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Re: Code of Conduct complaint about Linus's comments at DC14

On Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 06:20:31PM -0700, Aigars Mahinovs wrote:
> > Stefano's talk clearly implied a negative view of some corporations,
> > certainly, and shows that it's possible to be respectful while being
> > passionate, critical, and clear.
> 
> Maybe that is because you agree with him? I personally see absolutely
> no difference between Stefano's opinion about several specific
> corporations as taking power away from users and Linus opinion about a
> specific advocacy group misrepresenting a legal position to benefit
> its point.
> 
> I, myself, certainly see FSF as being quite bigoted against non-free
> software and its creators and I don't see that as a necessarily bad
> thing.
> 
> So far I do not see what *exactly* was violated in CoC, I see a lot of
> disagreement of whether was violation or not, so if there was a move
> for *any* kind of action resulting from this, I would personally
> propose a GR to decide on the action and prevent any action before the
> GR process is completed.

There seems to be a school of thought that it doesn't matter what was
intended; but if the recipient of "derogatory behaviour" is offended,
then offense has taken place, and that is ipso facto a violation of
the CoC.  I think some poeple believe that this there should be a
"reasonable person" test inserted, because otherwise anyone could
claim offense at anything, and then demand that someone be ejected
from the conference, but there's no such language in the CoC, and it
is purely up to the discretion of the organizers (which I suspect is
where the reasonable person test would take place).

I personally think the CoC language is fine if it is used when trying
to smooth over a disagreement at a conference, but if it one side
decides to use it as a cudgel against someone else, "I am offended ---
I demand that the DPL make a public apology on behalf of the entire
project and a decision yea or nea be made *IMMEDIATELY*" --- it is my
believe that at that point, the CoC language breaks down and is
insufficiently precise about what, exactly, is derogatory behavior.

> I, personally, thought that Linus was very reasonable and very patient
> in face of a seemingly unprovoked very aggressive questioning. If
> there was a CoC violation at that Q&A, I would have rather look more
> closely at the respectfulness levels in a few of the questions.

But apparently, it doesn't matter what you think.  Only that at least
one person felt that they were personally offended.

To be fair, I understand why the language is left such that it is
solely up to the opinion of the person who is offended.  Otherwise it
might be possible for the person who made the uncouth remark to
protest that a reasonable person shouldn't have been offended.  This
basically shifts the burden of proof such that this can't be used as a
defense; if someone feels offended, then you are in the wrong.
Period.

Unfortunately, this makes the CoC subject to abuse in the other
direction, but *obviously* people who do not traditionally have
privilege would *never* abuse it in such an unseemly way....

					- Ted


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