Andy Wingo is a mensch and he does yeoman's work on a number of great open source projects, such as Guile and V8. I look forward to every one of his posts because I know they will be thought provoking, well written and aimed at making the world a better place in some way. He is a person who has looked at the world and his own personal moral compass and found a way to be true to it, working at Igalia, a software cooperative.

This post is no different. GNU and the FSF behind it are social projects before they are coding projects. Attempts to avoid thinking in terms of society and instead myopically focusing on "the code" are wrong headed from the start, especially in the context of GNU.

I think though, that for everything that I agree with in this post, it is focused too much outwards, without having a sufficient amount of introspection. The post opens with an example of a person withdrawing their talk as they feel it will conflict with the code of conduct. Later in the post, Andy writes that it turns out that the author withdrew their talk because they were worried that it would be considered offensive probably because of its content (I am inferring from the post that he intended to use curses in the talk) and not because it was misogynist. Even when it is revealed that the author misunderstood the meaning of the code of conduct, the post is still written almost as though this is on the author. I think this is the first place that people working to make a community more inclusive should take a step back and do some reflecting.

If a code of conduct is simply put out there, without sufficient explanation of it, or sensitivity to the fact that it probably written in English with numerous assumptions based on your culture built in, then a certain amount of responsibility must be taken if someone misunderstands it. Obviously, attempts to exhaustively enumerate what a code of conduct covers would be futile, so I'll head off attempts to claim that is what I am saying here. No I am not calling for some strawman case statement, which will obviously immediately be found to have loopholes. But if you can't put in the work to list examples, help explain things that may rely on your own cultural assumptions and biases, and in general work to make understanding the code of conduct inclusive to everyone it will cover (obviously helping only those extending a good faith effort), well then how much better are you at being inclusive that the community with which you are finding fault?

Another thing that I think needs to be established is that the code of conduct will be applied equally to everyone. I recently read a twitter message from an author expressing disdain for people complaining about their talk "Learn Functional Programming Without Growing a Neckbeard". This is an obviously gendered title, with negative connotations. In the same way that I would expect a conference to reject a talk entitled "Learn about Feminism Without Getting Hairy Armpits" I obviously expect the same standards to applied to the former talk. If you want people to buy into inclusivity (and yes everyone should just buy into it, but we do not live in a perfect world), then you need to include them. If people feel that the code of conduct will only apply to them in the "negative" sense, instead of also in the positive sense where they too can feel safe from mockery, offense, and bad conduct then it will be pretty hard to get buy in.

I'll finish here by saying that I agree with most of the other things that Andy has written. I honestly never really understood the whole freedom of speech argument, especially in the context of a conference. If you can't give a talk without referring to rape, you should honestly rethink your approach. If you can't describe a system without comparing it in some gendered way with sexual overtones, again you should take a step back. I can't even fathom how this could be a problem but maybe I just haven't given enough talks to large groups of people. Maybe the urge to make a sexual reference in an explicitly technological conference is overwhelming. But I am guessing that is probably not the case. So I have little sympathy there. But for the sake of progressing to the better world that Andy is working towards I think a little introspection on the two points above from those working for it is in order as well.