Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER TOPIC FOR KS] CoC and Linus position (perhaps undocumented/closed/limited/invite session)

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>]

Em Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:33:05 +0300
Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> escreveu:

> On Thu, 20 Sep 2018, Tim.Bird@sony.com wrote:
> > My view is that it's intended to be a social document, with guidelines
> > for actions within the community  (Actions by maintainers, actions
> > by contributors, actions by the TAB).  To me it's more like rules for
> > a party at my house.  If someone doesn't abide by the rules, I'll ask
> > them to leave the party.  And I'll ask others at the party to remind people
> > to abide by the rules.  But the person kicked out can hardly call the cops
> > on me for doing so.  
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> I think there's much more value in adopting a widely used code of
> conduct than writing your own, or even trying to tweak it. If a project
> uses the Contributor Covenant, you pretty much know the rules without
> actually having to read another document and wonder what this all means.
> In this regard, it's really not unlike the GPL for copyleft licenses;
> one acronym tells you what you can and can't do.
> 
> With that perspective, I think the changes proposed in this thread do
> more harm than good. If people still insist the text should be improved,
> I think the proper flow is to file issues or pull requests to
> Contributor Covenant upstream [1], and later update to a new version of
> the document.

The main experience of the Contributor Covenant's author seems to be
on Github. There is a fundamental difference between a Github-based
project workflow and the Kernel: there, everything happens inside a GUI
interface. Usually, those projects don't have a large number of
maintainers, nor contributors. Message traffic is typically not high.

On such kind of interface, the maintainers can edit or delete all
kinds of messages, even posted by a third party. So, a text like:

	"Maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit,..."

would work. If the number of messages are small, it is also an easy
task.

It could also work on a smaller e-mail-based project where there is
just one or two moderated ML.

However, on a higly e-mail based project like the Kernel, where we receive
hundreds to thousands of messages per day, and we have a large
number of mailing lists, in order to comply with that CoC statement, 
all email lists should be moderated. I can't imagine any way to have
a list like LKML moderated. Even moderating the linux-media ML nowadays
would be really hard, and would be someone's full time job.

Even if LF hires a team of moderators for all Kernel mailing lists,
if someone cross-post a message on more than one list, different
moderators could take different measurements, with could be a problem,
if the same email is threated different by the different moderators.

Not practical (and it comes with a cost).

Using the terms of the CoC, by not taking any measure to stop
offensive posts, maintainers wouldn't be "acting in good faith".
So, maintainers are violating the policy.

Also, if someone felt abused, the "unacceptable behavior may be
reported by contacting the Technical Advisory Board (TAB)".
The *may* word indicates that he can also go to other places to
do a similar complain. Implicitly, it opens space to go to court.

So, the practical effect is that, if someone wants to fire
a random maintainer, all it has to do is to create a fake account,
send a bunch of random offensive messages to himself on his real
account, and then complain - first on TAB - then filing a lawsuit
(with can envolve both the TAB and the maintainer).

That's why I don't think that, the way it is, this CoC applies
to us. The way it is, it is just FUD. I can see a few 
alternatives:

1) Revert the CoC patch;
2) Use another CoC that would work for e-mail-based workflows;
3) Patch it - either changing the text of the CoC or adding
   a prologue adding ammendments to prevent the above risk
   and solving the e-mail addresses on review tags.

My view is that, currently, we have a major issue at the 
contributing process. So, if nothing happens, I may wait until
the Maintainer's Summit before sending any pull requests
upstream.

Thanks,
Mauro