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Contributor Covenant

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The Contributor Covenant is a code of conduct for free/open source projects, created by Coraline Ada Ehmke. It is used in prominent projects including Linux, Ruby on Rails, Swift, Golang, and JRuby.[1][2][3] Relevant signers include Google[4], Apple, Microsoft, Eclipse and Gitlab.[5]

Reception

Positive reception

Since its initial release as an open source document in 2014, the Contributor Covenant has been adopted by over 40,000 open source projects ranging in size from single-maintainer projects to portfolios of projects produced by tech industry giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. In 2016 Github added a feature to streamline the addition of the Contributor Covenant to an open source project, and the Ruby library manager Bundler also has an option to add the Contributor Covenant to software programs that its users create.

In 2016, the author received a Ruby Hero award in recognition of her work on the Contributor Covenant.[6][7]

Criticism

The Contributor Covenant has been criticized as "a tool for social justice" through which activist groups try "to gain power over people" indifferent to politics or with a different political view[8][9][10].

Coraline Ada Ehmke, the creator of Contributor Covenant, has called herself a "social justice advocate" and has stated that from its beginnings open source software should be considered a "political movement with its own ideologies" that are a reaction against corporate-controlled software development, calling for hackers to "welcome social justice advocates"[11].

Jay Maynard has claimed that "Coraline Ada Ehmke argues that open source is a political movement, and that it should honor and welcome the work of SJWs. This is badly wrong. Open source is not a political movement at all. [...] Coraline’s code of conduct is designed to force hackers into the SJW-approved politically correct mold", going as far as calling the Contributor Covenant "a poisonous code of conduct designed to ram SJWs’ ideals down our throats [which] is detrimental to us all, because it takes the focus away from what truly matters: the code".[12]

In 2016 PHP expert Paul M. jones claimed that "the Code of Conduct as presented enables its enforcers to stand in judgment of every aspect of your public, private, professional, and political expression [...] the real purpose of the Covenant is to [...] gain power over the political enemies of Social Justice, by using project membership as a form of leverage over them"[13].

He used as an example, among others, the situation of an Opal maintainer, who Coraline Ada Ehmke tried to have removed "in reference to a Twitter conversation where Opal is not the subject"[14]. More specifically, the Opal maintainer made a potentially transphobic statement on Twitter and Ehmke opened an issue on the repository[15] to call out these comments and question whether they would have a negative effect on contributions from marginalized people, including other transgender developers like herself[16].

Paul M. Jones recalled another incident like this, when Roberto Rosario, a mixed race person who at the time maintained the Awesome-Django project, was asked to adopt the Contributor Covenant and, after declining to do so citing the total lack of any conduct related incident, was subjected to intimidation, as he was threatened to lose its job [17]. Specifically referring to the Rosario controversy, Eric S. Raymond said that

We must cast these would-be totalitarians out – refuse to admit them on any level except by evaluating on pure technical merit whatever code patches they submit. We must refuse to let them judge us.[18]

Following the adoption of the Contributor Covenant v1.4 by Linux,[19] where the creator and maintainer Linus Torvalds said "The Code of Conflict is not achieving its implicit goal of fostering civility and the spirit of 'be excellent to each other'", The Linux community reacted, with some applauding the change, and some speaking against it.[20] At least one contributor is now calling for their code to be removed from the kernel.[21]

In practice, the Contributor Covenant has been observed as being only as good as the enforcement carried out by project owners. Typically, if bad behavior is observed, a warning is sufficient, and anecdotal evidence shows actual removal of contributors to be rare.[22]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Contributor Covenant: A Code of Conduct for Open Source Projects". Contributor Covenant. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  2. ^ Evans, Jon (March 5, 2016). "On the war between hacker culture and codes of conduct". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  3. ^ Bostick, Chad (November 4, 2016). "GitHub's Anti-Harassment Tools and the Open Source Codes of Conduct". Hello Tech Pros. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  4. ^ "Code of Conduct – opensource.google.com". opensource.google.com. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  5. ^ "Contributor Covenant: Adopters". Contributor-covenant.org. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  6. ^ "2016 Ruby Heroes". Ruby Heroes. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  7. ^ RailsConf (May 12, 2016). Ruby Hero Awards (Videotape). Confreaks. 3:52 minutes in.
  8. ^ http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214
  9. ^ https://medium.com/@jmaynard/coraline-ada-ehmke-argues-that-open-source-is-a-political-movement-and-that-it-should-honor-and-f8776ac607bf
  10. ^ http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918
  11. ^ https://medium.com/rx3-magazine/why-hackers-must-welcome-social-justice-advocates-1f8d7e216b00
  12. ^ https://medium.com/@jmaynard/coraline-ada-ehmke-argues-that-open-source-is-a-political-movement-and-that-it-should-honor-and-f8776ac607bf
  13. ^ http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214
  14. ^ https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
  15. ^ https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
  16. ^ https://medium.com/@coralineada/on-opalgate-2efd0fc1e0fd
  17. ^ https://archive.is/dgilk#selection-933.228-933.249
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference ibiblio.org was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ "Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it".
  20. ^ "The Linux Kernel Adopts a Code of Conduct".
  21. ^ "Killswitch the Linux Code of Conduct".
  22. ^ "The Woman Bringing Civility to Open Source".
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