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Sqlite: Code Of Conduct

by kragniz on 10/22/18, 10:39 AM with 281 comments

• by chippy on 10/22/18, 11:26 AM

  Discussion on the sqlite-users mailing list:

  http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/Regarding-CoC-td104277.h...

  From Richard:

  "Yes. Clients were encouraging me to have a code of conduct. (Having a CoC seems to be a trendy thing nowadays.) So I looked around and came up with what you found, submitted the idea to the whole staff, and everybody approved."

• by SonOfThePlower on 10/22/18, 11:40 AM

  Best CoC I have ever seen! I do not think that it is joke. From sqlite's source code:

  The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing: May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

• by finnthehuman on 10/22/18, 12:34 PM

  I am surprised at how dismissive and intolerant the comments here are of this code of conduct. And I say this as an atheist that still harbors a lot of resentment against my family's religion.

  Do you have so little empathy that you can't possibly image someone adopting The Rule of St. Benedict in good faith (no pun intended)?

• by O2F2 on 10/22/18, 11:24 AM

  Yes, it's meant as a joking stab at those who seemingly cannot live without having a CoC everywhere. Especially in projects they do not actually participate in. Now watch as this gets blown out of proportion, because this will make some people really, really angry. Id be very surprised if this stays up actually.

• by runjake on 10/22/18, 6:23 PM

  Right in the first section, people:

  "However, those who wish to participate in the SQLite community, either by commenting on the public mailing lists or by contributing patches or suggestions or in any other way, are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that honors the overarching spirit of the rule, even if they disagree with specific details. Polite and professional discussion is always welcomed, from anyone."

  Edit: I am not religious at all.

• by mrweasel on 10/22/18, 11:40 AM

  People seem to be upset about the religious parts of the code of conduct, just read the overview, it's in no way intended to force religion onto people.

  If the religious bits was to be deleted, it would be hard for anyone to disagree.

  I see it as no less good or bad than any other code of conduct I've seen. Most of them could be used to throw anyone out of any project, if you chose to do so. The code of conducts for a lot of projects are so selectively enforced that is ridiculous.

• by caiocaiocaio on 10/22/18, 3:49 PM

  Leaving aside everything else, using the rule of St. Benedict and pointing out its influence on medieval thought seems like poor choice. Benedictine monasteries were often notoriously corrupt. There were frequent attempts at Benedictine reform, but it was almost always that case that in a few decades, the reformers would become more corrupt than those they were initially criticizing.

  And, of course, is medieval government actually something to aspire to? Medieval European governments were extremely unstable, collapsed frequently (often due to assassination), rarely went a decade without civil war/armed rebellion, their legal systems were patchy and inconsistent, and almost all of them had laws which separated punishments for commoners and noble-born. The fact that medieval law was influenced by the Benedictine rule seems like a reason to reject it.

• by thrower123 on 10/22/18, 12:42 PM

  I do get a little joy on my monday morning that there are still people out there doing good work who can just tell people in a pig's eye when they are pressured to do stupid things.

• by mikl on 10/22/18, 4:01 PM

  An interesting mirroring of the popular CoCs these days. While they enshrine what one could call "San Francisco Democrat" values, this CoC enshrines christian conservative values.

  If you think value-based CoCs are fine, you shouldn't have a problem with this.

• by idoubtit on 10/22/18, 11:28 AM

  I don't understand the purpose of this. I hope it's an elaborate joke, but it is surprisingly unprofessional.

  A few years ago I spent some time in their dev mailing list and proposed a patch. I doubt I'd still do this in this context. This code of conduct that requires members to honor th Christ, even as a joke, would make me reluctant to interact with SQLite.

• by stupidbird on 10/22/18, 4:59 PM

  Having a code of conduct isn't about creating rules, it's about making a public commitment to enforce them.

  Now that they've shown us that they clearly don't care about a code of conduct, I wouldn't trust them to ever handle any actual conduct issues in a reasonable way. Maybe they'd just send me a joke instead.

• by apexalpha on 10/22/18, 11:22 AM

  > Speak no useless words or words that move to laughter.

  Aww here goes my entire social coping strategy.

  That being said: this is a stab at Linux CoC? I can see the humour in it but... Seems unprofessonal for a project as SQLite?

• by yakshaving_jgt on 10/22/18, 11:40 AM

  > 39. Be not a grumbler.

  Oh dear. That's basically all of us.

• by kingofhdds on 10/22/18, 2:14 PM

  Awesome. It's the first CoC for a FOSS project which sets the plank for good behaviour high enough!

• by gonvaled on 10/22/18, 11:54 AM

  Great! I can't wait for another project adopting an Islamic CoC (not to be enforced!), and read the comments.

• by LawnDart1 on 10/22/18, 11:19 AM

  First, I never knew SQLLite was quite so religious,

  Second 69. Love your juniors. Really? Won't HR get involved?

• by AndriyKunitsyn on 10/22/18, 11:24 AM

  Fascinating! Some folks really need a reminder of what "inclusiveness" means.

• by sacado2 on 10/22/18, 6:03 PM

  Are there any studies proving the effectiveness of CoCs ? Like, more active contributors, or a bigger market share, on projects after they adopted their CoC?

• by bluetomcat on 10/22/18, 11:44 AM

  The ultimate CoC to put an end to this silly practice.

• by rbanffy on 10/22/18, 11:13 AM

  I had to read this as an elaborate joke around such codes. It'd be certainly amusing to see people trying to be in compliance.

• by drb91 on 10/22/18, 6:36 PM

  @dang Why was this flagged?

• by jf- on 10/22/18, 11:25 AM

  Ha. Needs some tweaks here and there but it’s a good start!

• by fanbelt on 10/22/18, 1:43 PM

  For me, rule 11 conflicts with rules 59 and 63. There is a merge conflict.

• by zzo38computer on 10/26/18, 9:06 PM

  Rule of St.Benedict is good, although much of it is not applicable to computer software development, some of it is only meaningful to Christians (I don't mean that it is bad or unwelcoming to non-Christians, but rather that it is meaningless), and some of it is less suitable outside of monastic orders. However, the preface corrects these problems (as many others have mentioned too), to make it suitable.

  I have no problem with the people if they are Christian or Jewish or Wiccan or atheist or whatever (although this is independent from if you are good at this computer programming; Knuth is Christian and he is one of the best of the computer programmers in my opinion). Also, I have no problem to use SQLite regardless of the CoC; I still think it is a good software.

• by expertentipp on 10/22/18, 11:25 AM

  Amen

• by mabynogy on 10/23/18, 11:29 AM

  We've adopted the Saint Benedict rule too: http://dailyprog.org/rule/

  We will adopt similar codes from different traditions of the world.

• by roguecoder on 10/22/18, 7:19 PM

  I can't wait to see people get reported for merely being slightly afraid of hell rather than in actual dread of hell.

  Of course, since there's no enforcement mechanism this seems to be just an attempt to get credit with customers without actually caring about the question they were really asking.

• by mikeash on 10/22/18, 3:49 PM

  Interesting to see so many people defending this, either on the basis of “it’s satire” or “it says you don’t have to follow every single rule.”

  Would you be saying the same thing if it said “Allah” instead of “God”? What if it said you had to love Osama bin Laden? What if rule 1 was “love white people”?

  Religious discrimination is poor fodder for satire and is not something we should just selectively ignore.

  Edit: wonder what the downvotes are about. Don’t like seeing Yahweh compared to ObL, maybe? Well, my point exactly.

• by marceloboeira on 10/23/18, 11:03 AM

  "This code of conduct has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years" LOL

• by aral on 10/22/18, 11:27 AM

  Joke or not, dick move either way.

• by Annatar on 10/22/18, 11:37 AM

  "Having a CoC seems to be a trendy thing nowadays."

  Here, then, is an example of how society falls. Never has any good come out of such things, and for as long as one seeks to dominate, oppress and limit another in any such way, no matter how sweet the words, their meaning will forever remain imprisonment of another.

• by Svoka on 10/23/18, 12:31 PM

  Besides enforcing religious beliefs with history of multiple genocides, this is bad CoC.

  It is toothless. What are procedures when someone in community breaks rules? There is no board to decide, no email to report, no process to take place. Do I pray to the Lord?

  This is pure trolling without merit.

• by jmadsen on 10/23/18, 5:53 AM

  Am I the only person who was angered because I assumed they were doing a piss-take on a serious subject?

  Fuck's sake, people - learn how to explain yourselves in the context of your known readership.

• by jbogard on 10/22/18, 4:40 PM

  This is now the dumbest CoC I've seen today, and the RMS one set quite the low bar. Any actual enforceable CoC that may get adopted loses any credibility with this move.

• by ovi256 on 10/22/18, 11:23 AM

  Well this is surely extraordinary among codes of conduct, with its direct mention of God. It's bound to ruffle a lot of feathers, and act as a beacon for culture war.

• by sleepybrett on 10/22/18, 9:13 PM

  Hyperbolic bullshit solves everything, right?

• by obeattie on 10/22/18, 11:56 AM

  How immature. If you disagree with having a code of conduct, then not having one seems preferable to making it an insult to those asking for one.

• by unfunco on 10/22/18, 7:31 PM

  Be not addicted to wine. Be not a great eater. Be not drowsy. Be not lazy. Be not a grumbler.

  Guess I can't use SQLite anymore…

• by k__ on 10/22/18, 11:16 AM

  Is this an elaborate joke or something?!

• by smpetrey on 10/22/18, 5:13 PM

  This is 100% absurd.

• by _pgmf on 10/22/18, 5:15 PM

  If the code of conduct angers you, stop and think -- how did you feel one minute before you read the CoC? Is the problem really the CoC, or is it your collection of beliefs that is causing the problem? Furthermore, are you even affected? Do you contribute bug reports or patches? Follow the SQLite mailing list? Is anything here designed to prevent you from continuing to do so?

  SQLite's author is a spiritual guy. There's nothing wrong with him borrowing from spiritual sources to describe his ideal for how he wants the SQLite community to conduct itself.

• by hudibras on 10/22/18, 11:16 AM

  Ugh, wall of text. Can I get a tl;dr?

• by deadbunny on 10/22/18, 11:30 AM

  Hail Satan!

• by feketegy on 10/22/18, 6:19 PM

  USA != Rest of the World. Most problems are not issues, only for US devs as tech tend to be very US centric.

  I'm all for being civil online, but against everyone behaving defined by a template.

• by tgroshon on 10/22/18, 9:10 PM

  People being far too literal here about the "Love the Lord God". Your God is whatever you worship, and yes even the Atheist worships something. The commandment is two parts: (a) Jehovah (The Lord) should be your God and (b) your God should be the priority in your life. If you're Atheist or another faith then replace A by identifying "your God" and make it your priority. Live with purpose!

• by bitcynth on 10/22/18, 3:40 PM

  Regardless if this is a joke or not, this is not acceptable, you can't put religious things in the code of conduct. Even if it is a joke, it is still awful and I wish that it gets removed quickly.