[FOSDEM] It's time for a Code of Conduct

[Jens Finkhäuser]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 04:19:03PM +0100, Mario Torre wrote:
> I have contrasting feelings here, btw, I do agree that it's either a
> legal problem or not, and I don't think we need more Laws.
  It's the problem the magna carta made an attempt to solve: in order
not to be arbitrary, the king cannot *be* the law, but must be
*subject* to the law. Therefore, you need law.

  A code of conduct doesn't have to be particularly long or complex.
It's power doesn't come from covering every possible angle, it comes
from people being able to point to it and say "what you did is wrong,
according to our agreement".

  The code will evolve, the community will evolve, it's a process.
That's how these things (must) work.

  The problem here is the "king", aka FOSDEM staff by analogy. Sorry
for calling you a problem; that's not how I mean it...

  The problem is twofold:

  a) FOSDEM staff are already overworked, so shouldn't deal with this
     more than necessary.
  b) Those people dealing with it need to be held accountable to the
     same code of conduct they're supposed to uphold, by FOSDEM staff.

  Therefore, the code must be just explicit enough for FOSDEM staff to
be comfortable having someone else try to enforce it (there's a number
of volunteers now), whilst leaving it vague enough for volunteers to be
able to use common sense.

  That's always tricky.

  Hope that makes some sense!

Jens

-- 
1.21 Jiggabytes of memory ought to be enough for anybody.
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