[molyss]

seeing as some people have already added some comments criticizing the code of conduct, I thought I'd add what I think is the most important parts of that code of Ethics :

> No one is required to follow The Rule [...] or even think that [it] is a good idea. [...] anyone is free to dispute or ignore that idea [...]

> This is a one-way promise [...]. the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us"

No one is forcing their beliefs onto anyone. keep the pitchforks in the shed.

[comment500]

Agreed, as an atheist it all sounds fine to me. I can respect their code of ethics without feeling the need to adopt it myself.

I'm grateful to the author of SQLite for releasing this excellent piece of software into the public domain and continuing to maintain it for the benefit of all. If providing this good work to the world was driven by his Christian principles, then really, who are any of us to criticise. Indeed, we should all be thankful.

[thaneross]

I can't help but notice the contrast with the popular, Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, which makes it abundantly clear its aim to enforce a set of beliefs on its contributors, with no boundaries between professional and personal life.

[logifail]

> a set of beliefs

The elephant in the room in many current attempts to encourage "diversity" is that a genuinely diverse range of opinions and/or beliefs ends up being not welcome at all.

[rebeccaskinner]

Let’s be blunt, when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot. Of course nobody says that so directly- they use dog whistles so that people who are being attacked know to leave while the bigots retain a veinier of civility so they can radicalize others by saying “look how hostile and irrational that group got over my innocuous sounding statement.”

Maybe you think spaces would be better if we allowed unmoderated bigotry in the name of free speech, but a practical consequence is that when the bigots move in, the people that they are targeting go away. The end result isn’t “diversity of thought” and it was never intended to be- it just ends up being one more space where people get bullied into leaving.

[joannanewsom]

"And so when I hear, for example, folks on college campuses saying, “We’re not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas,” I think that’s a recipe for dogmatism and I think you’re not going to be as effective."

- President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot.

https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript...

[rebeccaskinner]

> - President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot.

If you a actually read the article you quoted, the main argument he’s making is essentially “well, they may be bigots, but you need to learn to argue with bigots if you want to make progress”. That may or may not be true on a college campus (and at a public college the argument is likely immaterial because a government run institution is, and should be, bound by free speech in ways that private forums are not and should not be).

Open source projects and technical communities are different- they have different goals, needs to operate under different constraints, and so should behave differently.

[joannanewsom]

I have read it many times. I really like it, which is why I quoted it. I also think moderating communities is a hard problem and I don't think private forums should be open to all forms of speech. In fact I only read forums which are heavily moderated. What I disagree with is your statement that

"...when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot."

Supporting diversity of opinions and being a bigot are very different things. As can be seen with Obama. Labeling any one who disagrees with you on the topic of free speech as a bigot is A) rude, dismissive and B) not an effective argument. Its easy to think you're right when you assume the other side is racist.

[prirun]

“well, they may be bigots, but you need to learn to argue with bigots if you want to make progress”

In my experience, the more opinionated a person is, the less rational they are, so arguing with them is a waste of time. Most bigots enjoy arguing with you, but it doesn't change their opinions.

[account42]

Sure, it's much easier to discount competing thoughts and opinions if you just discard them as bigotry.

If anyone is radicalizing others it is those that treat everyone that does not 100% agree with them as radicals that must be pushed out instead of as people.

[tomp]

This view “if you don’t agree with me 100% you’re a literal Nazi” is very common and very despicable.

[toomim]

That's not my experience at all.

[rebeccaskinner]

What experiences do you have to the contrary? I’ve moderated a few community spaces and this has been the way it’s gone every single time it’s come up for me.

[account42]

Have you reflected on the fact that all those community spaces have had one thing in common - you moderating them? Perhaps listening to peoples concerns about lack of diversity of thought instead of labeling them bigots would allow you to see things differently. Most people don't feel as strongly about controlling the discourse of others that they end up moderating any not to mention multiple spaces.

[fooey]

Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

[generalizations]

>> the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us"

> in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance

I have a lot more respect for people whose ethics are not conditional on the behavior of others.

[kibwen]

I find that somewhat short-sighted. Let's use a different example.

Imagine you live in a society that allows personal gun ownership. Obviously, in such a society you still don't want people running around shooting each other willy-nilly, so you make a law: shoot someone, go to jail.

Now imagine someone pulls out a gun and shoots you. Result: you're dead, they go to jail.

However, you'd really prefer not to be dead. So imagine that someone pulls out their gun to shoot you, but then you pull out your gun and shoot them. Result: they're dead, you go to jail. It's what the law says, after all.

This is undesirable to most people because it looks like you've been punished for defending yourself. So we'll change the law: if someone is pointing a gun at you, you can shoot them without going to jail.

Now imagine that someone pulls a gun on you, then you pull a gun to defend yourself, but then they shoot you anyway. Result: you're dead, and they don't go to jail. It's what the law says, after all: you were pointing a gun at them. Oops, it's equivalent to having no law at all! This is the worst form of the law so far, and it's also the same thing as the paradox of tolerance.

The way you solve this is the same way you solve the paradox of tolerance: you say that the initial aggressor does not receive any protections if their own weapons are used against them. This produces a result that matches people's intuitions. This also creates a lesser problem, where people try to toe the line of aggression and goad someone else into making the first move so that they can justly retaliate, but it's still a vast improvement on the situation that intuitively matches how people expect things to work, which just so happens to involve ethics that are conditional on the behavior of others. The condition in this example: violence is acceptable, if it's in self-defense.

EDIT: I see this is being downvoted, would anyone care to explain their reasoning?

[pclmulqdq]

The issue I have with this is that you are effectively strawmanning this by proxying an individual's code of ethics with a society's code of laws.

The laws of a society are imposed on you regardless of whether you want them. A person's code of ethics is adopted by choice. The law you are referring to is only unjust because it is being imposed on everyone. A devout monk can be a good person, while a society that forces you to behave like a monk would be tyrannical. The coercion is the difference.

I think you would agree that a person whose code of ethics includes "if I shoot someone, I will promptly report myself to the police for murder" is not an unjust condition at all. However, a society that forces you to live that way in a gun-loving society would be very unjust indeed.

[account42]

The problem with your analogy is that

a) someone being shot and someone pointing a gun are very well defined things while what is or is not intolerant is very subjective

and

b) unlike in your analogy, if someone expresses a opinion you consider intolerant then you are not dead, you can still defend your own opinion and counter theirs and most importantly you have not been harmed irreparably.

[ARandomerDude]

There's a 99.9% chance [1] any comment this long is tinfoil hat level crazy.

1. I've been on the internet.

[Kranar]

I downvoted it because I don't think most people need to read 7 paragraphs of an awkward strawman to understand the concept of self-defense.

Your example really has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance or the idea of ethics being independent of the actions of others.

[csdvrx]

> EDIT: I see this is being downvoted

FTFY

> would anyone care to explain their reasoning?

I think a lot of people on HN are just anti gun/very left wing, which may taint their judgement while your example was nice about the initiation of violence being the issue.

[FeepingCreature]

Sounds like a license to be intolerant, if only you can convince people that your opponents were intolerant first.

[Natsu]

The paradox of tolerance was aimed at those who would with "fists or pistols" prevent others from sharing their views and was premised on the right of self-defense.

In historical context, it's seems squarely aimed at the paramilitary organizations of various movements popular around the 1930s or so who physically injured people for saying things they disliked.

[philwelch]

Which does not seem to justify preemptive intolerance of peacefully expressed dissenting views.

[tehjoker]

Welcome to the messy uncodifiable reality of ethics and politics. You can pick a practical code with an exploit or you can pick one that lets you be cut down by anyone that doesn't go along with it.

[FeepingCreature]

Or you can try to fix the exploit. At least you can try to notice when people are exploiting it in the wild, which is to a first approximation "every time somebody cites the Paradox of Tolerance".

[rayiner]

People misconstrue this idea. Popper is talking about people who respond to debate with “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”

It’s about not tolerating people who make it impossible to have debate, not declaring arbitrary sets of views intolerable or beyond the pale.

[woodruffw]

This is a misquotation. The entire quotation from Open Society is:

> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Note that Popper is not claiming that "fists or pistols" are a necessary condition for not tolerating intolerance: they're a final stage of said intolerance. Popper explicitly says that we might reserve the right to preempt intolerance before it reaches the point of its followers resorting to violence.

[rayiner]

The whole paragraph makes it even clearer that he’s talking about people who would shut down free debate, starting with “denouncing all argument.” He’s actually talking about how progressives are today—ranging from declaring some topics beyond debate to “punch a Nazi.”

[ajsnigrutin]

We need a new secular code-society, where we separate code from personal beliefs, and assign "societal points" only by merit.

The problem with tolerance and intolerance is, that a few people (a loud minority) think they're the universal good guys, even in cases where their "good thing" is incompatible with itself.

[kragen]

Karl Popper was talking about Nazis and Communists organizing street brawls and putsches, not people insulting each other on Twitter:

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

As long as nobody is bringing pistols to tech conferences or starting fistfights in the hallways, Popper would not support excluding attendees for having intolerant ideas. Perhaps if contributors to your open-source repository are doxing and SWATting each other, putting lives at risk, then Popper would exclude them. But as long as they're just making offensive comments, Popper would not "claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force." (It might still be better to decline their patches so as to avoid being associated with them.)

I wouldn't go even as far as Popper, because his argument eats itself; as demonstrated in this thread, when people start applying his ideas, Popperism itself becomes an intolerant idea that, according to Popperism, we should suppress by violence. Moreover, any political position that advocates that the government take an action is advocating that some policy be imposed on the unwilling parts of the population by violence.

Much more sustainable is to suppress the violent actors and protect those who are merely calling for violence, while remonstrating with them to change their minds.

[gedy]

> not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

Wow, this ironically sounds exactly like the people spouting off about needing to "fight intolerance" in the past couple years.

[kragen]

Excellent point.

[bcrosby95]

That only works if you don't label half the population as intolerant.

[doctor_eval]

It's not about labels. Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. In a just society, we simply ask that one makes one's point without throwing specific groups under the proverbial bus.

[Tao3300]

> Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant.

I think most people can get on board with that. The trouble comes when people start berating others for using words/phrases like blacklist, sanity check, backlog grooming, master, and spaz - just to name a few. 99.9% of people who use these words do not possess the mens rea of bigotry or intolerance.

E.g.: Right now, someone who read your comment is probably enraged on behalf of the people who have been hit by buses. Most of us know you mean no harm by it.

[edgyquant]

This is a misunderstanding of the paradox of tolerance https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=31889018

[account42]

> Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant.

I wish more people would actually agree with that and not just apply it to groups thet they think need protection.

[philwelch]

What Popper probably meant was something more akin to, “don’t be a pacifist when people are starting to resort to violence”. At least that’s my reading.

It’s also interesting that the more extreme version of the “paradox of tolerance” is very close to the legal reasoning used during the Red Scare to justify bans on communist parties.

[Banana699]

Ah shit here we go again.

Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is widely misunderstood to be a licence to be intolerant yourself. For the last time : it is not.

Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views.

Until and unless you have evidence of that plausibly happening, there is no Paradox of Tolerance. You can perfectly tolerate people who hate women, who hate men, who hate gays, who hate the rich, who hate the poor, who hate any and every religion, ideology, way of life, identity, worldview or personality type. You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach.

It's well known in software that a data structure can have infinite readers, but the presence of even a single writer either necessitates that the data structure is completely private to the writer, or an explicit and consistent writing policy needs to be devised to coordinate the writer with the readers and possibly other writers. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is a restatement of this basic observation in the context of human societies. You can have infinite tolerance and diversity, as long as not a single ideology or group "writes" their conflicting views to society. If you have a group that does that, then you must choose whether you will cede all control of society to that group, or to set a strong writing policy that is much less permissive than infinite tolerance.

Stop using an argument for tolerance as an excuse for intolerance.

[mr_toad]

> You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach.

If you let them say whatever they want on an online forum without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, or something similar. The intolerant views take over.

Argue all the philosophy you like, practical experience shows that every time someone tries an unmoderated forum in any medium it ends up a cesspit of intolerance.

[Banana699]

> without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat,

I didn't know about Voat, sad that it was closed down. I would have loved to try it.

>The intolerant views take over.

This sounds to me like a you problem. You can very well admit that you don't know how to argue and shout back (in whatever style necessary to win), or that your views are so unpopular that you can't defend them unless to a supportive audience, but don't make this some sort of universal law or inevitable tendency. There is nothing about any view that makes it inherently more popular or appealing.

>a cesspit of intolerance.

This usage of 'intolerance' hints that you don't really understand Popper's sense of the word. Popper wasn't talking about what offends you, Popper was talking about people violently forcing you out of a society. There is no intolerance on 4chan or 8chan or any similar platform, literally everyone is allowed there, everyone is just an anonymous unique number. Only your own offence prevents you from participating, which is not anybody's fault. Every single "bad" tech platform, the ones that allow speech that mainstream progressive-dominated US companies love to rave about, only suffer due to external pressures imposed on them, the audience of those services very much like it, and they don't seem to physically force reality or other people to like what they like. The only one doing the forcing here are the self-appointed tolerance defenders, who are so so worried about tolerance that they are willing to freely dispence intolerance left and right to protect it. It's like how pro-war folks say that war protects and preserves the peace: It's indeed very true in a certain narrow sense, but you can't be doing it willy nilly, or you will risk destroying the very thing you claim you want to preserve.

I also don't understand why defending unlimited expresssion of views must imply defending unlimited expression of view without moderation. There is no reason why we can't moderate any ideology at all, see the subreddit r/themotte for example to see a place where everyone from radical feminists to white nationalists expressing their views in moderated threads.

[dragonwriter]

> Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views.

Where they pose a danger of it.

If you let them do it before reacting, you've already lost, and that's the point.

Anyhow, it's not widely misunderstood, AFAICT, since when it is invoked it is invariably with the strong implication, and usually the explicit statement, that that is the threat being addressed. You might at times question the judgement behind the assessment of the risk, but that's not a misunderstanding of the paradox of tolerance.

[tomp]

It’s usually invoked with the purpose of cancelling someone guilty of wrongthink, e.g. “Donglegate” or 100s of other examples of cancel culture.

[Akronymus]

I personally see the creator covenant to be a huge detriment, if not even a danger, to open source.

[madeofpalk]

> all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability

This one seems to be just the same, for better or worse?

[bitwize]

The Contributor Covenant is the gold standard for a reason: it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities. Alone it doesn't achieve much, but combined with a good faith enforcement board it helps keep a community a pleasant, joyful place to contribute to, for everyone. And that will increase software quality and attract quality people, aside from being, you know, the right thing to do.

The SQLite developers (developer?) are not interested in inviting more contributors to the table and that's fine, but for a functional public community the Contributor Covenant or something like it is pretty much table stakes.

[Ferrotin]

> it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities

Such as???

[Akronymus]

Advocating for removing a contributor for a statement on a different site, unrelated to the project, for example?

https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

[account42]

And this is supposed to be a good thing?

[Akronymus]

I gave the only example I could think of where such drama happened. Which was incidentally started by the creator of the creator covenant.

[tpoacher]

> combined with a good faith enforcement

which, of course, is the elephant in the room, isn't it.

Good faith contributors don't need the code, because it was not written for them. It was written for the pathological cases.

And systems designed around pathological cases are themselves pathological.

[bitwize]

Good faith users don't need security policies because the security policies weren't written for them. They were written for the pathological cases.

Good faith citizens don't need laws because the laws weren't written for them, etc.

Systems designed around the pathological cases help keep those pathological cases at bay. They are a framework for allowing the good-faith people to continue to act in good faith without having to constantly worry about the pathological cases themselves. I'd love to go back to the days when people left their doors unlocked and no one had a password to get into their account, but those days are gone. So are the days of not having a code of conduct on your open source project.

[tpoacher]

Having safeguards, let alone against criminals, is a very different conversation to having a code of ethics.

Perhaps the fact that we as a society are so ready to associate codes of ethics with policing should be raising some red flags in how we think about this issue.

[FeepingCreature]

With good modding, no code is needed. And with bad modding, the best code imaginable can achieve nothing. It is all down to the quality of the modding.

[Spivak]

The whole point of having a code is to be a thing those mods can point to to justify the banhammer when people complain.

Everyone has a CoC, some people write them down.

[FeepingCreature]

Well, I just think that's a bit misleading.

The justification for the banhammer is "I think you should be banned." The CoC doesn't enable or permit the mods to ban you. The mods can ban you because they're the mods; "can ban you" is pretty much definitionally identical to "is a mod." At most a CoC can serve as a guidebook for users.

[krainboltgreene]

> With good modding, no code is needed

This is nonsensicle and shows a lack of understanding. A code of conduct is just a guidebook for users to understand how your moderators will act, what to expect in a community.

How does "good modding" remove the need for that?

[FeepingCreature]

I guess I agree with that. But then there's still no point in using a prefabricated code. The code should be a README, a guide for users to predict mod behavior. An aid to the primary modding tool.

Moderation starts and ends with the mods, not with the CoC. The CoC just saves labor.

Using a prefabricated CoC is what you do when you need to fulfill a checkbox item saying "has a CoC", but have no intention of actually following it.

[actually_a_dog]

That seems to be a blatant mischaracterization:

> Scope:

> This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.

https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_con...

What's your motivation here?

[thaneross]

Up to version 1.3 the covenant didn't have a section limiting scope. 1.4 introduced it along with a loophole:

> Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers.

Eg, if you say something the maintainers don't like on your personal Twitter, all they need to say is "you're representing the project in a bad light" and it's fair game to ban you.

Then in version 2.0 the text you quote appears, but changes

> This Code of Conduct applies within all project spaces

to

> This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces

but never defines what community spaces are. Is your personal Twitter account a community space? Well, once again that's up to the maintainers to decide. It's the same loophole as 1.4 but more cleverly disguised.

[actually_a_dog]

Have you raised your concern with anyone who can do anything about it?

In any case, I fail to see how this is any worse than any other project. Do you expect some sort of due process before you're banned from any random OSS project? I wouldn't. If you don't like it, you can fork the project. That's how it works.

[formerly_proven]

> No one is forcing their beliefs onto anyone. keep the pitchforks in the shed.

I don't want a solution, I want to be mad.

[celticninja]

Reddit is that way ->

[smoe]

> The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability.

Sure, as far as I'm aware code of conducts/ethics only ever apply to contributors, no-one has beliefs being forced upon them. But that seems to be about the highest bar of entry for an interested developer I have seen in any project.

Not waving pitchforks here, I'm fine with them having this code of ethics, even tough I disagree with about half the points and find being asked to do such a pledge way to intrusive into personal life.

[ripley12]

SQLite generally doesn't accept contributions. "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution" https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

[smoe]

Even when not accepting outside contributions, to fulfill their long term support commitment through 2050, they might have to make changes to their current core team.

[threatofrain]

If they do, then they will have to find people who embrace Christian spiritualism. That's going to be a lot easier than finding Lisp devs. Similarly, Christian institutions seek Christian employees and they fire those who cannot abide.

Can't a software project be like a Christian church?

[smoe]

Personally, I don’t have a problem with a software project being run like a church. Don’t know what the legal situation is.

How common are those views in question tough? I’d say about 9/10 Christians I know from Europe and Latin America would find several of these points too extreme. But yes, that leaves probably still more people than lisp devs …

[worthless-trash]

> That's going to be a lot easier than finding Lisp devs.

I'm attacked ! out with your intolerance :P

[jacooper]

I don't understand why he didn't just use MIT or CC0 as license.

It gives the same rights and the same limitless nature, so why use an arbitrary license which might cause problems in some countries ? And also makes the contribution workflow more complex?

[MatthiasPortzel]

MIT requires that a copy of the license is distributed with the software—which means it is not strictly public-domain equivalent.

CC0 was not intended to be used as a software license, and IRCC includes a clause that the author withholds any patent rights, which which has its own set of concerns.

In practice, either of them would have worked fine, but part of the beauty of public domain code is that you can avoid having to specify a license.

[kwhitefoot]

There is no license. And all the contributors are in countries that recognize the concept of public domain. Why should they concern themselves with the niceties of licensing in some countries? How would choosing a different license guarantee a different outcome in those unspecified some countries?

[chasil]

This point seems incongruous to me, without its opposite:

"45. Be in dread of hell."

In zeal for mutual understanding, and practical fruit in general solutions that solve problems escaping a single perspective, would be that opposite for me.

We cannot approach the sublime within ourselves by fear, in my opinion.

There are a few other well-known teachings that appear to be missing from these rules, the first among them is the New Commandment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Commandment

[tootie]

I'm not sure what their organization is exactly but a private company isn't allowed to force a religious test on employees. I think it doesn't apply to an open source project but I sure don't like it. It's exclusionary.

[mechanical_bear]

Then don’t use it. Here’s your refund:

[phpisthebest]

That is the thing, Modern code of conduct policies are about governing the behavior of others, not a statement of how one will conduct themselves.

It is an important distinction many people over look

[jimbob45]

Except for all the current developers which makes it seem like Christianity is a prerequisite for getting hired or contributing.

I get frustrated at the SJW CoCs but this is arguably just as bad or worse.

[ksherlock]

Every time you come home and the SQLite developers aren't having sex with your wife, you should appreciate their code of Ethics. What other software makes that promise? Heck, Oracle probably probably upcharges, $500,000 or more for a 6-9s no adultery support plan (and that still gives them 52 minutes a year to commit adultery with your wife!)

[flaviut]

SQLite neither accepts external contribution nor do they hire anyone.

[kwhitefoot]

They do not accept contributions unless they are dedicated to the public domain. It's not quite as strict a no contributions at all.

[astrange]

They generally don’t accept patches at all AFAIK. They will look at yours and rewrite it themselves.

[baobabKoodaa]

I guess all the contributions magically appear out of thin air since nobody is allowed to contribute from outside the organization and nobody has ever joined the organization to contribute from the inside either.

[jhgb]

> makes it seem like Christianity is a prerequisite for getting hired or contributing

...how could one possibly get this impression, when it literally says "No one is required to follow The Rule"?

[Epa095]

This part:

>The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability. [...] In other words, the developers are saying: "We will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us."

I would definitely not be able to honestly commit to such a pledge. Do you think they will add a "(except epa095)" if I get hired? Or maybe I just won't get hired. IDK, but just like OP I read it as a requirement for contributing.

[jhgb]

Why not? If you're, for example, irreligious, then the best of your ability obviously doesn't include religious observations (and in fact, one could even make a solid argument that "interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community" don't touch the religious portions of Benedictine rules even for religious SQLite contributors because the clauses talking about relationship with God or Christ are simply not applicable to these interactions because none of the developers, clients, or larger SQLite user community include God or Christ). For example I'm a 110% atheist and yet I'd have zero problems with this. And again, you seem to be selectively ignoring the "this is not mandatory" part for some reason. If that part is a lie then the whole document is worthless as a guideline. You can't take a document telling you what to do and assume that it's randomly lying to you. If did that, then you'd have to consider your whole expected behavior to be unknowable.

[Epa095]

Granted, it is a bit complicated to figure out what it means to pledge to follow the "spirit" of a rule which includes the rule that anyone can choose not to follow it.

But you asked why I would not be able to commit to such a pledge. For me pledging is a kind of social contract (I don't belive in God, so its not between me and it), and I care quite alot that other people know that when I promise something it means something. So it becomes important that we, me and the people who care about the pledge, agree on what it means. If we all agree that it essentially means nothing, then fine, I pledge. But if it means something, what does it really mean?

It says "They [the founder of SQLite and all current developers] view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave". So the developers view it as a promise of how the developers are expected to behave. If I take the pledge, and start working there, am I breaking the pledge if I:

- Don't "[...] love the Lord God with my whole heart, my whole soul, and my whole strength."? [1]

- Don't love fasting. [13]

- Prefers cremation to burying. [17]

- Make people laugh [54-55]

etc etc, you probably get the point. There are a lot of rules, and they can all be interpreted. It is kind of hard to be certain that we all agree on what it actually means to pledge to follow the spirit of these 72 rules.

So, that is why I find it hard to commit to the pledge.

Now, I agree with you that is says that "No one is required to follow The Rule". But it also says that "They view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave". So, it very much says that the founder of SQLite (part of "They") promise SQLite users that he expect SQLlite developers to follow "the code". Maybe, because of the "No one is required to follow The Rule", that means essentially nothing. Or maybe it means something. IDK.

[isitmadeofglass]

> Why not?

why does it matter? If a company only hires men would you tell woman that they could just say they identify as men, and therefore there is no problem?

[jhgb]

That's a really bad analogy because I'm really not being asked to identify as a Benedictine here. In fact in order for your analogy to be more correct, the exact opposite -- "they could just say they don't identify as men" -- would have to be said.

[ev1]

Don't forget 'was created for the purpose of filling in a box on "supplier registration" forms [.....] This document continues to be used for its original purpose - providing a reference to fill in the "code of conduct" box on supplier registration forms.'

[isitmadeofglass]

> ...how could one possibly get this impression, when it literally says "No one is required to follow The Rule"?

Now hear here miss, while true that the board of directors are all men, and have been so for 5 decades, we reject any notion of sexism as we clearly have here a document which states that “We believe men are superior to women, but we do not require employees to hold this belief…” also it’s voluntary and a compete coincidence that all employees have voluntarily vowed that they agree to this and that all employees are also male. It can’t be sexist since we do not force anyone to agree to do anything.

Hope the context shift makes it a bit easier to see why some people might call this suspicious.

[jhgb]

Not quite sure where the document says anything about women. While Benedictines couldn't include women, I strongly doubt that there is any such insinuation here.