>This establishes that nothing outside of the project has an impact on the project itself.
1. Clause 11 does. Let's abstract the example of the social pariah you gave, since as you pointed out, Godwin's already got your number. Let's say we were talking about the sub-human degenerates, the utter voids of moral thought and character, the unforgivable scum, that are pro-skub. Now, while I hate them as much as any upstanding conscientious person does, I have to grant that this code of merit does not give them a remit to advance their hideous philosophy through the use of the software (as long as the society they are in is civilized enough to ban all of the actions we hate these people for).
2. It is not a given that a private or open-source software project has the social duty to ferret out secret pro-skubists. If I, for example, were to allow my neighbors the use of my lawn for social events, am I responsible for validating that none of the, in their heart of hearts, secretly desires the spread of that plague upon our species? Should I conduct a personality test on a fellow before holding the door for him, to ensure that I never help one of these vile cretins?
3. Even if this "person" is known to be pro-skub, are we obligated to refuse them any access to our community? If one of them, like the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, can cease his endless spewing of nauseating ideology to write valid helpful code, am I under a moral obligation to refuse it? If so, why? As long as they keep their disgusting opinions out of the professional space in which said code is offered and judged, I can isolate them in my mind as a code fountain and think nothing more of them. And if they do so dare to proselytize their villainy, this code of merit gives us the authority to remove the post-haste.
4. On a strategic anti-skub level, I disagree that total shunning accomplishes a useful objective. Ideally, we want the to understand that they are wrong people with bad opinions. Refusing any interaction with them will not accomplish this, as they will simply be led into more extreme pro-skub echo chambers that reinforce this twisted, amoral world view. How will they ever be led to the righteous path, if every guide shuts the door in their faces?
>if Hitler picked up coding, a code-of-merit based project wouldn't object to him contributing to it, while most of the code of conducts I've seen would not. So it really comes down to: where do we draw the line?
There's no need to draw the line. As long as Hitler writes good code and behaves well on project's mailing lists, issue trackers etc., I would have no problem with him being a project member.
I would draw the line relative to the project interest. People are not bad or good. Only acts are bad or good, and even in this case it may depend on the point of view.
If a pedophile or any other kind of criminal provide a pertinent pull request, I will accept it. Discussions in the project must be respectful and professional.
Pedophilia is not criminal (in "civilized" countries), it's just a sexual orientation. What you might be thinking of is child abuse. Please don't confound those two, because being a pedophile is neither a choice nor does it make you a child abuser, nor is all child abuse done by pedophiles.
edit: lol, downvotes for this? Really? I'd really be curious how those downvotes correlate with support for CoCs.
Discussions often go down this road, and it leads to nonsensical arguments like "well Hitler didn't like fox hunting, and Hitler is bad, therefore fox hunting is good".
There is nothing morally wrong with Hitler contributing code to a project, provided there's nothing morally wrong with the impact that code has.
Most of the argument around CoCs is along the lines of "Hitler wants to exterminate people like me, therefore I don't feel safe being associated with this community, therefore Hitler should be excluded to make the community more inclusive."
Maybe the answer is that there should be less "community" around a project, and the work should speak for itself.
(I wonder how quickly someone will misinterpret my words as a defence of bigotry or National Socialism…)
Why would you want to stop someone you see as bad from contributing to something you see as good? If that was the only good thing he was able to do, why not encourage him and help him?
It doesn't help to shun people just because you don't like them or what they do instead of helping them, persuading them, and encouraging them to grow.
If Hitler wanted to join my code project, I'd try to help steer him in the right direction and teach him to contribute something worthwhile.
So, the solution to that would be to exclude him from the project, because while you fear the consequences of rejecting PRs from him, you see no risk in rejecting him outright as a person?
>This establishes that nothing outside of the project has an impact on the project itself. 1. Clause 11 does. Let's abstract the example of the social pariah you gave, since as you pointed out, Godwin's already got your number. Let's say we were talking about the sub-human degenerates, the utter voids of moral thought and character, the unforgivable scum, that are pro-skub. Now, while I hate them as much as any upstanding conscientious person does, I have to grant that this code of merit does not give them a remit to advance their hideous philosophy through the use of the software (as long as the society they are in is civilized enough to ban all of the actions we hate these people for).
2. It is not a given that a private or open-source software project has the social duty to ferret out secret pro-skubists. If I, for example, were to allow my neighbors the use of my lawn for social events, am I responsible for validating that none of the, in their heart of hearts, secretly desires the spread of that plague upon our species? Should I conduct a personality test on a fellow before holding the door for him, to ensure that I never help one of these vile cretins?
3. Even if this "person" is known to be pro-skub, are we obligated to refuse them any access to our community? If one of them, like the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, can cease his endless spewing of nauseating ideology to write valid helpful code, am I under a moral obligation to refuse it? If so, why? As long as they keep their disgusting opinions out of the professional space in which said code is offered and judged, I can isolate them in my mind as a code fountain and think nothing more of them. And if they do so dare to proselytize their villainy, this code of merit gives us the authority to remove the post-haste.
4. On a strategic anti-skub level, I disagree that total shunning accomplishes a useful objective. Ideally, we want the to understand that they are wrong people with bad opinions. Refusing any interaction with them will not accomplish this, as they will simply be led into more extreme pro-skub echo chambers that reinforce this twisted, amoral world view. How will they ever be led to the righteous path, if every guide shuts the door in their faces?