Re: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hi Thorsten,

Thorsten Wilms writes:
> [...]
>
> Likewise, contributing to Guix is apparently meant to imply that one
> makes the pledge as outlined in that CoC.
>
> In both cases, you are meant to not get one without the other. It
> happened that one could not read the EULA in advance and it happened
> that I contributed before reading the CoC carefully. I distrust it's
> origin and I'm not happy about a few details, though they most likely
> will never matter. So I could almost, but not quite make such a
> promise, but I cannot be made to make such a promise. Especially
> retroactively. Even less can I be made to make a promise that might
> change:
>
> I assume that Ricardo and Ludovic want to have the option of editing
> the CoC without asking every single contributor. Well, people should
> better know what the current state of their pledge is.
>
> Not that I think the two would introduce a nasty surprise, it's just
> that the "covenant" and "we as contributors ... pledge" language is
> dishonest.

Out of curiosity, would you personally feel better about the CoC if it
used terms such as "This community commits to" or "This community
pledges to" insteead of "We as contributors commit to"?

I ask because one of the positives about the CC wording from my
perspective is that it specifically makes it a collective responsibility
to uphold certain norms, and not just the responsibility of the
"projec authorities".  It is understood that there are specific channels
for dealing with violations of those norms, but the community as a whole
stands behind that.

Alex