Re: SPI member projects adopting a Code of Conduct

Dear SPI projects,

The OBF is an SPI member project, and is currently in the process of
adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) to cover both our online activities
(including software development) and in person events (like our annual
conference, assuming that resumes as a physical event).

If legal assistance were required (e.g. in handling a specific CoC
incident), I presume as per https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
the OBF would at the SPI board's discretion have access to the SPI's
legal counsel? Is that correct?

If any other SPI projects have themselves adopted a CoC, do you have
any advice to share? Our concerns include scope and procedures, and
providing training for those handling reports.

Thank you,

Peter
Peter Cock, current OBF president.

Peter,

PostgreSQL.org has a CoC: https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/

Postgres Conference (not an SPI project) also has a COC.

My experience with both is that Open Source communities have *zero*
business managing a CoC or community around it. It is an extreme conflict
of interest. The way Postgres Conference does it is that there is an
anonymous reporting facility that we run through a company called
"lighthouse" and they also handle the investigation.

If your CoC community isn't autonomous you will get into stick situations.

JD

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 10:58 AM Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com>
wrote:

> Dear SPI projects,
>
> The OBF is an SPI member project, and is currently in the process of
> adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) to cover both our online activities
> (including software development) and in person events (like our annual
> conference, assuming that resumes as a physical event).
>
> If legal assistance were required (e.g. in handling a specific CoC
> incident), I presume as per https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
> the OBF would at the SPI board's discretion have access to the SPI's
> legal counsel? Is that correct?
>
> If any other SPI projects have themselves adopted a CoC, do you have
> any advice to share? Our concerns include scope and procedures, and
> providing training for those handling reports.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Peter
> Peter Cock, current OBF president.
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

Hi Peter. OpenZFS adopted a CoC <https://openzfs.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct>
a few years ago. I'm not sure I have any specific advice, but I'd be happy
to (privately) share our experience if you'd like.

--matt

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 10:58 AM Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com>
wrote:

> Dear SPI projects,
>
> The OBF is an SPI member project, and is currently in the process of
> adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) to cover both our online activities
> (including software development) and in person events (like our annual
> conference, assuming that resumes as a physical event).
>
> If legal assistance were required (e.g. in handling a specific CoC
> incident), I presume as per https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
> the OBF would at the SPI board's discretion have access to the SPI's
> legal counsel? Is that correct?
>
> If any other SPI projects have themselves adopted a CoC, do you have
> any advice to share? Our concerns include scope and procedures, and
> providing training for those handling reports.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Peter
> Peter Cock, current OBF president.
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

Hi Peter,
SMC adopted a CoC a few years ago, based on Contributor Covenant

https://smc.org.in/code-of-conduct

Enforcement side, All free and open source communities have limitations as
Joshua pointed before.

Anivar

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 8:33 AM Matthew Ahrens <matt(at)mahrens(dot)org> wrote:

> Hi Peter. OpenZFS adopted a CoC
> <https://openzfs.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct> a few years ago. I'm not sure
> I have any specific advice, but I'd be happy to (privately) share our
> experience if you'd like.
>
> --matt
>
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 10:58 AM Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear SPI projects,
>>
>> The OBF is an SPI member project, and is currently in the process of
>> adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) to cover both our online activities
>> (including software development) and in person events (like our annual
>> conference, assuming that resumes as a physical event).
>>
>> If legal assistance were required (e.g. in handling a specific CoC
>> incident), I presume as per https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
>> the OBF would at the SPI board's discretion have access to the SPI's
>> legal counsel? Is that correct?
>>
>> If any other SPI projects have themselves adopted a CoC, do you have
>> any advice to share? Our concerns include scope and procedures, and
>> providing training for those handling reports.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Peter
>> Peter Cock, current OBF president.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Spi-general mailing list
>> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
>> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

Hi, X.org adopted a Code of Conduct a while ago. We haven't had to have an
external entity handle things, so long as the people on the CoC team are not in
positions like being secretary (where there could be a conflict of interest as a
result). We also have members of the Code of Conduct team and the board go
through CoC training courtesy of:

https://otter.technology/code-of-conduct-training/

As well our CoC is here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/

I'm a little surprised by some projects here mentioning that OSS communities
have no place handling a Code of Conduct, this was never even mentioned as
something to worry about during my training.

On Mon, 2020-10-12 at 18:58 +0100, Peter Cock wrote:
> Dear SPI projects,
>
> The OBF is an SPI member project, and is currently in the process of
> adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) to cover both our online activities
> (including software development) and in person events (like our annual
> conference, assuming that resumes as a physical event).
>
> If legal assistance were required (e.g. in handling a specific CoC
> incident), I presume as per https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/
> the OBF would at the SPI board's discretion have access to the SPI's
> legal counsel? Is that correct?
>
> If any other SPI projects have themselves adopted a CoC, do you have
> any advice to share? Our concerns include scope and procedures, and
> providing training for those handling reports.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Peter
> Peter Cock, current OBF president.
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>
--
Sincerely,
Lyude Paul (she/her)
Software Engineer at Red Hat

Note: I deal with a lot of emails and have a lot of bugs on my plate. If you've
asked me a question, are waiting for a review/merge on a patch, etc. and I
haven't responded in a while, please feel free to send me another email to check
on my status. I don't bite!

Greetings,

* Lyude Paul (lyude(at)redhat(dot)com) wrote:
> Hi, X.org adopted a Code of Conduct a while ago. We haven't had to have an
> external entity handle things, so long as the people on the CoC team are not in
> positions like being secretary (where there could be a conflict of interest as a
> result). We also have members of the Code of Conduct team and the board go
> through CoC training courtesy of:
>
> https://otter.technology/code-of-conduct-training/
>
> As well our CoC is here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/

Nice!

> I'm a little surprised by some projects here mentioning that OSS communities
> have no place handling a Code of Conduct, this was never even mentioned as
> something to worry about during my training.

Please note that the post to this mailing list which you're alluding to
here was absolutely not from the PostgreSQL project, nor does the
PostgreSQL project feel that way as clearly demonstrated by our existing
CoC, which shows that we do handle the CoC (and, as a member of that
community, in my view the PG project does a good job at it). The
official PG CoC can be seen here:

https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/

Individuals are welcome to express their opinions on this public mailing
list, provided that they're respectful, but I would ask everyone to
please make sure you are not seen as speaking for a project when you are
actually voicing your own personal opinions. If you are, indeed,
speaking on behalf of a project, please also make that clear, to
hopefully avoid such confusion in the future.

Thanks,

Stephen

Thank you for that clarification Stephen.

I had wondered if the intended meaning was about the potential difficulties
in self-policing, and thus value in outsourcing.

We (OBF) have discussed the idea of an ombudsperson or a reciprocal
arrangement with a sister organisation to allow external handling if a
complaint was about the project leadership. That gets very complicated.
If our CoC chain of escalation comes to our board, my personal preference
for dealing with any breach by a board member, is to leave this to rest of
the board (rather than outsourcing).

Peter

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 4:55 PM Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> * Lyude Paul (lyude(at)redhat(dot)com) wrote:
> > Hi, X.org adopted a Code of Conduct a while ago. We haven't had to have an
> > external entity handle things, so long as the people on the CoC team are not in
> > positions like being secretary (where there could be a conflict of interest as a
> > result). We also have members of the Code of Conduct team and the board go
> > through CoC training courtesy of:
> >
> > https://otter.technology/code-of-conduct-training/
> >
> > As well our CoC is here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/
>
> Nice!
>
> > I'm a little surprised by some projects here mentioning that OSS communities
> > have no place handling a Code of Conduct, this was never even mentioned as
> > something to worry about during my training.
>
> Please note that the post to this mailing list which you're alluding to
> here was absolutely not from the PostgreSQL project, nor does the
> PostgreSQL project feel that way as clearly demonstrated by our existing
> CoC, which shows that we do handle the CoC (and, as a member of that
> community, in my view the PG project does a good job at it). The
> official PG CoC can be seen here:
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/
>
> Individuals are welcome to express their opinions on this public mailing
> list, provided that they're respectful, but I would ask everyone to
> please make sure you are not seen as speaking for a project when you are
> actually voicing your own personal opinions. If you are, indeed,
> speaking on behalf of a project, please also make that clear, to
> hopefully avoid such confusion in the future.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stephen