Hullo, Mark. IMO, this discussion is of questionable topicality for
Devuan Project, so I'll definitely drop the thread like a hot potato if the
listadmins so wish. I'm not disputing what you say, but am curious
if you can support some bits from the text Greg Kroah-Hartman
checked in as the new Documentation/process/code-of-conduct.rst text on
Sept. 15th. As to the rest, vague abstract discussions just aren't my
cuppa, which is probably why I try to gravitate to specifics.

Kroah-Hartman's patch for your reference is here:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8a104f8b5867c682d994ffa7a74093c54469c11f

Quoting Mark Rousell (mark.rousell@???):

> You see, the problem is that someone somewhere will take offence at
> almost anything. It Is NOT necessarily reasonable to censor one's
> normal speech to pander to some idiot or liar who has chosen to claim
> that he or she finds something you said "offensive" or "insulting".

The recent check-in states that the judgement about what is to be deemed
'offensive' (or inappropriate, threatening, or harmful) would be made by
kernel maintainers -- not just by 'someone somewhere'. This is in the
paragraph 'Our Responsibilities'. Subsequent paragraph 'Enforcement'
is less vague, stating that the matter would be decided by the kernel's
Technical Advisory Board. For reference, that's currently these folks:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/technical-advisory-board/
(Disclosure: Several of those are acquaintances and former co-workers,
and I'm pretty sure I've corresponded with most of them.)

To be fair, you may have been speaking only generically about CoCs
without specific reference to the Kroah-Hartman check-in that triggered
this discussion. If so, I would appreciate your speaking to the
specific example at hand, too.


> We cannot and MUST NOT pander to the lowest common denominator of
> claimed personal offence, and yet codes of conduct often seem to be
> intended to do exactly that.

Is there anything you can cite from the Kroah-Hartman example suggesting
that the standards applied will be decided by the most hypersensitive?

> CoCs don't help since they
> tend only to entrench politically correct notions of what is
> "respectful" rather than allowing common sense to prevail in terms of
> what is "reasonable").

Similar question about this in the context of K-H's checkin. I note
that it doesn't even mention that term or any similar one, let alone
mandate any particular construing of the concept of 'respect'.

> Furthermore, just because a person says that "I find 'fwibblefut'"
> offensive/insulting is not necessarily a good enough reason for another
> reasonable person to avoid it.

Similar question about this in the context of K-H's checkin, which I
notice nowhere requires cessation of a term merely on account of some
individual objecting to it.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


One final note: Part of the reason I referred to the CoC text currently
under discussion as 'the Kroah-Hartman check-in' is that I find the
recent upthread viewing-with-alarm of Ms. Ehmke and her various agendas
a rather insultingly obvious attempt to change the subject while
pretending not to.

Kroah-Hartman's text is a _derivative_ of one of Ms. Ehmke's successive
'Contributor Covenant' texts (some changes, I hear, but I haven't diffed
them), but in any event the merits of a work are distinct from the
merits of its creator. I happen to think, for example, that dnscache is
a very nice and useful piece of software (although over 17 years of
being unmaintained software, it's accumulated a whole lot of needed
patches), and it'd be downright irrational of me to dislike or badmouth
it just because I think its author is a colossal jerk -- so I don't.

So, I would appreciate if remarks about the Kroah-Hartman check-in text
address relevant concerns such as _the text_ and its likely
interpretation by the people shown on
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/technical-advisory-board/ and
their eventual successors.