Re: Free Software and the New Sexism

[Adam Spiers]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2023 at 05:40, Jacob Bachmeyer <jcb62281@gmail.com> wrote: 
> The fundamental problem here is that all of the issues these CoC 
> documents are supposed to address are entirely off-topic and 
> inappropriate in a software development context.  Sexism, racism, 
> whatever-ism-of-the-day are all irrelevant because discussions are 
> supposed to focus on the /software/ instead of on the /people/ writing 
> the software.  Yes, your patch proposing to add "sex" to Guix's CoC was 
> wrong, but the CoC itself is wrong in the same way as your patch:  none 
> of those issues are relevant. 
>
> Put another way, on the Internet, to other users, you are not a person, 
> you are a stream of messages.  More idealistically, on the Internet, 
> /you/ /are/ /your/ /ideas/. 

There is something wonderfully aspirational about this utopian and 
well-intentioned approach.  Unfortunately however, personally I don't 
see how it can ever work, because we don't cease to be human beings or 
lose all human context when we move our communication and 
collaboration online.  In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that 
moving communication online tends to /increase/ unkind behaviour and 
therefore the need for kindness and communication guidelines. 

Some may agree with this but still contend that it is outside the 
scope of Free Software or GNU.  However there seem to be 
counter-arguments, e.g. 

- If it was out of scope, the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines would
  not have been written.

- Whilst Free Software can exist as a pure, abstract concept, GNU and
  other Free Software communities consist of people, all of whom have
  our own biases and communication styles.

- Copyleft and other Free Software licenses do not and cannot exist in
  a vacuum, and indeed are built on and enforced by the socio-legal
  construct of copyright.

Similarly, whilst arguments along the lines of "if you don't like the 
community, you are free to fork the software and/or build your own 
community" are (marvellously) true, they ignore the pragmatic reality 
that as a movement we are generally stronger together through 
economies of scale, rather than fragmented into siloes.  The freedoms 
granted by Free Software are a wonderful baseline, but that doesn't 
mean we shouldn't aim higher.  Communication guidelines can help 
prevent unnecessary fragmentation. 

> Efforts to thwart that, efforts to carry real-world baggage into the 
> Internet space, are, put simply, /wrong/ 

Maybe that is true for deliberate efforts, but given that it is 
impossible for human beings to entirely divorce themselves from their 
baggage in the Internet space, realistically we need systems for 
dealing with it. 

The crux of this particular debate seems to be whether it is possible 
to support one group of people without discriminating against another. 
Personally I think it /should/ be, /regardless/ of the group(s) in 
question, and that doing that should obviate or at least minimise any 
conflict.  Indeed, that is why I like the neutral words "any other 
demographic characteristics" in the first sentence of the GNU Kind 
Communications Guidelines: 

   "The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes
   to advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of [...]
   any other demographic characteristics"

Perhaps it would have been better if the "[...]" words I trimmed were 
not present and it just read "regardless of any demographic 
characteristics", because there is an argument that mentioning certain 
demographic distinctions may introduce biases against other 
distinctions not mentioned. 

That said, this last point is much more philosophical in nature, 
possibly getting off-topic for this list, and certainly a rabbit-hole, 
so I won't continue down that avenue here.  Please let's all just be 
kind to each other and assume good faith?