[iodiniemetra]

#1 on the list is: First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength.

I'm an atheist - I am unable and unwilling to comply with this CoC. So yes, I would say that I am affected.

Other well known religious folk in the foss world, such as Larry Wall, do not insist on this kind of exclusion.

[runjake]

Good news, the CoC is inclusive for you, with the following:

"those who wish to participate" ... "are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that honors the overarching spirit of the rule, even if they disagree with specific details. Polite and professional discussion is always welcomed, from anyone."

In other words, calm down.

[oaktowner]

It's weird, though, right? I mean, flip the logic.

What if someone had a code of conduct that was clearly about people treating each other well...but started it with "First, you must acknowledge that there is no God." Or "First you must acknowledge that Mohammad is God's messenger." Or "First you must accept the mitzvot as binding." Or "Brahman is Truth and Reality."

None of these is promoting inclusion.

That said: I'm an observer here. I haven't chosen to participate or not participate in the SQLite community because of this. I simply think it's a strange place to promote one's religion, and it doesn't surprise me that non-Christians might find it unwelcoming.

[rphlx]

I reject this premise that every CoC must "promote inclusion" i.e. be approved in full by some social marxist Politburo notionally intended to protect everyone's "feelings" by expunging and banning everything that might be considered "offensive". If you want that for your own project, fine, but you have no right to force it onto others.

In any case, western civ has deep roots in the christian tradition and I don't know any atheists that are so extremely fragile or sensitive that they are "offended" by simply seeing people repeating 1500+ year old fragments of it. Especially when they use the disclaimers that were used here.

[oaktowner]

I'm not trying to force anyone to do anything, and I'm not sure where you came up with the idea that I am. If someone wants their OSS project to be appealing to the 1/6th of the people in the world who consider themselves to be Christians, that's fine.

If they want to try to be appealing to, say, 7/7ths of the developers out there, they might want to do something different.

[Const-me]

> appealing to the 1/6th of the people in the world who consider themselves to be Christians

I don’t consider myself Christians but I like CoC a lot. It even made me think why I only used sqlite when I had to.

To me the CoC doesn’t say I’m excluded. It says a couple of other things however, that author’s not ashamed of who he is, he’s sincere, and he knows about 1st amendment. I think all of these things are good.

[omnimus]

Well i love Sqlite and also don't consider myself Christian and i am quite baffled by this. I mean this is some strange place to promote Christianity. It is suprising considering how tech tries to always paint itself as apolitical.

Seriously i can't imagine the uproar and hate if he was a Muslim. Imagine how many tech leads would immediately start figuring out how to completely change their stack and replace sqlite with leveldb.

[whatisunseen]

Um, that isn't flipping the logic at all.

It says 'love God'. It doesn't say 'acknowlege God exists'. The latter may be a prerequisite of the former, but the explicit rules are distinct, and have different flavors.

[mikeash]

Ok then, imagine if rule 1 were “hate God with every fiber of your being.”

[gonvaled]

Your logic is at fault, at least regarding atheists: atheists are expected to be tolerant of religious beliefs, but no religious person is expected to be tolerant of atheist (non-) beliefs.

[codesnik]

Expected by whom? There were and are "warlike" atheists, who actively fight, mock and even eradicate religious objects and people, and there are, thankfully, a lot of religious people, who tolerate atheists' non-beliefs.

[runjake]

Aside from the fact that the SQLite CoC does not use the language "you must", none of those statements bother me.

I think the SQLite's author is just trying to make a statement of "hey, there's us Christians out here, and this is actually what we believe in[1]".

1. Let's just avoid the reality that there are many people who call themselves Christians who don't follow those rules, and do many horrible things. Those people exist in virtually every demographic.

[vor_]

If the religious requirements of the CoC aren't going to be enforced, there's no reason for them. They exist because Richard Hipp is religious.

[jlillyreed]

They exist because this is a bad faith effort of creating a CoC that only exists to mock the idea of CoCs

[roguecoder]

The overarching spirit of The Rule of St. Benedict is service to Christ.

[qbaqbaqba]

So? What's wrong with that? Your service to humankind may as well be a service to Christ.

And you are the one to decide what server the Christ.

[whorleater]

>Your service to humankind may as well be a service to Christ.

You cannot say this and believe that this CoC is inclusive then.

[Redoubts]

I suppose it isn't inclusive to the spiteful, but oh well.

[qbaqbaqba]

Why? Can you give an example of someone that would be excluded?

[gonvaled]

In other words, hot air.

Something written, without the explicit goal of being enforced, or expected, whatsoever.

He could have equally written: "We expect those participating in the SQLite project to murder at least three people by Sunday - but if you don't do it, it is fine too"

[iodiniemetra]

> disagree with specific details

Ah yes, "is there a god or not" is a specific detail, especially when it's in the context of a whole series of religiously motivated directives. /s

I hardly think that a repudiation of a set of CoC terms that I find directly exclusionary to me counts as warranting "calm down". I won't, thanks!

[raspie]

That's as much inclusiveness as "stop hitting yourself" is your friend's good advice.

If the CoC started with "First of all, purge any God from your heart" you wouldn't have thought twice about condemning it.

But no, the atheists should just suck it up.

[i_am_right]

Leftist Atheist here... I have no problem with this Code of Conduct. This isn't like "In god we trust" on our currency or the 10 Commandments in our courthouses. I could contribute to this project with a clear conscience because a lot of what I believe is very much in line with Christ's (if he even actually existed) actual teachings. Take care of the poor. Don't judge people who have differing lifestyles than you do. Love your neighbor. Do unto others. Etc.

I think the Golden Rule is a wonderful Code of Conduct and it's how I try to live my life. If only more people followed that rule.

[raspie]

Sure, I follow the categorical imperative myself.

The author had a chance to make his CoC the golden rule. But instead he made a deeply religious statement. He has full right to do what he wants, but to also claim that this is somehow inclusive because you can close your eyes to things incompatible with you is nonsense, sorry.

All religions teach largely the same good things, but you generally won't see their devotees agreeing to any document that proclaims their love for a different God.

And yet atheists are expected to swallow that. No thanks.

[fareesh]

Swallow how though? Feel dirty when submitting a patch? I really don't understand the west's fascination with these codes and statements. Why not just do your work and avoid drama?

By standing up for/against things like CoC as opposed to actual incidents, nothing is really achieved except - I believe the term is bike shedding?

Open source exists so that everyone can contribute their talents to something that benefits everybody. If Joseph Stalin or bin Laden wrote a great patch, I'd want it. We'd all be better for it. We can fight his ideas in a different arena. It doesn't have to be the SQLite mailing list. It is not a sensible place to have these other types of ideological battles.

Here in the third world life is hard. Business ethics are non existent, workplaces are dominated by obsession with job security. If you have to make a life for yourself, you have to do your work. I find perhaps the greatest "white privilege" as it seems to be called in the west, is having the luxury of debating CoCs instead of supporting yourself and your family.

[raspie]

> I really don't understand the west's fascination with these codes and statements. Why not just do your work and avoid drama?

And you will never understand it if you look at "the west" as a single organism. Its millions of people with different opinions. They don't have to be consistent with each other.

CoCs exist to promote desired (usually understood as "professional") communication and collaboration standards in open source projects. People who want to bring their political or religious agenda into those CoCs are indeed largely undesired even in "the west", that's why this particular CoC riled up so much attention.

> Why not just do your work and avoid drama?

I'd love that, and I'm doing that. But I'm not a "turn the other cheek" kind of person, and I'll call out bullshit when I see it. This here is bullshit.

> If Joseph Stalin or bin Laden wrote a great patch, I'd want it. We'd all be better for it.

That theoretical programmer-Bin-Laden would never contribute a patch to a project with SQLite's new CoC because it is incompatible with his faith. You said we would be better off if he did, so by your own logic such a religious CoC is detrimental to us, which is why it is a problem.

> It doesn't have to be the SQLite mailing list. It is not a sensible place to have these other types of ideological battles.

Indeed, it is not a sensible place because SQLite itself is not a sensible place for religion. But its author made it a place for religion, with very predictable consequences.

> Here in the third world life is hard.

> I find perhaps the greatest "white privilege" [...], is having the luxury of debating CoCs instead of supporting yourself and your family.

That's perhaps a bit of an overstatement, and definitely a false dichotomy. Moreover, here you are enjoying the same white privilege in the third world. A bit hypocritical to accuse others of something you yourself are engaging in, don't you think?

[HarryHirsch]

Anyone familiar with Christian tradition will understand the reference to the Gospel: Jesus says that "love God" and "love your neighbour" (# 2 on the list) are the chief commandments and equally important. That's fine. Even if atheists think nothing of God anyone can think the best of the next man.

But how am I to understand the requirement in the Ada Initiative-derived FreeBSD code of conduct? In all seriousness, it demands that contributors do not selectively quote from private communication to give a false impression! Is there a special spirituality behind it, a context that I'm not aware of, or are they just stating the obvious? And who needs to be told the rudiments of human interaction in this form? Best, let's stay away from this morass. If the FreeBSD crowd needs to be told that to function, that's a bad sign.

[virtuexru]

> I'm an atheist

Don't worry! You can still use SQLite as God is infinite in his grace.

[exolymph]

From the preface:

"The entire rule is good and wholesome, and yet we make no enforcement of the more introspective aspects."

[legostormtroopr]

So your issue isn't with the Code of Conduct, its with the people badgering them to implement one.

The maintainers (and only contributors) implemented a Code of Conduct in line with their community.

[_pgmf]

You wanna know how to tell if someone is an atheist?

> I'm an atheist

Oh wait, it doesn't matter -- they'll be sure to tell you.

[iodiniemetra]

When it's in relation to a post asking, "who's really excluded", I think it's appropriate.

[qbaqbaqba]

No one is excluded.

[_pgmf]

I'm pretty sure, if you are offended by the word God, you can substitute another word, such as "Ayn Rand" or "the human intellect". Nobodys insisting that you have to do...anything really.

[iodiniemetra]

I am not offended by someone's personally held religious beliefs. I am, however, deliberately excluded if participating means adhering to a code of conduct that targets my beliefs.

[turkeysandwich]

Read the CoC more carefully. Adherence is not mandatory.

[pjscott]

A general problem with this genre of claims is that they're pure confirmation bias: you don't notice the people who don't tell you, because they don't tell you.

[todd3834]

I'm pretty sure they were just trying to be funny.