Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-10/msg00001.html <comment><USER2> > The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try > to help people learn to make their communication more kind.

This is excellent; using love and persuasion to help someone improve is so much better than by force, compulsion, and fear. How many children rebel against restrictive and domineering parents? but a child who is loved and taught, but allowed to make choices and pursue independence usually ends up much healthier and happier.

>I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. >Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D.

This dovetails in so nicely as well. You get more bees with honey than vinegar, and it is better to make a project open, kind, mentor-friendly, and productive-- which furthers the industriousness and quality of a product. Let all come who desire to come and treat them in the spirit of kindness and co- operation, but giving no preference or overt recruitment campaigns, which in themselves could end up sidelining or diverting attention from the true aims of the project.

I don't always agree with Stallman, but I think this is a magnificent and well-thought out plan and response.

<comment><USER3> So, here's the thing. Statements like this?

 _Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D._

This is not a new statement. This is what people pushing diversity have been saying for years and years. The only ways for this to be a new and refreshing thing to you are:

1\. You were not paying attention, or

2\. You were getting all your information from people who were doing their best to misinform you.

<comment><USER4> It's everything surrounding this statement that is refreshing. Hearing, "Diversity is not our goal; creating an environment that welcomes diversity is," runs counter to the incessant assumptions that going out of our way to collect diversity tokens is the end all and be all to facilitating diversity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you > disagree with what they say. When people present code or text as their own > work, please accept it as their work. Please do not criticize people for > wrongs that you only speculate they may have done; stick to what they > actually say and actually do.

That's a breath of fresh air. There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. Keeping the benefit of the doubt is always a more charitable (and peaceful) way for conversations to take place.

<comment><USER6> > There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman > people for what they did not say/express.

The claim that there is always someone creating strawmen is itself the creation of a strawman. If you assume good faith of participants then it might be useful to assume good faith of those who criticise even if they misunderstand or misread or assume unwarranted implications.

<comment><USER7> Well, in the case of volunteer software projects, I think people who make significant contributions should be cut a great deal of slack, whereas those who criticize contributors without contributing themselves aren't entitled to any slack at all.

<comment><USER8> I think there's a huge difference between cutting slack and assuming positive intent, in the same way that there's a huge difference between criticism and constructive feedback.

Cutting slack is essentially turning the other cheek to otherwise unwelcome behaviour, for whatever reason that might be.

I don't believe it's healthy at all to cut slack for some people and not others. On the contrary, it's incredibly healthy to give everyone the exact same assumption of positive intent up until it's proven otherwise.

Those making significant contributions should be doing their best to set the example, to show what the high standard is, and if you let them off the hook you're not holding them to account. You're putting them above the guidelines and essentially enabling them.

This doesn't mean that everyone should be criticised equally, but nobody should be above receiving constructive feedback on their communication just because they've contributed a lot of work.

And on that level, it also stands to reason that feedback has to be delivered compassionately and appropriately, and it works a lot better if that's done in the context of a trusting relationship or through people who are skilled in engaging in such conversations.

A newcomer to the community who criticises everybody else is not communicating kindly or compassionately. The assumption of positive intent may suggest that they're not familiar with the guidelines, so the constructive feedback would be to present those guidelines and point out where the newcomer may have fallen short.

Hard work, but communities are hard work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting, but I have to say I'm skeptical that it'll do any better than the Linux kernel community's attempt to apply Wheaton's Law back in 2015.

The geek community was largely formed by people who had been unfairly targeted by those who enforce social norms: picking inappropriate targets, taking things to inappropriate extremes, and the like. Our response was to create a community that didn't enforce social norms at all -Geek Social Fallacy #1, essentially- and a lot of beautiful things came from that. We changed the world for the better in a lot of ways, precisely because we refused to reject people just because they acted in ways that went against the social norm.

But there was a problem: some behaviors really shouldn't be accepted, and some people really won't change without the application of force. Unlike the people who first formed the geek communities -people we should all aspire to be like- this second group was fairly ostracized: appropriate targets, appropriate measures. They came to our community, not precisely for support, but for enablers; having been rejected from everywhere else, they fled to a group that refused to reject anybody. And that's exactly what we did, if not always enthusiastically. It's hard to find a geek circle without at least one of Those Geeks: the kind who drag things down and ruin things for everyone, but people feel a duty to put up with their crap because that's what it means to be a geek. They continue to abuse us and play us, for exactly this reason. And they aren't going to change unless they are forced to. Some of them won't change even then, but you do what you have to do.

And that's the problem with the kernel's old code of conduct, and with these "Kind Communication Guidelines". They're a step in the right direction, because they spell out unacceptable behaviors. But because they don't spell out clear and consistent consequences for those behaviors, creepers gonna creep. You might catch a few mild cases, and that's not insignificant, but the mild cases aren't at the core of the problem, so the needle isn't going to move much.

I know only too well how hard it is to lay down the law against someone who is abusing your goodwill, especially when they're valued for other reasons, and most of all when it feels so much like they're "just a little more extreme" than most. It's a horribly painful thing to have to do -if you haven't had to do it before, it hurts just as much as you might imagine, if not even worse- and I can't blame people for being reluctant to do that. But this is how you induce change in the hardcore. Guidelines like this can serve as decent warning that real change is coming, but they don't bring about that change themselves.

Still, this is a step in the right direction. It's at least an acknowledgment that there are norms, and they are to be observed. But it's not going to be the magic pill. There simply is none.

<comment><USER10> I agree almost completely with your comment, with the exception of the second paragraph.

We created a community with a different set of social norms, norms that are enforced as aggressively and often as inappropriately as any others.

<comment><USER9> It's not hard to argue that this is basically what happened in practice. Certainly it feels the same for those targeted. But I'd argue that the mechanism is different in ways that affect how it needs to be treated.

If there were norms that were actually being enforced, then existing enforcement could be brought to bear against the creepers. The problem is that there _is_ no enforcement in the usual sense, allowing the creepers free rein to enforce, not any norms actually relating to the wider society, but their own emotional whims. In essence, rather than being proper enforcement of social norms, it is nothing but common bullying perpetrated by a vocal minority, which they get away with because there is no mechanism to bring any force to bear against the bullies. Their presence continues to be tolerated in the same way that any abusive person in a friend group is tolerated: it keeps the peace. Meanwhile, the targets leave because that's the closest thing they have to recourse.

The creeps don't mind Wheaton's Law or "Kind Communication Guidelines" much, because they know that no one with any clout will come after them for breaking the rules. Same goes for SQLite's adoption of the Rule of Saint Benedict, which they have already stated cannot be enforced for "minor" transactions. Only when the rules come with enforcement mechanisms do they actually complain, because that's the point when their targets gain a way to fight back against the bullying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As co-maintainer of GNU Guix, I want to point out that the views expressed in Richard Stallman's message are his and not those of the Guix maintainers.

In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence.

More importantly, by writing that he disagrees with "making diversity a goal", RMS seems to deny the role we free software people play in the demographics of our communities.

Many of us in Guix (and I think I can speak for my fellow Guix co-maintainer here) believe that free software should empower everyone. As such, correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission.

<comment><USER12> Stallman's guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.

<comment><USER13> > _Making diversity a goal is identity politics_

I think you may be being too absolutist here? This would only be true if literally every demographic thought identically about every aspect of a project or product and brought the same point of view. Then everyone would be interchangeable beyond pure technical competence. However I don't think that's always true, and when it's not that means that diversity can have some value purely in and of itself since it will bring a better reflection of global usage goals and UX considerations.

I want to emphasize that this doesn't mean it's a _more_ important value then anything else, which might be where some of the reflexive opposition comes from. It shouldn't be a zero-sum game, where gaining diversity means necessarily losing on other important values. But neither is diversity never of any inherent positive value, it can be, and that in turn is worth some positive effort to pursue isn't it? Not merely correcting biases, but actively seeking a wider array of PoVs from intelligent people could help avoid mental boxes and unpleasant surprises when something goes out into the general world.

So maybe a better version of what you said would be "making diversity the only goal" or even "the goal above all else" or "diversity a goal but never taking into account whether any cost/benefit tradeoffs to existing culture makes for a net win" or something along those lines?

<comment><USER14> What you're saying makes sense, and I don't think anybody would disagree that having a diverse PoV on a project would be beneficial. In practice though, organizations saying that they strive for diversity normally don't bother to look any deeper than skin color and gender. That's one of the common criticisms of big tech companies; they claim to value diversity, but they still mainly hire people from a handful of top schools, creating a largely homogenous culture that share a similar PoV, but they say that they're diverse just because a lot of their employees have different skin colors.

As an example, I'm a white male without college experience, raised in a single parent, lower income household. Most people hiring for "diversity" would overlook me just because I'm a white male, but would welcome my wife's vietnamese friend, even though she comes from a wealthy background and went to a prominent school that makes her much less diverse culturally than their existing employees.

<comment><USER12> To add to this, the benefits of "diversity" are vastly overstated and unproven. I believe that the benefits could plausibly exist in certain narrow cases, mainly things like UX design, marketing, etc. I don't believe these benefits generally exist in any meaningful way for things like low level code or backend services.

I very much want to weed out bad experiences from turning otherwise interested contributors away, and strongly support that. But when it crosses a line to superficial tokenism, we all lose, including those who are underrepresented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Rather than trying to have the last word, look for the times when there is > no need to reply, perhaps because you already made the relevant point clear > enough. If you know something about the game of Go, this analogy might > clarify that: when the opponent's move is not strong enough to require a > direct response, it is advantageous to give it none and instead move > elsewhere.

I love this analogy of why not responding might be your best option.

<comment><USER16> I was very influenced when I read Paul Graham's assertion that comment quality tends to be inversely proportional to reply depth.

I can't find the reference but I really took that to heart, and try as hard as I can to avoid replying to a reply to one of my comments, here and elsewhere. The exception would be if I was very unclear originally, or if someone asks something specific that only I can answer.

What's interesting is how effective this seems to be. If my original statement is worth defending usually someone else will chime in.

Otherwise it's a great mental exercise to just let the criticism stand, and try to think how to be more airtight in the future.

<comment><USER17> That's a good pointer maybe for debate threads but it's not a good way to have a real conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While it sounds very reasonable, friendly, and non-authoritarian, a big problem with an approach like this, without real teeth or rigidity, is that it is very easy to harass people out of a community while staying within its constraints, and provides very little recourse for those being harassed (who often are not in a position of power) to put on pressure for getting something done about it.

The approach taken largely ignores the discussion that's been going on about this topic, and sounds pretty naive, if not willfully passive.

<comment><USER19> The current push for codes of conduct in software projects isn't about harassment per se. Realistically anyone can be harassed out of a community regardless of rules. The point of the rules is to change the norms such that behavior that would otherwise have been exclusionary or just off-putting is specifically called out and recognized as "wrong".

"This code is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed" may or may not be "harassement" according to the intent of the writer or interpretation of the reader. But it's still wrong and we don't want that.

<comment><USER20> What if the code was indeed garbage, and it cost a lot of time (super precious asset) and brain power (a precious asset) to evaluate and reject? Such a reaction would be understandable even if hurtful. No wonder people leaning towards the Asperger/autistic spectrum of brutal honesty would state that; such is their nature.

What would you propose for addressing it? Ghosting? Silent blacklisting? English-style "there is a minor hiccup with the code"? A compiled list of what is wrong with the code (taking another few hours to prepare)? Any realistic ideas?

<comment><USER21> > No wonder people leaning towards the Asperger/autistic spectrum of brutal > honesty would state that; such is their nature.

Actually, it is not "their nature". The nature of people on the spectrum is to have difficulty understanding social conventions. Having a system whereby social conventions are explicitly spelled out in detail is likely to help people on the spectrum adhere to them, because they no longer have to be inferred.

People on the spectrum deserve understanding (like everyone else) when they break social norms or say hurtful things due to not understanding that they're doing anything wrong. When they _know_ that what they're doing is not acceptable, they are as responsible as anyone else who knowingly acts like a jerk.

I'm also highly skeptical of the idea anyone outside of a tiny minority would be unaware that "garbage" is an intentionally insulting term, especially given that it is a metaphor. Even "completely fails to meet standards" is vastly better and more descriptive (outside of the emotional content of "garbage").

<comment><USER22> "Actually, it is not "their nature". The nature of people on the spectrum is to have difficulty understanding social conventions."

Holy moly, please don't tell me what I do and don't have difficulty understanding. Even if you were a clinical psychologist, it's a spectrum and throwing out what entire populations do or do not understand is so weird, I'm not sure what point it serves.

Even if I was the elected spokesperson of this population in the world, I'm not sure I'd have the authority to issue such a nebulous statement.

<comment><USER21> I apologise for the generalisation. That was too broadly and absolutely worded. But I would stand by the idea that "people on the spectrum are more likely to have difficulty intuitively learning social conventions".

Is that still a nebulous statement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. There is plenty or role playing projects where your feeling matter more than your skills. In last couple of jobs I am always asking about company policy, if they start piling about diversity and getting everybody heard and how everybody's feelings are most important thing, I don't want to work there.

Earn your place with your quality and your skills, not with the help of inventing newer and newer rules until nobody can say how crappy, sub average and difficult to work with you are.

(Talking to a random programmer with no skills but huge area of possible butt- hurt).

Edit: btw can't agree more with Stallman if that's not clear from my post. Love that guy.

<comment><USER24> > Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose > getting the job done.

I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where getting the job done requires a choice to be politically incorrect as implied here. Do you have an example of the phenomenon you're discussing?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, like mirko said, being pressured by project leader to merge absolute crap (I was in charge of merging), "because it works and we don't want to suppress less skilled colleagues". "Try to explain nicely how to do it better" while that other guy a) doesn't want to learn and b) has feelings that are more important that making better software / learning.

Edit: to clarify, that other guy couldn't understand the project or how to do proper code so all the PC dance afterwards is the perfect shield and role playing. I just walked away after few weeks.

<comment><USER25> Hey, I don't know your situation so this may be nonsense, but what you describe doesn't sound so PC.

The guy's code worked? Doesn't sound unreasonable that the project leader would want it merged. Put the technical debt on the backlog, get on with writing other code that works.

The project leader presumably had a team to manage. Seems perfectly understandable that they would want all their team contributing, even if some team members were vastly more productive than others. The alternative is over- reliance on key personnel, or back to the recruitment treadmill (both of these are risks and uncertainties - which it's the PM's job to manage down).

The project leader should want his less skilled employees to grow their skills so that he may one day have a greater breadth and depth of talent at his disposal. It might even be reasonable for the leader to want his most talented developers to do nothing _but_ coach junior colleagues - particularly on a typical project that isn't rocket science, where 5 average developers will be more useful than one rockstar.

Like I said, I don't know your situation. My point is that the behaviour you describe seems like it could be quite normal and rational and not motivated by PCness at all.

<comment><USER26> A low-quality codebase slows down everybody on the team and causes tasks that ought to be routine to hit unexpected roadblocks. Every software team has some set of practices for maintaining and improving the quality of their codebase; a few teams, like ØMQ, merge any old crap and then fix the crap (_but not in the backlog_, dear God! _Right away_, before it costs somebody else debugging time) while most teams require that patches meet some kind of quality standards in order to be merged.

By far the fastest I've leveled up my programming skills has been when better programmers looked at my code and told me what was bad about it and what could be improved. You're commenting on the story of someone who offered such commentary and had it rejected.

<comment><USER23> Word by word this is exactly my experience. Code I was forced to merge was working only on that day in a very limited set of tests. That's not 'working' in my definition. First next feature we needed to add and code would break all over the place. First I was politely telling it can't work because of this and that, then I was fixing the code silently so we don't all hit the roadblock the next day, then I was trying to discuss that we can't really work that way, then I walked away. All in a span of 30 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On the one hand, I'm glad that he's at least acknowledging that this is a problem. It's disappointing to me that he talks about the problem as if people first noticed it in August, when I've heard it discussed for a decade or more. But still, baby steps.

There's also a crashing lack of self-awareness here. This bit sounds great: "The only political positions that the GNU Project endorses are (1) that users should have control of their own computing (for instance, through free software) and (2) supporting basic human rights in computing."

But a) that's a very political position, b) many people in the diversity and inclusion world see it as a direct consequence of basic human rights, and c) I don't think it's consistent with Stallman's behavior. E.g., it was only in May he declared it important to keep a stale joke about American politics in the code: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stal...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stallman/)

<comment><USER28> This is not an argument.

You've merely listed things you don't like, punctuated by little insults ("crashing lack of self-awareness", "baby steps").

<comment><USER27> Yes, you have correctly detected that I wasn't making an argument. Into the "add comment" box, I put my comment.

I think that's fine given that I'm in the target audience for his post. I'm somebody who has been making occasional open-source contributions since the early 90s but who has mainly stayed out of it given that it tolerates a high level of jackassery up to and including outright abuse. This is a good step forward, but a small step done at a point I'd call very late in the game.

Is there some specific thing I'm supposed to have an argument on? As far as I can tell, Stallman has had a very "it's my bat and ball" attitude and has for decades, so even if I had some sort of argument, I don't have any impression he'd listen to it. I'm content to let him continue being very Stallmanesque until he retires. I'm much more interested what the younger generation is up to, as I think they're much more plausibly the future of open source than he is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a remarkably sane and cogent approach.

His point about CoCs failing to encourage behavior "above and beyond" the rules is well made, and i hadn't thought about that side of Goodheart's Law in this setting before.

<comment><USER30> >Goodheart's Law

Didn't know this one yet. Thank you for pointing it out. I'll bring it up on my next discussion on targeting 100% code coverage vs seeing it just as an indicator of insufficient tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What seems to be lacking is a viral clause so that when you 'be excellent to each other' the others are also required to abide by the same code of conduct.

<comment><USER32> _That_ is an excellent observation! In a sense, copyleft is the most inclusive code of conduct ever devised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people > towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of > saying, "You are breaking the rules."

I really like this. I think it'll help the community become a more welcoming place overall without needing to view politeness as a rule set. I see this as an overall benefit to the GNU project, as well as to OSS as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER34> When people are arguing for "diversity" what they are meaning, generally, is "there is already an enormous thumb on the scales, this can be shown empirically by outcomes". So to the extent Stallman's intent is to take the thumb _off_ the scales and make everyone welcome, it is very reasonable.

That said, I think he's wrong to devalue quota type approaches, because in some circumstances, particularly institutional ones in business and government, those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales.

<comment><USER35> >those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales.

I think some would argue that quota approaches aren't quite this, but rather that they're a thumb on the other end of the scale. The first thumb is still there because non-compliant cultures that aren't fundamentally converted to becoming compliant at the cultural level will generally continue to be non- compliant cultures and only comply insofar as the quotas require (to take a rather contrived example, you can hire 50% women, but what about when 30% of them are harassed, feel unwelcome, and leave?).

I'm personally of the mind that the only way to really take the first thumb off the scales is to persuade the non-compliant culture that complying is in their best interest. Which seems to be the gist of these guidelines: "We all agree contributors are a good thing. Let's be welcoming to all demographics so we optimize the number of contributors."

<comment><USER36> Well said! Moreover, the popular "thumb on the opposite side of the scale" approach risks accidentally encouraging a "thumb war" of sorts: I think people's attention is naturally drawn to the thumb on the _opposite_ end of the scale, and thinking this to be unfair, will respond in kind with more thumb pressure on their end. This could escalate more and more, until you eventually end up with extreme unfairness vs extreme fairness.

The "thumb on scale" approach does work in some cases, I think, but it's important that there be a "de-escalation" (or "de-thumbing"?) endgame strategy. What you don't want is a situation where there are thumbs on each side of the scale, and each side is telling the other to remove pressure but neither side wants to because it'll benefit the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Side note: This is the first E-Mail I've seen from Stallman in over 4 years that hasn't started with his usual boilerplate:

        [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
        [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
        [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

See e.g. [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2018-10/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2018-10/msg00293.html) (just picked his latest on emacs-devel) for an example.

<comment><USER38> Stallman without boilerplate, Linus without rants, what has the world become? Maybe, when everybody is loud and screaming in rage, the escapist role is the quiet, humble and introspect one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this is a good approach, since these guidelines seem to arise out of compassion and wanting to make both the disrespectful contributors and the people they disrespect better communicators, and make the community better as a whole. In contrast I get the sense that most CoCs I read are motivated by a desire to punish people who make you feel bad.

</comment><comment><USER40> So, I read through the list of guidelines, and while I have some minor quibbles with them, overall they seem fine and reasonable.

But what happens if someone refuses to be kind? What happens if that person is a major contributor? What would happen if, in some strange alternate reality, Linux was a GNU project, and Linus-of-2012 said he'd really rather not care about all this politeness nonsense, and would prefer to continue on the way he was?

The problem I see with your bees/honey comment is that there is no commitment here from the maintainers and leaders of the project. This is just a more verbose "Be kind to each other", but without any commitment from the leadership of the project to actually maintain a kind, welcoming environment.

A non-committal claim to be kind may be honey, but its on a flytrap, and many people recognize this.

<comment><USER41> How much damage have Linus's snippy emails really caused, in light of how they have benefited us? I and many other people like reading them because they are fun, so you have to take that in to account. Different people like different things, and that principle extends to writing styles and personalities. Indeed, if you really want to have diversity you should have some emails that I like to read in addition to having emails that you like to read, which by necessity implies that every email thread needs at least a few glib comments. I have heard that Matz and by extension the Ruby community is nice, maybe that project needs to recruit a Linus to fill out their personality lineup.

<comment><USER42> >How much damage have Linus's snippy emails really caused

Don't downplay how he acted by using words like "snippy." There are contributors who have either left the project or actively avoid directly talking with him. There is a reason why Linus admitted he had a problem. It wasn't productive or useful.

[https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...](https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/posts/J2TZrTvu7vd)

>But more importantly, I'd actually put some blame on a certain circle of folks that play a major role in kernel development, and first and foremost Linus Torvalds himself. By many he is a considered a role model, but he is quite a bad one. If he posts words like "[specific folks] ...should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" (google for it), than that's certainly bad. But what I find particularly appalling is the fact that he regularly defends this, and advertises this as an efficient way to run a community. (But it is not just Linus, it's a certain group of people around him who use the exact same style, some of which semi-publically even phantasize about the best ways to, ... well, kill me).

<comment><USER43> systemd is not a good advertisement for prioritizing social pacification over software quality.

<comment><USER42> >for prioritizing social pacification over software quality.

Well quite literally it's doing the opposite. Social derisiveness does nothing for the community. That's just one example of many. And of course you had to nitpick about systemd instead of understanding what's being discussed. Missing The Point (TM) 2018. Linux itself isn't really a good example of sane kernel development and architecture. It's popular and it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This seems to be a verbose restatement of the Golden Rule - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule) \- that one is taught as a child.

<comment><USER45> But then people use excuses like "I have thick skin, I wouldn't be offended if someone else said the same thing to me, I prefer honesty over decorum", etc. Most often these people come from a privileged background where negative feedback rolls off more easily because they know that, at the end of the day, they'll always have a comfortable life without any serious hardship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is much. much more reasonable than the "Post-Meritocracy" Code of Conduct.

</comment><comment><USER47> Clearly RMS believes in having software licenses with teeth, which is why he so strongly advocates the GPL over the BSD and MIT licenses. When he disagreed with Apple's stance on IP litigation, he didn't just exhort them to be excellent — he boycotted them for several years. So it's not that RMS is strongly opposed to coercive enforcement; he just doesn't value people as highly as he does code.

<comment><USER48> There are no punitive 'teeth' in GNU licences. If you don't like the terms, don't use the thing under that license.

Stallman is his own man and can boycott what he likes and explain why to others.

"Punitive" "teeth" as found in proprietary EULAs and various unreasonable copyright laws looks like jailtime and financial ruin.

<comment><USER47> The same copyright law can be used to enforce the terms of the GPL.

And if you don't like a code of conduct, you can equally just stop participating in a community. Unlike rejecting a license, you can even reject a code of conduct and continue to use the software produced by that community.

<comment><USER48> Nope...

[https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance- gu...](https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html)

That's the basis of eg Kernel enforcement, the most-distributed project out there by far.

<comment><USER47> This describes, as far as I can tell, the de facto enforcement practices of ONE GPL copyright holder. I don't see where it places any binding limits on even the enforcement the SFLC would take, and of course it has no power to enforce any limits whatsoever on other GPL copyright holders.

In the particular case of Kernel development, contributors are NOT required to assign their copyrights to any shared institution, are perfectly within their rights to take any enforcement action against violators that they wish, and sometimes do exercise that right: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats- internal-legal-thr...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal- legal-threat/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub I like it. It captures the best spirit of the CoC stuff while also explicitly calling out and avoiding the parts of existing attempts at this stuff that some perceive to be aggressive.

Can basically be summed up as: 1) Everyone is welcome, 2) Don't scare people away by being shitty and 3) Keep it on-topic

But it seems that the discussion here misses the absolute best part. In true GNU fashion, Stallman refuses to accept grammatically incorrect use of pronouns and instead offers a brand spanking new extension built on a homegrown abstraction.

Here comes _GNU_ENGLISH!

</comment><comment><USER49> > Please don't argue unceasingly for your preferred course of action when a > decision for some other course has already been made. That tends to block > the activity's progress.

I've seen this so many times in non-oss work too. Why do some people have such a hard time letting go? Even more so for Open Source projects - If you care _that_ much about your ideas - fork and move on; otherwise spend you and your co-contributors time advancing the project in other ways.

<comment><USER50> I have a hard time letting go when I feel like my input was dismissed out of hand, or not understood.

<comment><USER48> It helps me to remember in a public forum, whether my point is acknowledged by the OP or not, is only a small fraction of the number of people who may read and accept it. If the OP unreasonably denies or refutes it, in fact they may be silently judged accordingly.

No need to make your good point a hostage in your own mind to whether the OP will publicly accept it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been experimenting with the idea that good code/design/whatever technical is RARELY more important than good work environment and professional relationships. My intuition tells me that you'll end up with a worse off product being developed more slowly if you focus on good code at all costs. That's not to say you should become a team that focuses on feelings.

I had a manager once entirely shut down code reviews because he felt it was hurting people's feelings. There's a right balance to strike and I really don't think that was it.

My thought is that when you're somewhere near that balance and aren't sure, lean towards good relationships, over good code. This generally happens at the moment when I have to decide just how nitpicky I should be about something, often minor.

The problem is that I'm no industry veteran. I don't have a lot of experience or hard facts to back this idea. But I just "feel" that it might be true.

</comment><comment><USER52> Linus: I'm taking time off and getting help from people who are (probably) trained to understand people's emotions.

RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals.

What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."

<comment><USER53> What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? Are you suggesting that hackers cannot hack behavior and must rely on the medical community?

<comment><USER52> > What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem?

If there are outstanding effective approaches in fields outside of one's area of expertise, everything.

At least one should seek the guidance of people who study these problems for a living. I don't see any evidence that RMS did that-- his only footnote refers to his own article wrt pronouns.

The hacker ethic is great. But if it is seen not as a supplement to prior art but as an _alternative_ to it-- as you seem to imply-- that's a real problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I do agree with this trend, while there are some comments like "we just want to get the work done and not worry about being nice" I do think they are forgetting about a certain part. I as a developer might not contribute to certain open source projects due to the fear of being called things against my gender identity (I am transgender) or being yelled at. And the thing is that I am not getting paid or anything to do it, so instead I am just not going to contribute because I don't want to try to help and instead be yelled at. I think that the free and open source software community is moving in the right direction by making code of conducts or other similar things.

</comment><comment><USER55> Well said. I think Richard Stallman got this just right.

I know he is specifically talking about making everyone feel welcome in FSF development communities, and, I think what he says also applies to the business of writing software, starting companies, forming community groups, etc. Our industry has some problems of un-kind and sometime illegal behavior. By encouraging people to use kind communication and be inclusive, then all reasonable people win.

If someone in your environment is disrespectful of someone it seems lighter and more likely to succeed to point out that they are being un-kind rather than breaking a rule.

</comment><comment><USER56> A question for the folks who would like to do more than just communicate in a way that welcomed all demographics -- how would so-called "demographic quotas" work in practice?

It may well be my lack of imagination, but I'm having trouble imagining an outcome based approach that still allowed progress on projects to continue.

Also, if such an approach could be articulated, would it be incompatible with this code of conduct?

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm very glad that there seems to be change in the community, and also that Linus is doing some self-reflection. He is a role model for many in his position, and some people in discussions started to take his behavior as an excuse to have bad manners themselves and that it is ok to be rude to others.

</comment><comment><USER58> To me, the answer has more to do with discerning the spirit of the conversation rather than adopting any particular protocol. There will always be some joker somewhere that will violate the rules that one adopts in such a way that debate is created that causes a system to self-destruct.

</comment><comment><USER59> > Please avoid statements about the presumed typical desires, capabilities or > actions of some demographic group. They can offend people in that group

You can tell a programmer's writing by how closely that rule dodges recursing upon itself.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?

<comment><USER61> Respect is earned not given. Treating others with common decency is expected in a professional environment, and that's a two way street where both parties need to have a common understanding of what decency is. Finding that commonality becomes harder the more "diverse" the community involved is. People's cultural, religious and political beliefs clash and have for thousands of years, and no we're not going to be the generation to solve those issues. There are fundamental differences in how women socialize versus men. This stuff isn't as easy as "be kind to each other". Your "kindness" might be rude to me, and my "kindness" might be rude to you. Therefore I argue that the moment you start enforcing social justice you've kicked productivity in the nuts and stifle productivity for everyone involved. Instead you're going to spend your time checking off boxes about people's immutable physical traits and filling quotas of identity groups within an organization and everyone loses. The employee, the consumer, even the bystander.

Maybe 10% of women in software is just fine. Maybe women aren't being shooed away, and are just choosing other things to spend their time on. Maybe forcing women to go into STEM and SE is wrong. Maybe leaving people to make their own professional choices and not punishing people for some ideological virtue is the good thing to do.

Respect implies holding someone in high regard, as special. Or to refrain from interfering with. It's fair that in this context it's the latter that's primarily being referred to. That means respect comes with hard work that can be shown and proven. A strong track record. Being the best, having what it takes to rise out from the others. No everyone deserves respect because, frankly most people aren't special or rock star material. I'm not. If I was you'd know.

Kindly, your local reactionary.

<comment><USER62> Why is respect earned, not given? The way you've stated that sounds like an axiom.

It called me to contemplate, and realize that I hold the opposite axiom – that all beings, including humans, deserve respect fundamentally. Some people might behave in ways that call this into question and modify the degree to which I feel I can truly hold respect for them, but that only happens with more information about how they are organized or disorganized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk _A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn 't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that._

That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other.

Edit: I also love how each paragraph in the guidelines starts with "please". It's such a different approach than the one taken in CoC: "please do this or that for everyone's benefit" rather than "do this and that or you'll be judged by the appropriate judging organ".

We lack this kind of gentleness in the world of raging wars between pro-CoC people and anti-CoC people.

<comment><USER63> > That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A > CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its > rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other.

Can I ask an honest question? Do you really think that men advocating for molestation of women, or open racists, are just... you know... undereducated and waiting for you as a thought-savior to come and explain to them what's objectionable about their thinking? Do you think that Ts'o just needed you to step in and explain how domestic sexual abuse is rape and that he's just being insufficiently awesome[0]?

I'm all for assuming positive intent, but at some point this game becomes patronizing, even infantilizing. It seems bizarre to propose Linux's CoC or GNU's is the place to go educating people that rape apology is bad.

I don't think it's bad that Stallman decided to go this route (even if I disagree with some of the logic he expressed). To be honest, I don't think the GNU org actually has that much sway or control over individual projects, so guidelines for successful contribution are probably an appropriate measure for them.

But Projects can and in my opinion _should_ quantify what constitutes acceptable behavior from their contributors. This is not an unfair or unreasonable thing for a project to do. It's bizarre to me that people here constantly suggest that it's somehow unfair to bar a developer from participating. This is about the most anti-free-speech, anti-individual- autonomy stance one can propose in the world of software. It's a statement that says the production of value (often not for the community, but at the behest of corporate funding) outweighs the individual's rights to free association. It suggests that reprehensible people with reprehensible views can simply use economic value or unique education to force themselves on communities, and those communities should _not_ be able to choose for themselves because the value of these things should be self-evident. It's completely nonsensical.

[0]: [http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0037.html](http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0037.html)

<comment><USER64> In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads.

Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being immediately tarred as a rape apologist.

I do believe most of the people in favor of CoCs mean well, but the first paragraph of your comment basically reads like an unsubstantiated attempt at character assassination of and by a random person on the internet, and I guess lots of people are (probably unjustifiedly, but whatever) afraid that CoCs will provide cover for engaging in precisely this kind of poisonous behavior.

<comment><USER63> > In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference > organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics > are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads.

Which seems fairly relevant to a technical conference's audience, don't you...

> Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so > it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being > immediately tarred as a rape apologist.

Oh. So you think pointing out that many rapes are crimes of opportunity isn't relevant to tech conferences because... why exactly? It seems like exactly the sort of environment where such opportunities arise.

> but the first paragraph of your comment basically reads like an > unsubstantiated attempt at character assassination

Ts'o said these things. He stands by them. He wants to try an draw a line between one type of rape and another to change the way people discuss statistics, specifically to affect how scaled social events are organized. It's amazing to me that folks are passionately defending such a textbook example of at-scale apologism. We would not even imagine suffering this argument if we substituted "rape" for "wallet theft." But Ts'o does level it for rape precisely because he believes it's appropriate to tactically blame victims and subdivide statistics.

<comment><USER64> I don't know what kind of conferences you attend, but I've never attended one where people got black-out drunk, nor have I attended any with my partner.

On the other hand, I _have_ attended conferences where we were specifically warned by the organizers about pick-pockets and not to go into certain parts of the (rather large, South American) city.

So yeah, if we substitute "rape" for "wallet theft", people are in fact "suffering" through arguments that people throw a fit over when it comes to rape.

(Two caveats, since that kind of thing is necessary with topics that are prone to cause people to go ballistic:

1\. I do think there are good reasons for why people throw fits over victim blaming etc. when it comes to rape, but especially since you brought up the comparison, I _also_ think it's good to remember that people are perfectly fine with victim blaming when it comes to wallet theft. There should be a possibility for nuance here.

2\. I get what you're trying to say about "crimes of opportunity", but that doesn't mean you can transfer statistics about incident rates of domestic abuse to incidence rates of rape at conferences. After all, both the whole setting and the relationships between participants are totally different. And it should be possible to question the connection without being made a target for the kind of accusation you're making.)

<comment><USER63> > I don't know what kind of conferences you attend, but I've never attended > one where people got black-out drunk, nor have I attended any with my > partner.

I've certainly seen numerous examples of this behavior around technical conferences. There are often runs to local bars or other establishments where its socially normal to drink. In fact, that's a common complaint about tech!

> On the other hand, I have attended conferences where we were specifically > warned by the organizers about pick-pockets and not to go into certain parts > of the (rather large, South American) city.

And did anyone write a long, statistics-citing rant about how unnecessary it is to warn people about this? I suspect the answer is no, and in fact no one did.

> I also think it's good to remember that people are perfectly fine with > victim blaming when it comes to wallet theft. There should be a possibility > for nuance here.

... What? Did you genuinely just suggest there should be nuance for rape victim blaming by proxy?

> After all, both the whole setting and the relationships between participants > are totally different. And it should be possible to question the connection > without being made a target for the kind of accusation you're making.)

Except that many people travel to conferences with their colleagues, and that's precisely the kind of crime of opportunity the statistics (when you exclude statutory crimes) warn about...

<comment><USER64> > And did anyone write a long, statistics-citing rant about how unnecessary it > is to warn people about this? I suspect the answer is no, and in fact no one > did.

You're getting the sides of the issues confused here.

The conference organizers' statement about pick pockets was essentially victim blaming. They were telling people how to behave in order not to become victims of a crime. The equivalent statement within the rape context would be something like telling women not to wear "provocative" clothing in order to avoid being raped.

My point was that there tends to be outrage about this kind of victim blaming when it comes to rape, but not when it comes to other crimes. SJWs (for lack of a better term) don't feel the need to gang up on people who give advice to tourists to avoid getting mugged; they don't feel the need to call the conference organizers from my example "mugging apologists". Why is that?

And for what it's worth, the analogy to the statistics-citing rant would be somebody who reacts to conference organizers putting out statements about how _attendees_ should not steal each others' wallets as if that was a common problem at conferences.

Obviously conference organizers never make such statements in reality because it would be kind of ridiculous, given that the incidence rate of pick pocketing among conference attendees is completely incomparable to the incidence rate of pick pocketing in society at large, but well, that kind of brings us back to the original point about incident rates of rape :)

(And just to reiterate: There's broader context in the rape case which gives me some sympathy for the double standard demonstrated by "SJWs", but I think it should still be possible to acknowledge that the double standard exists.)

<comment><USER63> I can cite statistics to create absurd conclusions and minimize points I don't like to. It's called, "being disingenuous." It is not a laudable thing simply to cite them. Statistics do not lend truth, they illustrate relationships and convey points.

> My point was that there tends to be outrage about this kind of victim > blaming when it comes to rape, but not when it comes to other crimes. SJWs > (for lack of a better term) don't feel the need to gang up on people who > give advice to tourists to avoid getting mugged; they don't feel the need to > call the conference organizers from my example "mugging apologists". Why is > that?

Because rape is a heinous crime violating fundamental human rights, and yet here you are suggesting it's no more consequential than being pickpocketed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> "Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D."

I think that hits the nail on the head as to why a lot of these initiatives are a good thing: If you make things more welcoming overall, more people of all walks of life feel more likely to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER66> > In August, a discussion started among GNU package maintainers about the > problem that GNU development often pushes women away

I'm not trying to offend people or anything, but where is the evidence for this in GNU specifically?

<comment><USER67> I was there to witness the private mailing list that culminated in this, and there was a very clear example of that happening there.

A certain GNU contributor, let's call her Sal, was voicing concerns with current practices. Someone else replied to her with "Sally," condescendingly talking down to her. To this she said, "I did not invite you to call me by a nickname. Call me Sal."

A sub-discussion then erupted about the etymology of "Sally" and whether or not it was technically correct to someone who preferred "Sal" to be called "Sally" instead. Instead of, you know, just calling people what they want to be called and be done with it. And not be condescending about it.

<comment><USER68> That sounds utterly trivial - why was Sal/Sally so upset by an attempt to be polite by _not_ using a short form/pet name. That must happen to her all the time in formal settings.

As for "voicing concerns with current practices", what were those concerns and practices? Technical?

<comment><USER43> It wasn't an attempt to be polite. They didn't use the long form of their name (which would be irritating but I can see that being an attempt to be polite), they used a rather infantilising diminutive. The effect was condescending and "Sal" was well within their rights to object.

In the general case, telling someone that actually you are the person who has the last word on what they are called is bullying.

<comment><USER68> Sure, if someone says "call me this" and you don't, I agree, that's annoying. But it should be a polite request, not the start of a fight.

And what _is_ the long form then? The only female name I can think of that shortens to Sal is Sally. This whole story seems suspect.

<comment><USER69> Sally is traditionally short for Sarah, though if someone with a longer name like Salvadora/Salvatoria were living in an anglophone society, I could also see them going by Sally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Diversity as a _goal_ is fundamentally flawed. It is what leads to policies like "affirmative action" which are in themselves simply a form of reverse discrimination.

<comment><USER71> Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They are all the same and resolve nothing.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156).

<comment><USER70> How does detaching my comment from the person I was replying to and removing all context of the conversation help?

There was nothing generic about my comment nor was it a tangent from the topic at hand. It was a direct reply to an individual in favor of "diversity as a goal" policies as a means for correcting biases.

<comment><USER71> It helps by allowing the generic flamewar topic to sink to the bottom of the thread, where it is less likely to burn everything else to a crisp.

The link back to the original parent is there to provide context for anyone who wants it.

It may be true that you didn't introduce the generic topic; flamewars arise by degrees, so the choice of where to snip them is often a little arbitrary. Usually we snip it where the discussion becomes unmoored from the topic, which might not be where the bait first appeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> > For instance, call them by the names they use, and honor their preferences > about their gender identity

That's a backhanded way of cementing the validity of the concept of "gender expression" throughout the GNU project.

I would have been perfectly on board with a guideline that simply said not to police people's gender expressions, the question being rather off-topic and disruptive in the given context. That would do the job regardless of what your political opinions on the gender question are.

<comment><USER73> The question is how to talk to and about other members of the community.

Calling other people by their preferred names is a basic norm that goes beyond gender.

Gender expression is rarely relevant in the context of software development, but gendered language is common enough in English to make the issue of gender identity unavoidable. You can require speakers to respect others' preferences, mandate gender-neutral language, or allow speakers to refer to others however they like.

<comment><USER72> Is it not possible to refer to someone by the name and pronouns they refer to themselves by not because you believe in the validity of transgenderism, but because that has simply always been the social convention? Gender identity needs to play no part in it, even if gendered language is being used. The outcome in the software should be the same whether the developer who claims to be a woman is really a man or vice versa.

Someone who isn't satisfied with that but rather requires full intellectual submission to their ideology is just as disruptive on a software mailing list as those who go out their way to "root out the trannies".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Well the social justice team wins again. We're not talking about writing code, instead we're talking about identity politics. These people need to hear more "NO!"

</comment><comment><USER74> Fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER75> this reads childish and stupid. what a terrible way to say you don't agree with change.

<comment><USER24> Could you clarify what in the article reads as immature and why? I don't feel I fully understand your position here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> A CoC in any other name is still a CoC.

A very thin end of a wedge is stil the end of a wedge.

<comment> crooked-v A wedge towards... what? Polite and professional behavior isn't a bad thing.

<comment><USER48> "professional behavior" would make sense if both sides are getting paid.

If only the user is getting paid, and he wants support or something else from the FOSS author, why should the FOSS author be held to this "professional behavior" standard?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> 1) I hate this trend

2) I like that he acknowledges the criticisms against the trend and attempts to get to the root of the issue rather than "agreeing" with one of the polarised sides. (Anti-CoC/Pro-CoC people).

It's nice to have guidelines, they're less aggressive than whips. Hopefully this is enough to appease both sides.

EDIT: please criticise my points. If you have something to say, don't hide behind the downvote button.

</comment><comment><USER78> Long term I expect to see the quality of GNU and Linux software falter over efforts like this. This is not because I don't advocate for treating other people well, on the contrary I do. It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software.

I've personally watched the activists pushing these target women and other under-represented minorities using these documents for the crime of disagreeing with the narrative.

IE: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-empress-has-no- cloth...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-empress-has-no-clothes-the- dark-underbelly-of-women-who-code-and-google-women-techmakers-723be27a45df)

I fully expect to see purges happen of talented individuals based on politically motivated targeting etc. with secret tribunals where the accused are guilty until proven innocent etc.. It's happened to people like Larry Garfield of Drupal, the Opalgate crew tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc..

<comment><USER79> > It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses > meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created > this great software.

1\. Why is respecting gender identity a "trojan horse" \- in what way is it deceptive?

2\. How is a project a meritocracy if it scares away potentially better contributors with an antagonistic discussion climate?

> tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on > Twitter in a personal capacity etc..

I feel like you and the Medium post are missing out crucial information here. What were these views? How did they relate to the workplace? The Medium post mentions she is friends with James Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. This leads me to suspect that the "disagreeing with the narrative" is a euphemism for anti-women, anti-minority views and policies.

<comment><USER78> For #1 and #2, there is a thing called emotional resilience that we have lost today. More importantly, the conversations do not get any less antagonistic in communities with this policies. If anything I have seen them get more vicious towards those in the "out group". In times past it was very rare when people were banned from groups. Today it is a regular occurrence, often made with threats of bringing in the police, ruining ones career etc..

Her post actually does a pretty good job at that. But to summarize, as a women in tech she does not feel that women should be given preferential treatment and she is outspoken against lowering the bar and etc. to increase diversity numbers.

For example with one group they held a hackathon. In most hackathons they focus on tech and participants are encouraged to talk about it. One Women in Tech group however held one for women only and actively encouraged the participants to not talk about tech and focused on identity politics, marketing and celebrity endorsements (I was a volunteer and observed this first hand and actively ignored, went against the organizers wishes with the groups I worked with by encouraging them to explore, talk and learn about the tech). Their mentors, with encouragement from the organizers, even went so far as to discourage participants from talking about the tech because it is "boring". The medium post author spoke up about this and ended up with a big target on her back for daring to suggest that the women should be held to the same standard, encouraged to talk about the tech and level up if they are not their yet.

> Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but > unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby > creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses > over.

Marlene, the author of the medium post and a women in tech who wants to be recognized for her skill when she's at a job or conference etc. and feels that many of the initiatives that lower the standards etc. work against that goal. She, along with many other women and prominent scientists came to a very different conclusion after reading this. Yet this intelligent, independent thinking woman is ostracized for daring to not go along with the narrative. One of the organizers of these women in tech groups suggested that her husband needed to control her, you can't make this up, and another female organizer who, unlike Marlene, literally had no real tech experience, said that Marlene, an experienced women in tech is being banned from a woman in tech group because her views that are "harmful to women and under represented people".

She is pro-women etc, but if we are being honest, it's because she is not a progressive and is not afraid to speak the truth.</comment></comment></comment>


It's Kafka, not Orwell we should be reading (PRISM) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/why-should-we-even-care-if-the-government-is-collecting-our-data/276732/

<comment><USER2> To be honest, you shouldn't read fiction, read Weizenbaum, Joseph instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try Foucault.</comment>


Ask HN: First employees, how much equity did you get? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think it's meaningless.

Employees with "equity" options will:

1\. Get diluted with every VC round (oh, but value of our company is increased so you potentially own more in dollars!)

2\. Left in a dark about preferred shares schedules and conditions that every VC gets. Preferred shares allows VC's to get paid first and in multiples of their original investments in case of an exit. This effectively can and most often will leave exactly $0 for employees with every exit regardless is employee owns 1% 5% or 25% of options.

Upon hiring - request disclosure of preferred shares schedules - before and during employment - and you'll quickly be given some excuse or shown the door if you insist.

If you're lucky and given equity right before IPO or given RSU (actual shares with vesting schedule) of publicly traded company - then it could make a world of difference.

<comment><USER3> What do you recommend an employee do to protect themselves before signing? Are there any special clauses you recommend be on there to maximize profits from an exit or any red flags to look out for? Is it typical to ask for additional options during every fundraising round?

<comment><USER2> >> Is it typical to ask for additional options during every fundraising round?

You may, and they may as well give you some extra paper options to keep you interested. But what's the point? $0+$0 = $0 - in 99.9% of early stage startup cases.

Engineering force pretty much has no negotiation power in this.

Engineering (surprise!) is a liability, not an asset.

Sales is an asset. Anything that generates direct and immediate revenue is an asset.

Even if such clause would exist - VC's won't allow it - they won't invest in anything that jeopardize their lion's share of exit.

My take: for 99.9% of early stage startups (Non-pre-IPO, not publicly traded) - get as much cash as you can as compensation. Don't get tricked into working for peanuts for the promise of future that has low probability of happening.

It just safer bet.

Invest the difference into real assets or save it for real estate or so.

<comment><USER4> This doesn't make sense.

"Engineering force pretty much has no negotiation power in this." Of course we do. We don't have to accept an offer unless it meets our terms.

"Engineering is a liability. Sales is an asset." This is ridiculous. In an early stage startup, most likely there is no product. Sales has nothing to sell if not for engineering's efforts.

"VC's won't allow it." If a startup can't hire, then VCs have exactly nothing.

This isn't to say that cash isn't a good thing. I personally agree that options need to be balanced with cash, especially when a startup is well funded, and options are fractions of a penny, but that decision is individual.

<comment><USER5> One major problem is also that many times engineers themselves are not concerned at all about compensation.

For example, at my current startup I work with a couple 10X engineers (seriously, they are brilliant and able to solve problems in an incredibly elegant way) who are paid 30% less of what I make in cash, and about 25X less equity, despite having joined just a few months after me in a similar role and with more years of experience than me (I know because as part of my due diligence I took a peek at the cap table). The difference is that I negotiated heavily before joining, and every ~12 months I express my discontent to my boss about my current compensation, and he tries to bring it up with new equity grant and/or salary raises and/or performance bonuses. In exchange for that, I try to do my very best on the job.

To those people, the pay simply doesn't matter, it's the specific opportunity given by the startup what they are after (domain/tooling/authorship/etc.). They will never complain about the compensation, or even ask to get more equity, since, as software engineers, the "base" pay allows them to have a reasonable quality of life. If the company sells for $10B and they make $0, they'll be just as happy, they got to work on a for-profit project that became super successful! yay!

Empirically, I've seen way more people like them in the software engineering field than in other highly-skilled fields (e.g. law, medicine, accounting), and I'm sure those fields are just as rewarding as software engineering, for the person passionate about those aspects of human knowledge and creativity.

I've never raised these observations in a live setting, I am too scared I'd be taken for a cynic who doesn't love his craft and it's only after money, while in reality it couldn't be farther from the truth, I very much enjoy software engineering and spend a considerable portion of my free time reading up and improving my skills. It's just that for me both the compensation and the opportunity need to be good, I won't be happy with just one of the two (so I wouldn't take a very high paying job for a long period of time, if such job would mean stagnating my technical growth as an engineer).

Why do you think that is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> None at first. I was hired by a client after the dev shop I worked for went under. We were so inexperienced/grateful for the job we didn't think to ask for any equity. The salary is just below market average, which is fair considering my experience level. Some background: this is my first startup, we're a team of 5 (CEO, Android, iOS, Web/CTO, Customer support).

6 months after we were hired the runway began to get tight and we had to take some semi-drastic measures to stretch it: the CEO (who hadn't been taking a salary for quite some time) asked us to stay on but work half-time until we were far enough along to raise the correct amount of funding. Because I believe in both the mission and the CEO I offered to stay on full-time for half-pay and half-equity. For the past 5 months half of my salary has been converted into shares. Instant vesting, shares are being given at our current valuation. Each month translates to roughly 0.1% of the company.

<comment><USER7> > I offered to stay on full-time for half-pay and half-equity.

There's a lot of red flags here ... some random advice:

1) Ensure your deal is in writing.

2) To protect your equity, you need to be in the room when new investments are negotiated. Otherwise you will be diluted or new options pools created without you even knowing.

3) Business people think very little of programmers in general, until they need to hire one. To them, you're a secretary with an attitude.

4) a product launch costs about $1 million. If they have money for that, then they can also pay your salary

5) It's irrelevant to you whether the CEO is taking a salary or not. Unless you have access to the books, how do you even know? It seems that generally CEOs land on their feet.

6) The shares you think they gave you "clutter up the cap table" and make it more difficult to get investors later. Typically VCs try to wipe out the angel investors (who have lawyers.) Guess what they'll do to a programmer.

<comment><USER8> Reminder that being in the room doesn't mean anything if the people in the room aren't legally beholden to you.

<comment><USER9> So let's say I am hired by a startup and I am getting half the industry salary rate for my role. What kind of "stock/share/esop/options" I should ask for that changes like a founder's would?

Of course it will be a lot less than the founder's (and it will be fulfilled in stages) but iff, let's assume, I want to get that "kind" of "share" of that startup what it would be? Is there a specific term for it? Or it varies from company to company? Unless it it's public where's it's the "share", right?

edit: any recommended reading on this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1.6%, third hire. Now the company is at series C, 4 years later. Significant dilution as expected (own roughly 0.5%), but clean terms for all rounds (liquidation preference 1X, non participating).

<comment><USER10> 1.6% of something/the company here as ~#2, too. But I don't count on an exit anyways and jumped the boat a year ago.

<comment><USER5> In my case, even if the company is still illiquid, I luckily was able to sell a good portion of my vested shares as part of a secondary transaction for a decent amount, so I was happy about that. I'll risk the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Employee number 4 at a very small startup in the bay area. 1% equity slightly after seed. I have been at a few startups which are more commonly .1 - .5%. I was very appreciative of the amount and hope it will pay off in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER12> Years ago, I was around employee number ten in a database software startup. When the company was sold, my shares were worth about $2000.

(Yeah, that was my last startup.)

<comment><USER13> If it makes you feel any better, I've worked at three startups. Two exited and one is still going. The net stock contribution to my bottom line was a $200 capital loss. The only actually money I got was retention cash and RSUs from the acquiring company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As you are probably asking because you might become employee #1: I think either you get payed close to market rate or you should get a lot of equity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Equity? No such thing over here.

<comment><USER15> Zero to me too and thank goodness actually. I received a proper salary instead which worked out a lot better in the end.</comment></comment>


Dara Khosrowshahi Is Uber's New CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-uber-officially-welcomes-as-ceo-expedias-dara-khosrowshahi-2017-8?IR=T <comment><USER2> I wonder how Uber approached the topic of his $180m Expedia stock...</comment>


Debunking The Startup Myth: Finding The Right Team - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketing-startups.com/?p=294

<comment><USER2> Eric Schmidt as founder #2? Sergey and Larry would disagree...

</comment><comment><USER3> Groupthink is not a situation where all members agree. Groupthink is a situation where members of a group self-censor their (critical) opinions in fear of retribution or loss of esteem.</comment>