Does samba have a code of conduct?

[Jeremy Allison]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 01:51:34PM +1000, William Brown wrote:
> 
> I would like to see the samba community recognised as a place of
> technical excellence, and as a supportive and open community. That
> means that people should feel able and safe to contribute without fear
> of insults or other mocking comments. Too often we hear of stories of
> insults, harrasment and more coming from software projects. Every one
> of those stories is potentially scaring away a future contributor or
> user.

We haven't had any real horrors like that in Samba (yet, there's
always a first time of course).

It helps that this our lists are mainly places of pure technical
discussion, without the politics involved in many younger projects.

That's not to say there *aren't* politics of course (as there
are in all human endeavors), but they don't tend to dominate
our communications here.

> A code of conduct is a list of behaviours that a community should
> aspire to model. It's not about policing speech, as about defining who
> you want to be and how you want to be seen as a project.

That's the *intent*. It's not how it often ends up being used, however.

See my paragraph below for more on my personal experiences with
such things.

> Today in our industry, more than ever we are starting to see the need
> for our communities to be positive and kind in our actions. From
> helping to mentor future students, allowing blameless analysis of
> incidents, improving discussions on code reviews, and including people
> from all walks of life.

In my day job I have seen many cases where "Codes of Conduct"
and "Non-bias training" are being used to bully and intimidate
people who don't agree with the majority politics of the dominant
group.

I have been the target of such activities myself (which
to be honest I found pretty surprising, as I thought I *did*
agree with the majority politics of the dominant group :-).
It's that kind of experience that sticks with you (yes, you're
politically pure, just not pure *enough* :-).

Code of Conducts were the weapon of choice there.

So in my experience, a code of conduct is *precisely* about
policing speech. In fact that's the only way I've ever seen
them used.

I am not keen to see this activity extended to the Samba project
mailing lists, which up until now have been remarkably free of
such things.

> My request was not intended to police speech, but to ask about the
> nature of the community in this project. As someone who is looking to
> contribute more of my time to this project, it's worth knowing the
> character of the community and how we desire to interact.

I hope you continue to contribute more, all are welcome
here without any discrimination.

> I hope this helps, and once again, thank you for apologising.  

It does help, thanks.

Jeremy.