[llvm-dev] RFC: Introducing an LLVM Community Code of Conduct

Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev
2015-10-14T00:07:28Z

I was in the "it's too long" camp and continue to think so even
after looking at the web rendering, but I see the value of consistency.  I might
like to see the "includes but is not limited to" lists factored out so
that the bullet points are crisper, but maybe that's just me.

I'm thinking of the CoC as more like the Coding Standard. Even if we already
had a consistent style, it can be worthwhile actually writing it down. I'm
not super fussed about exactly what it says.

And I do think it's worthwhile writing it down. The easiest sub-groups to
identify in a typical gathering of humans are male/female. How many women were
at my first LLVM dev meeting in 2011?  I remember being struck by how few; I
remember trying to count, and while I don't remember the total I am certain
it was under 10%. (CPPCon 2014 was much worse, as if that could be any
consolation.) That's really not an improvement over how things were when I
started in this business 30+ years ago, and that's pretty depressing as I
contemplate the industry that my college-student daughter is probably headed
for. I don't know that an explicit CoC would help, but it surely can't
hurt.
--paulr

From: llvm-dev [mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org] On Behalf Of James Y
Knight via llvm-dev
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
To: Chandler Carruth
Cc: llvm-dev
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Introducing an LLVM Community Code of Conduct

+1 to using basically verbatim the existing Django Code of Conduct. The Django
CoC expresses the desired sentiment well, and does a Good Enough job on the
details. It also seems well respected in general.

I'd suggest that we all resist the urge to disuss basically irrelevant
minutae (such as the exact list of things that are written in the
"includes, but is not limited to" list), adopt it, and move on to more
fun activities. I'd like to repost what someone said on a thread about
adopting a Code of Conduct in Twisted, because it does a better job of saying
this than I can. Clayton Daley wrote:
Not that I'm a heavy contributor, but:
   - A CoC is like a ToS in many ways.  They rarely get read until there's a
problem.
   - A CoC is like a License in many ways.  They should be pretty standard
infrastructure.

I think both of these facts argue for joining Twisted to an existing CoC. No one
goes around reading the CoC for every group they participate in. We increase the
odds that someone reads our CoC if they get leverage (one read, lots of groups)
and we get spill-over (they read the CoC for another group and thus know ours).

To those saying it's too long: I think it looks a lot longer as a wall of
ReStructured Text in email, than when read formatted. Reading it here
https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/ it seems a reasonable length, with a
nicely bolded TL;DR list for those who don't want to sweat the details.

One other thing: I don't think it'll be terribly useful to debate about
whether this is the MOST IMPORTANT thing for the community to do. There
certainly are other issues facing the community e.g. around making it easy for
newcomers to get patches reviewed/submitted. Maybe lack of CoC isn't the
largest problem facing to contributors, but IMO it's definitely a positive
step. And, one that isn't terribly difficult to accomplish: it's mostly
just writing down expectations for professional behavior that basically everyone
follows already.

The only bit that seems to me really needs fleshing out is what the process for
appointing the CoC committee is. I'd sort of assume based on what other
organizations do that the LLVM Foundation Board would be responsible for
appointing the Committee, but that the Board and the Committe would not be one
and the same.

Of course, the LLVM Foundation Board *really* must be a transparent, trusted,
and respected group in the community in order to be able to properly take on
that role. Based on the board members (at least, from the 2014 announcement), it
seems to me that there should be no intrinsic problem there...but getting the
"trivial" things done like posting the bylaws and meeting notes on the
website is really quite important to engender such trust.
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