derailing conversations, act in a manner unsuited for proper debate and bringing up points that do not matter.

I get it. Some don’t agree with the politics of the Contributor Covenant, but bringing up random trifling shit does not value to a discussion. In the recent Ruby Code of Conduct debate debacle, I have read talk on dildos, random ad hominem, and Young Hitler.

It’s hard to tell if these people are trolling, false flagging or straight up highly misguided individuals. For a group of people that supposedly advocates work based on merit, the arguments that do not stay on topic fail horribly at providing anything of merit.

Should advocates of the Contributor Covenant stay silent? No. However, their arguments or lack there of should indeed be critiqued.

The real travesty for the advocates of the Covenant is that proponents ignored the best points and arguments. Chuck Remes, you are my hero. As a former user of Ruby that was never a core contributor, I feel like it’s intellectually dishonest for me to inject my words into that clusterfuck of a discussion.

Chuck (May I call you Chuck?), brought up the exact point and question that I had made the night before on Twitter. Where is the data? At the time of this writing, no one has provided data that the Covenant is an effective tool.

One fellow did try to dismiss his question by providing zero proof while making the broad claim that proof is already provided for the effectiveness of a Code of Conduct in opens source projects .

Codes of Conduct: not inherently good, nor evil.

Codes of Conduct are simply another tool, a tool often found in corporate offices and historically used to shield corporations and organizations rather than members of said organizations.

Universities also make extensive use of Codes of Conduct. I’m sure undergrads can remember how well their university’s Code of Conduct kept other students in check.

Codes of Conduct are simply a product of the people that create them and are an extension of the people that wield them.