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GNU is Not Unix

GCC Steering Committee Announces a Code of Conduct (gnu.org) 202

GCC is the GNU project's free and open-source cross-platform compiler collection. Now an anonymous reader shared this announcement from the mailing list for GCC: The GCC Steering Committee has decided to adopt a Code of Conduct for interactions in GCC project spaces, including mailing lists, bugzilla, and IRC.

The vast majority of the time, the GCC community is a very civil, cooperative space. On the rare occasions that it isn't, it's helpful to have something to point to to remind people of our expectations. It's also good for newcomers to have something to refer to, for both how they are expected to conduct themselves and how they can expect to be treated...

At this time the CoC is preliminary: the code itself should be considered active, but the CoC committee (and so the reporting and response procedures) are not yet in place.

There's also an official FAQ, and GCC's Code of Conduct begins with this introduction. "Like the free software community as a whole, the GCC community is made up of a mixture of professionals and volunteers from all over the world, working on every aspect of the project — including mentorship, teaching, and connecting people."

Where this leads to issues and unhappiness, "we have a few ground rules that we ask people to adhere to... [T]ake it in the spirit in which it's intended — a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us, the project, and the broader communities in which we participate."
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GCC Steering Committee Announces a Code of Conduct

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  • code of conduct (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @06:02PM (#63631844)
    does it state we will not let the NSA build in back doors?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      GCC is the GNU project's free and open-source cross-platform compiler collection.

      And you need a "code of conduct" for this .... why exactly?

      • Because people do not know how - or choose not to - communicate in a civil manner and treat other people with respect, at least over the internet.

        Funny thing, I was watching an old Computer Chronicles episode about modems and BBSs. The issue was exactly the same then. They discussed people âoehiding behind keyboardsâ. I recall those days, although I wasnâ(TM)t connecting to BBSâ(TM)s until a few years after. It wasnâ(TM)t great then, and not only has it gotten worse but it has now s

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Unfortunately it isn't about "respect" anymore and these clowns want submission to their ideologies. Calling someone by the birth gender or using the term master/slave are triggering events for this crop of woke snowflakes.

          • and yet yoi are the biggiest offending snowflake why does it hurt you so much to have to repsect other peoples wishes and call them by their prefered title?
        • violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them.

          I know it doesn't intend to, but it sounds like I'm gonna get my pull request rejected for rating the Dave Chapelle comedy special 5 stars.

          • by mysidia ( 191772 )

            This is highly likely, not solely bc of having some ground rules -- but due to also introducing a Committee culture, and enforcement regime that involves a group assigned to police others' conduct.

            I guarantee that once the overall group is large enough - you will have some people who would like to initiate action, stir up some drama, "Because they can", or because they are bored.

            The CoC committee meetings will also be boring for their members if they don't also constantly have some issue to discuss, or s

      • Re:code of conduct (Score:5, Insightful)

        by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:30PM (#63632048)

        And you need a "code of conduct" for this .... why exactly?

        gcc needs to constantly attract new contributors who will participate in their free time, even if free time sometimes means on the job (they need people to wilfully submit patches upstream, whether these patches were developed at home or during job hours), and they will only find people to send patches upstream if it's not a headache to lead with local bully, even if it's only condescending comments.

        Internet community forums frequently have a code of conduct, which is what moderators enforce. For example when you joined Ubuntu forums a while ago you were suggested to pledge to a code of conduct and hence became an "Ubuntero". Big serious projects like gcc just did not think they needed to have one explicitly, because people who join such projects usually are highly educated, highly qualified, experienced professionals (also often boring greybeards), and there is expectation that these behave well without the need to tell them. If there is a risk that not all the community members follow the same rules, and some of them ruin it for everyone else, then you need to makes the rules explicit such that people know what to follow, or as last resort there is some due process to turn away the irredeemable. I can't tell if gcc was in this situation, but better safe than sorry. It should cost zero for most contributors.

        • Re:code of conduct (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @08:47PM (#63632204)

          And you need a "code of conduct" for this .... why exactly?

          gcc needs to constantly attract new contributors who will participate in their free time, even if free time sometimes means on the job (they need people to wilfully submit patches upstream, whether these patches were developed at home or during job hours), and they will only find people to send patches upstream if it's not a headache to lead with local bully, even if it's only condescending comments.

          There is never an acceptable reason for actual bullying.

          But in 3 many years I have been in the workforce, I have had the experience of trying to work with people who consider any criticism, even the tiniest meekest sort as a egregious and unforgivable offense. Interestingly, these people have all been substandard performers.

          We called it "not taking telling", and the result was that the the only goal ended up being to not offend them.

          As noted before, real bullying is not acceptable.

          I had a co-worker who tried to pull that stunt on me. I was designing a new process and system that was going to be used in her department. S I would regularly meet with her and another person from their department to work out the details, and performed the design.

          She wen't to my boss and claimed I was cutting her out of the loop, and not respecting her. My boss pointed to a several inch stack of memos, meeting minutes, and designs and processed I had implemented, and noted that every one was cc'd to her, and the other employee. He knew she was full of BS, but checked with the other employee who noted I was very polite, respectful and listened and went over everything with both of them.

          Now I had suspected there might be something like her action, which had me really go deep into the documentation process. It was also why I had another witness. A form of walking on eggshells

          And if I hadn't? Perhaps

          It would be naive to believe that there would never be cases where someone used actual constructive criticism and tried to turn it into bullying, and a great reason to get rid of anyone who dared to criticize the easily offended.

          So what is your fix? I can tell you that while she was the worst performer in her department, and I was definitely the highest performer in mine. If a volunteer effort, I wouldnot put up with the accusation, so I'd leave, and the person that was incompetent and easily offended, and turning job one into not offending the sensitive one, just perhaps is not going to make the group better, but worse and very likely would get a lot of others to leave.

          But acceptable conduct being job one - competence is much less important.

          • by sinij ( 911942 )

            I have had the experience of trying to work with people who consider any criticism, even the tiniest meekest sort as a egregious and unforgivable offense. Interestingly, these people have all been substandard performers.

            We called it "not taking telling", and the result was that the the only goal ended up being to not offend them.

            Why are you not seeing the described behavior as bullying? Causing drama when good-faith and honest feedback is given is not a reasonable workplace behavior. Yes, unwelcome feedback exists, yes Dunning-Kruger advice is annoying to revive, but the reasonable way to conduct yourself is to politely listen and ignore it (or if you are extra motivated, try to explain your decisions, but that rarely tends to work well).

            • Re:code of conduct (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @10:07AM (#63633664)

              I have had the experience of trying to work with people who consider any criticism, even the tiniest meekest sort as a egregious and unforgivable offense. Interestingly, these people have all been substandard performers.

              We called it "not taking telling", and the result was that the the only goal ended up being to not offend them.

              Why are you not seeing the described behavior as bullying?

              Yes, it is a form of bullying - the term we used for that was a person being a "crybully". This is when a person establishes taking offense as a way to enforce their will. Most people do not want to offend others. The crybully starts off with small transgressions upon their sensibilities, and people comply. Eventually they establish themselves as a de-facto leader, the person who essentially takes over the place, and changes the group purpose from whatever it used to be to not offending them.

              And despite AC's comments, there is no particular sex or gender of the crybully.

              Causing drama when good-faith and honest feedback is given is not a reasonable workplace behavior.

              So true. Where the crybully plies their trade is when any feedback at all is given to them. And sometimes they can become really offended for other people. I had one guy who for some reason would freak out if I gave any feedback at all. I even tried the sandwich method, as well as allowing him to think that some problems were my fault. Didn't matter, he refused to take any criticism at all. Pity was his work was reasonably competent. But if the workplace gets a temper tantrum when pointing out simple things like a typo

              No one should be treated poorly for their sex or gender. But the crybully often conflates any criticism as a personal attack, and attaches their favorite reason for that. See the crybully coward's reply where they try to turn me into both a misogynist because the example I used stated the sex as a female, and a right winger as an added thing to whine about. Bloody hell, I have dealt with males, and females as the perpetually offended. AC crybully just tipped their hand in their reply. And the right wingers in here think I'm left wing. Sorry folks, I'm central in today's US politics.

        • gcc needs to constantly attract new contributors who will participate in their free time, even if free time sometimes means on the job (they need people to wilfully submit patches upstream, whether these patches were developed at home or during job hours), and they will only find people to send patches upstream if it's not a headache to lead with local bully, even if it's only condescending comments.

          This goes both ways: you can attract new developers if starting contributing is easy, as just send a patch, no need to read rules and regulations, no need to watch every single word you say, no threats to be banned from project. COCs create bureaucracy and bureaucrats and turn a cooperative project into a corporation.

          • by vadim_t ( 324782 )

            Get real. You could always be banned from anywhere. Lack of formal rules never stopped anyone in power from kicking you out.

            • by Tom ( 822 )

              That's true, but lack of formal rules reduces mental load and barriers to entry. If you're not a dog you know that being an asshole can get you kicked out. But if there's a "read our COC and confirm" page, you think that there's a bunch of rules you need to follow and if you just wanted to quickly submit a two-line patch, it's likely that at this point you'd go "ah, fuck it" and go away. Because it's not worth the effort.

        • For example when you joined Ubuntu forums a while ago you were suggested to pledge to a code of conduct and hence became an "Ubuntero".

          And if you wanted to have a PPA, it was required.

      • by Entrope ( 68843 )

        There were recently a few very abrasive "outsiders" who started what were basically flame wars on the main GCC (development) mailing list. These were people who don't contribute code but had very strong, idiosyncratic, ideas about how GCC should behave as a compiler. I would guess that this code of conduct was put in place to make it clearer about how the list's stewards can deal with counterproductive people like that.

        The threads I characterized as flame wars had nothing to do with general politics or id

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Not woke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:12PM (#63631996)

    I looked through it, and it looks like reasonable stuff. I expected another authoritarian, woke screed, but it's pretty tame.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ewibble ( 1655195 )

      It really depends on how you interpret them, people can get offended by pretty much anything.

      Statements like:

      Be kind to others

      Are vague, and meaningless. Kindness cannot be mandated, true kindness has to come from the heart and be freely given. Its just fake kindness otherwise.

      Just like forcing your child to say sorry, to their sibling, everybody knows its fake and meaningless you are just going through the motions.

      I for one think that the world is far to full of fake people, being fake polite.

      https://twitter.com/introverts [twitter.com]

      • I don't trust this sort of vague.
      • Re:Not woke (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:51PM (#63632078)

        It really depends on how you interpret them, people can get offended by pretty much anything.

        For sure - just look at all the people here who got offended by gcc adopting a code of conduct!

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ewibble ( 1655195 )

          I didn't say I was offended, I don't know if you are referring to me or someone else.

          Written language is hard to interpret the emotion behind the statement or the tone, and non verbal queue are missing, do I disagree with this, or am i outraged, or offended its almost impossible to tell.

          I personally don't like the social niceties, they kind of bother me, maybe its because I am a nerd and am not good at picking up subtle queues. Maybe its because I am pathologically honest (I do lie, but not as often as I sh

      • You might want to read a pamphlet on autism if you’re having trouble understanding the meaning of “be kind”.

      • Re:Not woke (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tom ( 822 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @07:59AM (#63633222) Homepage Journal

        Just like forcing your child to say sorry, to their sibling, everybody knows its fake and meaningless you are just going through the motions.

        Agree with most you write, except this.

        Sometimes, going through the motions has value. It clarifies to everyone what the expected behavior is, it clarifies that whatever happened was not ok, and it restores the peace, even if both parties are not entirely satisfied (one because they were forced, one because they saw it wasn't from the heart).

        It's lake the dance in international diplomacy. You sent some of my diplomats home, I send some of your diplomats home. Everyone knows it's all bullshit, but we still do it because the actual message is on a different level.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Most people would read "be kind" as simply assuming good intentions in others and trying to explain issues in a way that doesn't demean them.

        It's actually a very important skill for engineers. If people are afraid to come forward with issues because they think they will be insulted, belittled, or blamed, they often just don't come forward. At best the project is delayed as they struggle by themselves on a problem, at worst it doesn't get discovered until it causes a major problem.

        I always operate on a "no b

  • They said "coc"
  • Try being civil and occasionally making tough decisions.

    Every project that spells out a list of manners and demands legal signatures is beyond misguided.

    Substitutes for human interactions always fail.

  • The way I see it, one of two things will happen with the adoptions of codes of conduct in a few years:

    - Only one or two will survive, with the exact same wording. Similar to "is it GPL or MIT?" and then you know the main points you need to know. This is kind of the case now, most share a common base.
    - and/or the same people pushing them will be pushing to tear them down, replacing them with a "be excellent to each other" because ultimately, they will provide a burden or entry for the marginalized people who

  • Now we'll have a codified, programmatic enforcement guide to all human interaction!

    Never again will we have to consider events on a case-by-case basis, we will have a Code of Conduct by which to assign blame, guilt, and redress!

    It has worked so well in the past!!

  • This is of course very unfortunate. Most likely, it will now be less than a decade before the project gets run into th ground by power hungry moderators (make no mistake, once any steering committee goes down the path of censoring their community, this result enshitification is unavoidable). Hopefully, by that time, there will be a good alternative to gcc.

  • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @02:36AM (#63632700)
    1. Ignore anything people write that is not relevant to technical discussion. It is just lit up pixels on a monitor or ink on paper and cannot harm you.

    There. Wasn't so hard, was it?
    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @04:29AM (#63632880) Journal

      How about instead of filling the channel with bigotry that other people have to ignore, you instead don't write anything that's not relevant to the technical discussion.

      There. Wasn't so hard, was it?

      It is just lit up pixels on a monitor or ink on paper and cannot harm you.

      So is the code of conduct and you're pig-biting mad about it.

      • "How about instead of filling the channel with bigotry that other people have to ignore, you instead don't write anything that's not relevant to the technical discussion."

        Because bigots from the extreme left and extreme right do not agree what constitutes bigotry and it turns into a "You're a moran" battle of the hateful woke and the hateful right.

        So, again, ignore anything people write that is not relevant to technical discussion.

        "So is the code of conduct and you're pig-biting mad about it."

        The Code of Co
        • The Code of Conduct has [blah de blah de blah]

          Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of your whining over a few pixels on the screen. You said writing is just inconsequential pixels on a screen. Why are you so emotional about it?

          You can't have it both ways dude.

      • by tofus ( 201424 )

        [quote]So is the code of conduct and you're pig-biting mad about it.[/quote]
        I fail to see what exactly is 'pig-biting mad' about suggesting to keep a technical discussion about technical arguments. I also fail to see why your comment was rated 'Insightful' instead of 'Gaslighting'. Especially your follow-up comment down below. It is nothing but a personal stab under the table and adds nothing to the discussion. It is exactly the sort of posts a technical discussion can do without. In that regard, the OP sho

        • I fail to see what exactly is 'pig-biting mad'

          Like... read his comments. He's clearly pissed off as hell.

          about suggesting to keep a technical discussion about technical arguments.

          That's not what he was suggesting. Actually read what he wrote. He's suggesting everyone should IGNORE anything that's not technical.

          It is exactly the sort of posts a technical discussion can do without

          Why are you defending someone who said you should ignore non techincal discussions by, er, doing the opposite of what he said and

  • While I do understand the motivation, whenever some project decides it needs explicit rules, I think of a story I heard a long time ago:

    Some people were living in a shared apartment. They shared not just rent but also household chores, the later without any explicit assignments. Until someone new joined and proposed to make a list so that everyone always knew what they should do. You know, "Monday: Peter vaccuums. Tuesday: Joe takes out the trash." etc.

    Soon, things started to fall apart. Things weren't done

    • I think of a story I heard a long time ago

      I don't think that illustrates the point you want as well as you think.

      The main point it illustrates is that it's hard to scale. When it was just 3 people or whatever it was fine. Small group, simple interactions. That doesn't scale, and refusing to set rules because they're hard is not better:

      Some things are better made NOT explicit. Netiquette used to be a thing, and - at least in my experience - it worked best in the communities where it was understood to apply b

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        When it was just 3 people or whatever it was fine. Small group, simple interactions.

        That's not the point of the story at all, and I'm not sure the group size changed or a person moved out and another in.

        I've seen the same effect in startups and growing companies. When everything is everyone's job, everyone just does everything. Once jobs are defined and something clearly is NOT your job, you stop doing it.

        In other words, they tried your way. It was called "netiquette" and that failed. Now something a bit more formal is needed.

        Seen that approach fail a couple times.

        Pandering to everyone is the mistake. If you kick out both the assholes and the sissies, ordinary people can go about their lives.

        We've come from th

        • That's not the point of the story at all, and I'm not sure the group size changed or a person moved out and another in.

          I missed the person moving out somehow.

          I've seen the same effect in startups and growing companies. When everything is everyone's job, everyone just does everything. Once jobs are defined and something clearly is NOT your job, you stop doing it.

          You can't organise a small group of people who know each other like a larger group/people who don't know each other. A large company where no one's

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Tom ( 822 )

        I've been on the Internet since one year after that document. In all that time, you are the 2nd person I've met who actually knows that it exists.

        FIDOnet (where I was prior to Internet) also had explicit rules - but 99% of its users didn't know them except by word-of-mouth.

  • Because the only thing that keeps people civil is a piece of text that tells them to be so.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • It's a whole lot easier to ban an asshole for breaking a rule if the rule exists.

        How so? Can he sue me if I ban him and there is not a specific rule to cite as the reason? Or maybe if there is such a piece of text I can sue him if he keeps sending hateful patches for GCC even though I told him to go away?

  • The CoC is contradictory. In one place it states "Be Welcoming... political belief, religion..." and another place it states "...gender identity and expression". When both of these groups tend to see each other as mutually exclusive, The Code of Conduct Committee will be weaponized as a tool to exclude some members of the listed groups.

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