On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 2:11 AM James Foster <smallt...@jgfoster.net> wrote:
> One side-effect of the “Covenant” discussion is that it is necessarily > political, which is something that many (rightly, in my view) are trying to > avoid. While I agree with most of the views expressed so far, I cringe > because I anticipate that someone who disagrees will feel the compulsion to > tell us that we are wrong, and things will go bad from there. > > I haven’t reviewed the full email chain, but I’ve spent a few minutes > searching pharo.org for “code of conduct” and “covenant” and come up > empty. Before we continue the discussion of how “woke" (politically > correct) we want to be, could someone confirm that this "dastardly deed" > (imposing a progressive “Covenant” without asking for agreement) was > actually done? Maybe a troll has just dropped a fire cracker on us and is > sitting back, enjoying watching us run around screaming! > > If there was, indeed, adoption of a “Covenant” it should have been done by > the board whose role “is to make decisions if in the future the community > can't decide on a course of action” (https://pharo.org/about). > > I suggest that we *suspend discussion* of the politics of speech codes > until we confirm that there is one for Pharo. At that point we politely > (but pointedly) ask the board (publicly and privately) to explain what > prompted the decision to adopt a Code (is it really necessary?) and how > this one was selected. Note that part of the reason for limiting discussion > is to avoid attracting attention of outsiders who will want to shape the > discussion. Let’s stop kicking up dust for the moment! > > Dear James, I'm the one who submit the PR for the CoC. Similar text are adopted by a lot of open-source communities or conferences in order to enhance diversity. I read again this morning the document here: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/blob/Pharo8.0/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and for me this quite neutral and I see nothing political here. I agree with you that this kind of document should have been discussed by the Pharo board and you can propose it for the next meeting. I'm a bit suprised by some overeactions here on the mailing-list. Apparently the Pharo community will be soon be doomed or under attack of nasty leftist activists ... But I will not discuss endlessly about that. > If we need a Code of Conduct, I respectfully suggest we start with ACM ( > https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics) which has what should be adequate > anti-discrimination provisions (see 1.4 for a list of “underrepresented” > groups) to satisfy the progressives among us. > > Thank you James to move the discussion on github. Cheers, -- Serge Stinckwic h Int. Research Unit on Modelling/Simulation of Complex Systems (UMMISCO) Sorbonne University (SU) French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) U niversity of Yaoundé I, Cameroon "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." https://twitter.com/SergeStinckwich
