The SQLite Code of Ethics
sqlite.orgBefore I got to talk with Richard, I found many things online about his Christian values and public domain license and how odd it was.
And I thought this was THE fascinating thing about Richard that led to the database and other things.
But then I talked to him. He's a great engineer but a regular guy running a business around a thing he built.
He gets to be a bit whimsical because he can. He can use his own source control and license, and he can certainly make up a code of ethics, to check a check box on some form somewhere.
The cool thing about SQLite is that he built this thing and gets to do things his way.
This is just a specific instance of that.
Shameless plug: https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/
I specifically adore Richard _because_ he's a good Christian man (and I say this as a non-Christian) and a great engineer.
I'm happy that he's found a way to integrate his values into his products. Richard is not enforcing his beliefs on anyone; moreover the values espoused in the Code seem fair to any reasonable mind. It asks us to do good, and calls for good human/humane values whatever your religion or ideology or spirituality. How can that be wrong?
Often times these days in tech it's all about progress, liberal ideologies, and there's no sense of values or ethics rooted in anything but money. SQLite's code of ethics is a refreshing change.
SQLite itself is also an amazing piece of engineering, that I use daily and can't express enough thanks to him for.
P/S: I love your podcast! Have heard so many great episodes that changed my mind.
There are several things on that list that I would not regard as “fair to any reasonable mind”.
Such as?
These are the most ridiculous ones from my own very quick glance. Rest of the list is questionable at best as well.
1. First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength. 10. Deny oneself in order to follow Christ. 21. Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ. 27. Do not swear, for fear of perjuring yourself. 34. Be not proud. 41. Put your hope in God. 44. Fear the Day of Judgment. 45. Be in dread of hell. 49. Know for certain that God sees you everywhere. 50. When wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ immediately. 56. Listen willingly to holy reading. 57. Devote yourself frequently to prayer. 58. Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future. 60. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do." 62. Fulfill God's commandments daily in your deeds. 70. Pray for your enemies in the love of Christ.
A secular perspective of some of those is still very positive:
> 27. Do not swear, for fear of perjuring yourself.
This means: be true to your word. It's an excellent principle.
> 50. When wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ immediately.
This means: have self-control over your own, possibly not-very-good, impulses and desires. This too is a good thing.
> 58. Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future.
You might not pray, but self-analysis each day, putting the past behind you and endeavouring to make each day better, is also an excellent principle. Confessing the past is a great technique for getting over the past too: it lets you forgive yourself and move forward.
> 60. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do."
I don't agree with this one, because I believe we should struggle against those in power when it is necessary. But you can still put forward a good argument for it.
> 70. Pray for your enemies in the love of Christ.
This is one of those principles that translates well even without prayer or religion: act in empathy to your enemies; hope that they will improve; do not let yourself become evil in your own heart (you know that anger that can grow? The things that make you behave not so nicely, even if you think of yourself as a nice person?) towards them but keep a loving attitude even to those who don't deserve it.
I don't agree with all of the principles they listed. I could not become a SQLite developer. But none of these -- none! -- are 'ridiculous'. In fact, they are tied closely to being a good person, and to living a peaceful, kind life.
The thing is you can be charitable with your interpretation or try to decipher some reasonable principles out of ramblings like these but the point is that it's 2022 and referring to 'holy scripture' in normal person's code of conduct is in my opinion actually insane and is not worth anybody's time.
So I do consider most of these insane, ridiculous and worthless. Anybody is free to think otherwise.
It is good to be charitable with interpretation. In fact, being charitable with interpretations is an attitude that would be encouraged with SQLite's rules.
A code of conduct that has persisted and remained used for 1500 years cannot really be described as 'ramblings'.
Referring to someone's code of ethics as 'insane', 'ridiculous' and 'worthless' is, perhaps, not quite as kind as it could be. It also doesn't fit the HN culture: we try to discuss things rationally here, not emotionally, and if I may so so, a bit more kindly.
This Register article sheds more light on the decision to use the code from the Benedictines: https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/sqlite_code_of_conduc...
> "Nobody is excluded from the SQLite community due to biological category or religious creed," [SQLLIte creator, D Richard Hipp] told us. "The preface to the CoC should make this clear. The only way to get kicked out of the SQLite community is by shouting, flaming, and disrespectful behavior. In 18 years, only one person has ever been banned from the mailing list."
> In other words, Hipp decided to adopt a seminal Christian text rather than grab some cookie-cutter code of conduct from elsewhere, reflecting his beliefs and, he believes, the general world view of those who contribute to open-source software projects for free.
So the rules do not require you be Christian or Benedictine to contribute to SQLite. He's chosen something that's stood the test of time, rather than writing something new - he explicitly notes in that article that he asked himself if he really regards himself as wiser than St Benedict, and concluding no, a reason not to edit the rules. He also chose a set of rules that he believes match many of the ways open source developers behave and the behaviours they believe they should have.
I respect that.
Why are such unfair to a reasonable mind?
Or do you consider they may be fair to a reasonable mind informed by Christian faith but unreasonable to non-Christians?
Can't edit my post but thank you to everyone saying they listen to and support the podcast.
Hearing positive feedback keeps me going and I'm always happy to take guest or topic suggestions as well.
Just want to say that I loved this interview, it was the first I had heard of your show and I've been a regular listener since. Thank you!
I started listening to your podcast a month ago because I was curious about SQLite and came across the transcript. This episode is excellent, as is the podcast backlog overall. I highly recommend it to my friends.
Hey Adam, I just started listening to your podcast and I just finished that episode.
You did a great job, and it was really informative. Thanks for making it!
That's a great interview - so interesting not just on Richard but also on the early history of Android and mobile phone development. He seems like the best kind of libertarian, not just "oh give me lower taxes" but "I want to be free and I'm gonna pay the price to do that".
This episode inspired me to join your patreon. Thanks for the great podcast.
That was one of the most inspiring episodes of the podcast, thanks so much!
seeing as some people have already added some comments criticizing the code of conduct, I thought I'd add what I think is the most important parts of that code of Ethics :
> No one is required to follow The Rule [...] or even think that [it] is a good idea. [...] anyone is free to dispute or ignore that idea [...]
> This is a one-way promise [...]. the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us"
No one is forcing their beliefs onto anyone. keep the pitchforks in the shed.
Agreed, as an atheist it all sounds fine to me. I can respect their code of ethics without feeling the need to adopt it myself.
I'm grateful to the author of SQLite for releasing this excellent piece of software into the public domain and continuing to maintain it for the benefit of all. If providing this good work to the world was driven by his Christian principles, then really, who are any of us to criticise. Indeed, we should all be thankful.
I can't help but notice the contrast with the popular, Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, which makes it abundantly clear its aim to enforce a set of beliefs on its contributors, with no boundaries between professional and personal life.
> a set of beliefs
The elephant in the room in many current attempts to encourage "diversity" is that a genuinely diverse range of opinions and/or beliefs ends up being not welcome at all.
Let’s be blunt, when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot. Of course nobody says that so directly- they use dog whistles so that people who are being attacked know to leave while the bigots retain a veinier of civility so they can radicalize others by saying “look how hostile and irrational that group got over my innocuous sounding statement.”
Maybe you think spaces would be better if we allowed unmoderated bigotry in the name of free speech, but a practical consequence is that when the bigots move in, the people that they are targeting go away. The end result isn’t “diversity of thought” and it was never intended to be- it just ends up being one more space where people get bullied into leaving.
"And so when I hear, for example, folks on college campuses saying, “We’re not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas,” I think that’s a recipe for dogmatism and I think you’re not going to be as effective."
- President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot.
https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript...
> - President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot.
If you a actually read the article you quoted, the main argument he’s making is essentially “well, they may be bigots, but you need to learn to argue with bigots if you want to make progress”. That may or may not be true on a college campus (and at a public college the argument is likely immaterial because a government run institution is, and should be, bound by free speech in ways that private forums are not and should not be).
Open source projects and technical communities are different- they have different goals, needs to operate under different constraints, and so should behave differently.
I have read it many times. I really like it, which is why I quoted it. I also think moderating communities is a hard problem and I don't think private forums should be open to all forms of speech. In fact I only read forums which are heavily moderated. What I disagree with is your statement that
"...when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot."
Supporting diversity of opinions and being a bigot are very different things. As can be seen with Obama. Labeling any one who disagrees with you on the topic of free speech as a bigot is A) rude, dismissive and B) not an effective argument. Its easy to think you're right when you assume the other side is racist.
> Its easy to think you're right when you assume the other side is racist.
The crux of my experience is that when the thing people disagree with you on _isn’t_ racist/homophobic/misogynistic/etc. then they tend to directly name and openly discuss the subject of their disagreement. The general and innocuous sounding term “diversity of thought” tends to get brought out when the opinions themselves are one of those opinions that people don’t want to admit to so openly.
If people are going to disagree about a choice of software license, or technical architecture, or copyright assignment, or even about moderation standards and free speech, they tend to just directly name the thing they are disagreeing about (as we are now).
I’ll give some ground here and say that in some cases “diversity of thought” isn’t raised because the particular person raising the thought wants to say bigoted things, but at the very least it tends to get trotted out to defend speech that ends up driving people away because of either direct overt bigotry or, more often, a pervasive use of dog whistles.
> to defend speech that ends up driving people away because of either direct overt bigotry or, more often, a pervasive use of dog whistles
Q: Who gets to determine if something counts as a "dog whistle" or a "trope"?
I don't find the typical usage of either of those terms ever contributes much to honest debate.
You know it when you see it, and ultimately it’s going to be a call left up to whoever is moderating the community. Any attempt at a narrow or precise definition leads to disingenuous people exhausting the moderators with endless rules lawyering.
“well, they may be bigots, but you need to learn to argue with bigots if you want to make progress”
In my experience, the more opinionated a person is, the less rational they are, so arguing with them is a waste of time. Most bigots enjoy arguing with you, but it doesn't change their opinions.
> In my experience, the more opinionated a person is, the less rational they are, so arguing with them is a waste of time. Most bigots enjoy arguing with you, but it doesn't change their opinions.
The implication here is of course that it is only worth talking to those that you can convert to your side, which is of course admitting that you are in fact opposed to diverse thoughts. Are you open to change your opinions or do you only expect others to adjust to your standards?
Of course those calling others bigots and using unionically using dog whistles like "dog whistle" is a very opiniated thing to do. Should we also take those things as a sign of irrationality and not engage with their ideas? Perhaps.
Sure, it's much easier to discount competing thoughts and opinions if you just discard them as bigotry.
If anyone is radicalizing others it is those that treat everyone that does not 100% agree with them as radicals that must be pushed out instead of as people.
This view “if you don’t agree with me 100% you’re a literal Nazi” is very common and very despicable.
That's not my experience at all.
What experiences do you have to the contrary? I’ve moderated a few community spaces and this has been the way it’s gone every single time it’s come up for me.
Have you reflected on the fact that all those community spaces have had one thing in common - you moderating them? Perhaps listening to peoples concerns about lack of diversity of thought instead of labeling them bigots would allow you to see things differently. Most people don't feel as strongly about controlling the discourse of others that they end up moderating any not to mention multiple spaces.
Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
>> the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us"
> in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance
I have a lot more respect for people whose ethics are not conditional on the behavior of others.
I find that somewhat short-sighted. Let's use a different example.
Imagine you live in a society that allows personal gun ownership. Obviously, in such a society you still don't want people running around shooting each other willy-nilly, so you make a law: shoot someone, go to jail.
Now imagine someone pulls out a gun and shoots you. Result: you're dead, they go to jail.
However, you'd really prefer not to be dead. So imagine that someone pulls out their gun to shoot you, but then you pull out your gun and shoot them. Result: they're dead, you go to jail. It's what the law says, after all.
This is undesirable to most people because it looks like you've been punished for defending yourself. So we'll change the law: if someone is pointing a gun at you, you can shoot them without going to jail.
Now imagine that someone pulls a gun on you, then you pull a gun to defend yourself, but then they shoot you anyway. Result: you're dead, and they don't go to jail. It's what the law says, after all: you were pointing a gun at them. Oops, it's equivalent to having no law at all! This is the worst form of the law so far, and it's also the same thing as the paradox of tolerance.
The way you solve this is the same way you solve the paradox of tolerance: you say that the initial aggressor does not receive any protections if their own weapons are used against them. This produces a result that matches people's intuitions. This also creates a lesser problem, where people try to toe the line of aggression and goad someone else into making the first move so that they can justly retaliate, but it's still a vast improvement on the situation that intuitively matches how people expect things to work, which just so happens to involve ethics that are conditional on the behavior of others. The condition in this example: violence is acceptable, if it's in self-defense.
EDIT: I see this is being downvoted, would anyone care to explain their reasoning?
The issue I have with this is that you are effectively strawmanning this by proxying an individual's code of ethics with a society's code of laws.
The laws of a society are imposed on you regardless of whether you want them. A person's code of ethics is adopted by choice. The law you are referring to is only unjust because it is being imposed on everyone. A devout monk can be a good person, while a society that forces you to behave like a monk would be tyrannical. The coercion is the difference.
I think you would agree that a person whose code of ethics includes "if I shoot someone, I will promptly report myself to the police for murder" is not an unjust condition at all. However, a society that forces you to live that way in a gun-loving society would be very unjust indeed.
The problem with your analogy is that
a) someone being shot and someone pointing a gun are very well defined things while what is or is not intolerant is very subjective
and
b) unlike in your analogy, if someone expresses a opinion you consider intolerant then you are not dead, you can still defend your own opinion and counter theirs and most importantly you have not been harmed irreparably.
There's a 99.9% chance [1] any comment this long is tinfoil hat level crazy.
1. I've been on the internet.
I don't agree at all with the gp or the use of the "paradox of tolerance" to shut down those you agree with, but I agree even less with discounting commings based on their length. Long from responses should be encouraged as they require the commenter to at least put in some time and hopefully some thought as well and also because many things are complex enough that shortening them just to please the twitter-brained loses vital details.
I downvoted it because I don't think most people need to read 7 paragraphs of an awkward strawman to understand the concept of self-defense.
Your example really has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance or the idea of ethics being independent of the actions of others.
> EDIT: I see this is being downvoted
FTFY
> would anyone care to explain their reasoning?
I think a lot of people on HN are just anti gun/very left wing, which may taint their judgement while your example was nice about the initiation of violence being the issue.
Why would I have an issue with people using guns as an example?
It doesn’t work nearly as well with knives, which other people aren’t totally defenseless against (or cars, which are hard to pull out of your pocket in response to someone pointing theirs at you).
Ok, so maybe I couldn’t resist being a little bit snarky, but really, it was a good example.
> anti gun/very left wing
FYI: contrary to popular belief, these are mutually exclusive.
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." -- Karl Marx
Anyone who advocates disarming the working class and leaving it entirely defenseless against capitalism and the state apparatus it inevitably begets is not leftist, and I'm personally rather tired of pretending otherwise. Gun control advocates might be "left" of the far-right, but that's a stunningly low bar.
Sounds like a license to be intolerant, if only you can convince people that your opponents were intolerant first.
The paradox of tolerance was aimed at those who would with "fists or pistols" prevent others from sharing their views and was premised on the right of self-defense.
In historical context, it's seems squarely aimed at the paramilitary organizations of various movements popular around the 1930s or so who physically injured people for saying things they disliked.
Which does not seem to justify preemptive intolerance of peacefully expressed dissenting views.
Welcome to the messy uncodifiable reality of ethics and politics. You can pick a practical code with an exploit or you can pick one that lets you be cut down by anyone that doesn't go along with it.
Or you can try to fix the exploit. At least you can try to notice when people are exploiting it in the wild, which is to a first approximation "every time somebody cites the Paradox of Tolerance".
People misconstrue this idea. Popper is talking about people who respond to debate with “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”
It’s about not tolerating people who make it impossible to have debate, not declaring arbitrary sets of views intolerable or beyond the pale.
This is a misquotation. The entire quotation from Open Society is:
> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Note that Popper is not claiming that "fists or pistols" are a necessary condition for not tolerating intolerance: they're a final stage of said intolerance. Popper explicitly says that we might reserve the right to preempt intolerance before it reaches the point of its followers resorting to violence.
The whole paragraph makes it even clearer that he’s talking about people who would shut down free debate, starting with “denouncing all argument.” He’s actually talking about how progressives are today—ranging from declaring some topics beyond debate to “punch a Nazi.”
I think this is the paradox's greatest weakness: whataboutism :-)
Karl Popper is not talking about today's progressives, because he died in 1994. The closest extension we can reasonably draw does not include them either, because Popper exclusively identified totalitarian ideologies with reactionary beliefs[1].
It's very easy to use the PoT as a blunt weapon, and there are some embarrassing applications of it on the political left. But none are quite as embarrassing as suggesting that Popper might seriously entertain "free debate" with a Nazi.
I didn’t say he was talking about progressives today, I said what he talked about is applicable to progressives today. When Popper uses the word “tolerance” he’s talking specifically about people who don’t tolerate a free society with free debate, not people who express intolerant views. For example, the Trump voter who is intolerant of immigrants isn’t “denouncing all argument” about immigration. It’s progressives who do that.
I didn’t say Popper would entertain free debate with a Nazi. My point is that, under Popper’s framework, there’s a huge incentive to declare anyone you don’t like to be Nazis, and reframe speech as tantamount to threats to physical safety.
I've never met a progressive who "denounced all argument" about immigration. Instead, they seem tired of the same handful of (xenophobic) tropes that get trotted out during national discussions around immigration policy: immigrants as social burdens, as criminals, as drug mules, as "anchors" for some dogwhistled demographic replacement, &c.
Those tropes (and the reactionary politics that underlie them) strike me as precisely the kind of intolerance that Popper might have concerned himself with.
(Separately: it's unclear how progressives have satisfied the "intolerance of intolerance" condition here. Are you claiming that progressives have successfully won some on that front of the culture war? Current policy suggests otherwise[1].)
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-biden-first-year-ti...
> none are quite as embarrassing as suggesting that Popper might seriously entertain "free debate" with a Nazi
(This really is a genuine question) who is to be allowed to determine if our opponents are that, and hence worthy of what one might call preemptive intolerance?
That is the eternal question. However, I will submit for consideration that the person we're talking about when we use the phrase "punch a Nazi" is, in fact, a neo-Nazi[1].
Dealing more abstractly: I personally think we are justified in practicing "preemptive intolerance" when the party in question (1) has a bad faith (not merely faithless) relationship with the "language" of our political systems, and (2) demonstrates repeated intent to employ the mechanisms of our systems to subvert them. Both conditions are necessary; the absence of the latter makes the individual a LARPer.
You are advocating behavior that is highly corrosive and fundamentally antithetical to the effective functioning of a healthy democracy.
Weimar Germany wasn’t fertile political soil for extremism because there weren’t enough people punching Nazis. In fact, the opposite — pervasive, normalized political violence gave cover to extremists who could then argue that they were justified in escalating their behaviors.
If I were to follow your own ethos (and to be perfectly clear, I do not), I should be advocating punching you in the street, as your ethos represents a bad faith attempt to undermine and subvert our political systems by using violence to control the words and ideas shared by others.
All I've done here is rephrased Popper's words, with some additional conditions. The fact that you don't like it mean that it's in bad faith; I've made no such presumption about you or anybody else in this thread.
And no, that's not what caused the decline of Weimar (and the rise of Nazism). Nazism was preordained by a confluence of political factors, including the need for an easy post-war scapegoat in the form of Jews and other outsiders. 20th century European Fascist movements follow a uniform pattern: the loss of face or sovereignty (Trianon, WWI), followed by irredentism and revanchism towards any group perceived as having either benefited (or merely not suffered enough). Those sentiments culminated in a concerted effort to use newfound civil freedoms to undermine the system itself, chiefly by directing a disposition for intolerance towards those easiest to vilify.
This is all in marked contrast to our current situation and historical context, one where liberal activism has consistently made America freer for increasingly large swathes of its population. We easily forget that you could have gone to jail in 1955 for buying a copy of Ulysses, or been fined for daring to eat a meal with a more privileged race. My sole interest has and will continue to be expanding those freedoms.
We need a new secular code-society, where we separate code from personal beliefs, and assign "societal points" only by merit.
The problem with tolerance and intolerance is, that a few people (a loud minority) think they're the universal good guys, even in cases where their "good thing" is incompatible with itself.
Karl Popper was talking about Nazis and Communists organizing street brawls and putsches, not people insulting each other on Twitter:
> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
As long as nobody is bringing pistols to tech conferences or starting fistfights in the hallways, Popper would not support excluding attendees for having intolerant ideas. Perhaps if contributors to your open-source repository are doxing and SWATting each other, putting lives at risk, then Popper would exclude them. But as long as they're just making offensive comments, Popper would not "claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force." (It might still be better to decline their patches so as to avoid being associated with them.)
I wouldn't go even as far as Popper, because his argument eats itself; as demonstrated in this thread, when people start applying his ideas, Popperism itself becomes an intolerant idea that, according to Popperism, we should suppress by violence. Moreover, any political position that advocates that the government take an action is advocating that some policy be imposed on the unwilling parts of the population by violence.
Much more sustainable is to suppress the violent actors and protect those who are merely calling for violence, while remonstrating with them to change their minds.
> not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Wow, this ironically sounds exactly like the people spouting off about needing to "fight intolerance" in the past couple years.
Excellent point.
That only works if you don't label half the population as intolerant.
It's not about labels. Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. In a just society, we simply ask that one makes one's point without throwing specific groups under the proverbial bus.
> Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant.
I think most people can get on board with that. The trouble comes when people start berating others for using words/phrases like blacklist, sanity check, backlog grooming, master, and spaz - just to name a few. 99.9% of people who use these words do not possess the mens rea of bigotry or intolerance.
E.g.: Right now, someone who read your comment is probably enraged on behalf of the people who have been hit by buses. Most of us know you mean no harm by it.
I’m glad you think most people would agree with me, but your follow up example seems a bit unfortunate.
You might not believe that language affects thought or behaviour, but saying so directly might arguably be a better way of making your point than singling out others who disagree with you.
I'm not sure what any of that is supposed to mean. You might be conflating my comments with someone else's because I'm not singling out anyone. Unless you're chafed at my use of your own words -- I assure you, it was meant as a kind word of caution and not as mockery.
Doesn't any example single out a specific object ?
This is a misunderstanding of the paradox of tolerance https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=31889018
Really?
> Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views. Until and unless you have evidence of that plausibly happening, there is no Paradox of Tolerance.
Considering what the USA is going through right now... well, I just have no words.
> Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant.
I wish more people would actually agree with that and not just apply it to groups thet they think need protection.
What Popper probably meant was something more akin to, “don’t be a pacifist when people are starting to resort to violence”. At least that’s my reading.
It’s also interesting that the more extreme version of the “paradox of tolerance” is very close to the legal reasoning used during the Red Scare to justify bans on communist parties.
Ah shit here we go again.
Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is widely misunderstood to be a licence to be intolerant yourself. For the last time : it is not.
Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views.
Until and unless you have evidence of that plausibly happening, there is no Paradox of Tolerance. You can perfectly tolerate people who hate women, who hate men, who hate gays, who hate the rich, who hate the poor, who hate any and every religion, ideology, way of life, identity, worldview or personality type. You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach.
It's well known in software that a data structure can have infinite readers, but the presence of even a single writer either necessitates that the data structure is completely private to the writer, or an explicit and consistent writing policy needs to be devised to coordinate the writer with the readers and possibly other writers. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is a restatement of this basic observation in the context of human societies. You can have infinite tolerance and diversity, as long as not a single ideology or group "writes" their conflicting views to society. If you have a group that does that, then you must choose whether you will cede all control of society to that group, or to set a strong writing policy that is much less permissive than infinite tolerance.
Stop using an argument for tolerance as an excuse for intolerance.
> You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach.
If you let them say whatever they want on an online forum without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, or something similar. The intolerant views take over.
Argue all the philosophy you like, practical experience shows that every time someone tries an unmoderated forum in any medium it ends up a cesspit of intolerance.
> without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat,
I didn't know about Voat, sad that it was closed down. I would have loved to try it.
>The intolerant views take over.
This sounds to me like a you problem. You can very well admit that you don't know how to argue and shout back (in whatever style necessary to win), or that your views are so unpopular that you can't defend them unless to a supportive audience, but don't make this some sort of universal law or inevitable tendency. There is nothing about any view that makes it inherently more popular or appealing.
>a cesspit of intolerance.
This usage of 'intolerance' hints that you don't really understand Popper's sense of the word. Popper wasn't talking about what offends you, Popper was talking about people violently forcing you out of a society. There is no intolerance on 4chan or 8chan or any similar platform, literally everyone is allowed there, everyone is just an anonymous unique number. Only your own offence prevents you from participating, which is not anybody's fault. Every single "bad" tech platform, the ones that allow speech that mainstream progressive-dominated US companies love to rave about, only suffer due to external pressures imposed on them, the audience of those services very much like it, and they don't seem to physically force reality or other people to like what they like. The only one doing the forcing here are the self-appointed tolerance defenders, who are so so worried about tolerance that they are willing to freely dispence intolerance left and right to protect it. It's like how pro-war folks say that war protects and preserves the peace: It's indeed very true in a certain narrow sense, but you can't be doing it willy nilly, or you will risk destroying the very thing you claim you want to preserve.
I also don't understand why defending unlimited expresssion of views must imply defending unlimited expression of view without moderation. There is no reason why we can't moderate any ideology at all, see the subreddit r/themotte for example to see a place where everyone from radical feminists to white nationalists expressing their views in moderated threads.
> Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views.
Where they pose a danger of it.
If you let them do it before reacting, you've already lost, and that's the point.
Anyhow, it's not widely misunderstood, AFAICT, since when it is invoked it is invariably with the strong implication, and usually the explicit statement, that that is the threat being addressed. You might at times question the judgement behind the assessment of the risk, but that's not a misunderstanding of the paradox of tolerance.
It’s usually invoked with the purpose of cancelling someone guilty of wrongthink, e.g. “Donglegate” or 100s of other examples of cancel culture.
I personally see the creator covenant to be a huge detriment, if not even a danger, to open source.
> all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability
This one seems to be just the same, for better or worse?
The Contributor Covenant is the gold standard for a reason: it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities. Alone it doesn't achieve much, but combined with a good faith enforcement board it helps keep a community a pleasant, joyful place to contribute to, for everyone. And that will increase software quality and attract quality people, aside from being, you know, the right thing to do.
The SQLite developers (developer?) are not interested in inviting more contributors to the table and that's fine, but for a functional public community the Contributor Covenant or something like it is pretty much table stakes.
> it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities
Such as???
Advocating for removing a contributor for a statement on a different site, unrelated to the project, for example?
And this is supposed to be a good thing?
I gave the only example I could think of where such drama happened. Which was incidentally started by the creator of the creator covenant.
> combined with a good faith enforcement
which, of course, is the elephant in the room, isn't it.
Good faith contributors don't need the code, because it was not written for them. It was written for the pathological cases.
And systems designed around pathological cases are themselves pathological.
Good faith users don't need security policies because the security policies weren't written for them. They were written for the pathological cases.
Good faith citizens don't need laws because the laws weren't written for them, etc.
Systems designed around the pathological cases help keep those pathological cases at bay. They are a framework for allowing the good-faith people to continue to act in good faith without having to constantly worry about the pathological cases themselves. I'd love to go back to the days when people left their doors unlocked and no one had a password to get into their account, but those days are gone. So are the days of not having a code of conduct on your open source project.
Having safeguards, let alone against criminals, is a very different conversation to having a code of ethics.
Perhaps the fact that we as a society are so ready to associate codes of ethics with policing should be raising some red flags in how we think about this issue.
With good modding, no code is needed. And with bad modding, the best code imaginable can achieve nothing. It is all down to the quality of the modding.
The whole point of having a code is to be a thing those mods can point to to justify the banhammer when people complain.
Everyone has a CoC, some people write them down.
Well, I just think that's a bit misleading.
The justification for the banhammer is "I think you should be banned." The CoC doesn't enable or permit the mods to ban you. The mods can ban you because they're the mods; "can ban you" is pretty much definitionally identical to "is a mod." At most a CoC can serve as a guidebook for users.
> With good modding, no code is needed
This is nonsensicle and shows a lack of understanding. A code of conduct is just a guidebook for users to understand how your moderators will act, what to expect in a community.
How does "good modding" remove the need for that?
I guess I agree with that. But then there's still no point in using a prefabricated code. The code should be a README, a guide for users to predict mod behavior. An aid to the primary modding tool.
Moderation starts and ends with the mods, not with the CoC. The CoC just saves labor.
Using a prefabricated CoC is what you do when you need to fulfill a checkbox item saying "has a CoC", but have no intention of actually following it.
That seems to be a blatant mischaracterization:
> Scope:
> This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.
https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_con...
What's your motivation here?
Up to version 1.3 the covenant didn't have a section limiting scope. 1.4 introduced it along with a loophole:
> Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers.
Eg, if you say something the maintainers don't like on your personal Twitter, all they need to say is "you're representing the project in a bad light" and it's fair game to ban you.
Then in version 2.0 the text you quote appears, but changes
> This Code of Conduct applies within all project spaces
to
> This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces
but never defines what community spaces are. Is your personal Twitter account a community space? Well, once again that's up to the maintainers to decide. It's the same loophole as 1.4 but more cleverly disguised.
Have you raised your concern with anyone who can do anything about it?
In any case, I fail to see how this is any worse than any other project. Do you expect some sort of due process before you're banned from any random OSS project? I wouldn't. If you don't like it, you can fork the project. That's how it works.
> No one is forcing their beliefs onto anyone. keep the pitchforks in the shed.
I don't want a solution, I want to be mad.
Reddit is that way ->
> The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability.
Sure, as far as I'm aware code of conducts/ethics only ever apply to contributors, no-one has beliefs being forced upon them. But that seems to be about the highest bar of entry for an interested developer I have seen in any project.
Not waving pitchforks here, I'm fine with them having this code of ethics, even tough I disagree with about half the points and find being asked to do such a pledge way to intrusive into personal life.
SQLite generally doesn't accept contributions. "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution" https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html
Even when not accepting outside contributions, to fulfill their long term support commitment through 2050, they might have to make changes to their current core team.
If they do, then they will have to find people who embrace Christian spiritualism. That's going to be a lot easier than finding Lisp devs. Similarly, Christian institutions seek Christian employees and they fire those who cannot abide.
Can't a software project be like a Christian church?
Personally, I don’t have a problem with a software project being run like a church. Don’t know what the legal situation is.
How common are those views in question tough? I’d say about 9/10 Christians I know from Europe and Latin America would find several of these points too extreme. But yes, that leaves probably still more people than lisp devs …
> That's going to be a lot easier than finding Lisp devs.
I'm attacked ! out with your intolerance :P
I don't understand why he didn't just use MIT or CC0 as license.
It gives the same rights and the same limitless nature, so why use an arbitrary license which might cause problems in some countries ? And also makes the contribution workflow more complex?
MIT requires that a copy of the license is distributed with the software—which means it is not strictly public-domain equivalent.
CC0 was not intended to be used as a software license, and IRCC includes a clause that the author withholds any patent rights, which which has its own set of concerns.
In practice, either of them would have worked fine, but part of the beauty of public domain code is that you can avoid having to specify a license.
There is no license. And all the contributors are in countries that recognize the concept of public domain. Why should they concern themselves with the niceties of licensing in some countries? How would choosing a different license guarantee a different outcome in those unspecified some countries?
This point seems incongruous to me, without its opposite:
"45. Be in dread of hell."
In zeal for mutual understanding, and practical fruit in general solutions that solve problems escaping a single perspective, would be that opposite for me.
We cannot approach the sublime within ourselves by fear, in my opinion.
There are a few other well-known teachings that appear to be missing from these rules, the first among them is the New Commandment.
I'm not sure what their organization is exactly but a private company isn't allowed to force a religious test on employees. I think it doesn't apply to an open source project but I sure don't like it. It's exclusionary.
Then don’t use it. Here’s your refund:
That is the thing, Modern code of conduct policies are about governing the behavior of others, not a statement of how one will conduct themselves.
It is an important distinction many people over look
Except for all the current developers which makes it seem like Christianity is a prerequisite for getting hired or contributing.
I get frustrated at the SJW CoCs but this is arguably just as bad or worse.
Every time you come home and the SQLite developers aren't having sex with your wife, you should appreciate their code of Ethics. What other software makes that promise? Heck, Oracle probably probably upcharges, $500,000 or more for a 6-9s no adultery support plan (and that still gives them 52 minutes a year to commit adultery with your wife!)
SQLite neither accepts external contribution nor do they hire anyone.
They do not accept contributions unless they are dedicated to the public domain. It's not quite as strict a no contributions at all.
They generally don’t accept patches at all AFAIK. They will look at yours and rewrite it themselves.
I guess all the contributions magically appear out of thin air since nobody is allowed to contribute from outside the organization and nobody has ever joined the organization to contribute from the inside either.
> makes it seem like Christianity is a prerequisite for getting hired or contributing
...how could one possibly get this impression, when it literally says "No one is required to follow The Rule"?
This part:
>The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability. [...] In other words, the developers are saying: "We will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us."
I would definitely not be able to honestly commit to such a pledge. Do you think they will add a "(except epa095)" if I get hired? Or maybe I just won't get hired. IDK, but just like OP I read it as a requirement for contributing.
Why not? If you're, for example, irreligious, then the best of your ability obviously doesn't include religious observations (and in fact, one could even make a solid argument that "interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community" don't touch the religious portions of Benedictine rules even for religious SQLite contributors because the clauses talking about relationship with God or Christ are simply not applicable to these interactions because none of the developers, clients, or larger SQLite user community include God or Christ). For example I'm a 110% atheist and yet I'd have zero problems with this. And again, you seem to be selectively ignoring the "this is not mandatory" part for some reason. If that part is a lie then the whole document is worthless as a guideline. You can't take a document telling you what to do and assume that it's randomly lying to you. If did that, then you'd have to consider your whole expected behavior to be unknowable.
Granted, it is a bit complicated to figure out what it means to pledge to follow the "spirit" of a rule which includes the rule that anyone can choose not to follow it.
But you asked why I would not be able to commit to such a pledge. For me pledging is a kind of social contract (I don't belive in God, so its not between me and it), and I care quite alot that other people know that when I promise something it means something. So it becomes important that we, me and the people who care about the pledge, agree on what it means. If we all agree that it essentially means nothing, then fine, I pledge. But if it means something, what does it really mean?
It says "They [the founder of SQLite and all current developers] view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave". So the developers view it as a promise of how the developers are expected to behave. If I take the pledge, and start working there, am I breaking the pledge if I:
- Don't "[...] love the Lord God with my whole heart, my whole soul, and my whole strength."? [1]
- Don't love fasting. [13]
- Prefers cremation to burying. [17]
- Make people laugh [54-55]
etc etc, you probably get the point. There are a lot of rules, and they can all be interpreted. It is kind of hard to be certain that we all agree on what it actually means to pledge to follow the spirit of these 72 rules.
So, that is why I find it hard to commit to the pledge.
Now, I agree with you that is says that "No one is required to follow The Rule". But it also says that "They view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave". So, it very much says that the founder of SQLite (part of "They") promise SQLite users that he expect SQLlite developers to follow "the code". Maybe, because of the "No one is required to follow The Rule", that means essentially nothing. Or maybe it means something. IDK.
> Why not?
why does it matter? If a company only hires men would you tell woman that they could just say they identify as men, and therefore there is no problem?
That's a really bad analogy because I'm really not being asked to identify as a Benedictine here. In fact in order for your analogy to be more correct, the exact opposite -- "they could just say they don't identify as men" -- would have to be said.
Don't forget 'was created for the purpose of filling in a box on "supplier registration" forms [.....] This document continues to be used for its original purpose - providing a reference to fill in the "code of conduct" box on supplier registration forms.'
> ...how could one possibly get this impression, when it literally says "No one is required to follow The Rule"?
Now hear here miss, while true that the board of directors are all men, and have been so for 5 decades, we reject any notion of sexism as we clearly have here a document which states that “We believe men are superior to women, but we do not require employees to hold this belief…” also it’s voluntary and a compete coincidence that all employees have voluntarily vowed that they agree to this and that all employees are also male. It can’t be sexist since we do not force anyone to agree to do anything.
Hope the context shift makes it a bit easier to see why some people might call this suspicious.
Not quite sure where the document says anything about women. While Benedictines couldn't include women, I strongly doubt that there is any such insinuation here.
I'm not religious but I've always liked this; it's fun to think of the SQLite developers as a small monastery. If monasteries can produce beer for the world (see: the Trappists), why not software?
If software engineering was available as a monastic vocation, we'd probably have a lot of significantly higher-quality software available. I would much rather use something written by a stylite with an esolang compiler than shat out by 100 poorly-coordinated javascript devs at MEGACORP.
There is a truth hidden in here. I would love to spend time at a monastry and code.
You can! I spent a week co-working at MAPLE (https://www.monasticacademy.com) earlier this month, living among monastics and participating in their practice. Honestly, I didn't get a lot of programming done, but that's probably because my goal shifted rather quickly from "get a lot of work done" to "take advantage of this rare opportunity to develop my meditation practice." Still, I think it'd be a great environment for focused programming: you're in a quiet, beautiful setting, your meals are taken care of, and you're surrounded by people who are diligent, respectful, and committed to solving important problems.
Coding in the scriptorium, no less.
I dunno about monastic programming getting a lot of takers. Don't forget that there's usually a vow of poverty involved; fully loaded Macbook Pros or decked out 16 core Threadripper workstations are not part of the picture.
However, a communal Mac Pro may be part of the infrastructure. It's a vow of individual poverty, but that doesn't mean the monastery itself does not contain riches that its monks have access to but do not privately own.
The vow of poverty tends to mean not accumulating real estate or a retirement account. The tools of a trade and other personal necessities are allowed.
Different monasteries enforce this different ways
Some software can be written on a raspberry pi. Truly accessible software should be able to run on anything, for example, government web sites. Someone on here developed a site that a homeless person was able to submit a form using a PSP.
I'm imagining it more like the work suckless do. Simplicity, beauty. Multiple cores are an extravagance.
You may enjoy reading Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_.
I certainly did!
I’ve often wondered at the validity of pursing a vocation as an Oblate and supporting myself by consulting and providing software “lovingly made by monks at prayer”
A path "Anathem" did not explore.What would millenarians do with a software project?
Of course not. That would be strictly something for the Ita to deal with. :D
Oh I don't know, they could build computers using mechanical contraptions.
You can do a lot in a thousand years if you put your mind to it.
I don't know that sounds like mechanical praxis to me. If it wasn't grandfathered in then it was probably banned in a Convox.
That is possible.
Maybe some avout would develop a discipline where they execute programs in their minds. Some sort of Chinese Room setup but for general purpose computing.
Something like this is actually hinted at in the novel, about halfway through Part 9:
> The Orithenans had used a system of computational chanting that, it was plain to see, was rooted in traditions that their founders had brought over from Edhar. To that point, it was clearly recognizable to any Edharian. It was a way of carrying out computations on patterns of information by permuting a given string of notes into new melodies. The permutation was done on the fly by following certain rules, defined using the formalism of cellular automata. After the Second Sack reforms, newly computerless avout had invented this kind of music. In some concents it had withered away, in others mutated into something else, but at Edhar it had always been practiced seriously. We'd all learned it as a sort of children's musical game. But at Orithena they had been doing new things with it, using it to solve problems. Or rather to solve a problem, the nature of which I didn't understand yet. Anyway, it sounded good -- the results, for some reason, just tended to be more musical than the Edharian version, which was serviceable for computing things, but, as music, could be hard to take.
there's an argument monasteries gave birth to the modern European scientific tradition too
Or Ancient Greece (and later Rome), some 500 years before the monasteries.
> Or Ancient Greece (and later Rome), some 500 years before the monasteries.
And we know this because monasteries kept a large army of monks guarding the knowledge so that it would one day serve society.
Much of ancient Greek knowledge comes to us because the Arabs preserved it. Some of them were Christians of course (so the occasional monastery may have been involved) but mostly not.
A more accurate description of that history is that the Christian Byzantine empire preserved it but it came to us from the Arabs as a result of it taking a foreign invasion to get Greek Christians and The West to talk to one another after 1054
Yes, the Arabs keep some, Europeans keep others. That’s why I use the word “much” in the beginning of my statement.
Sure, guess I should say *modern European, or perhaps English
Bacon, Grosseteste, etc
Ancient Greeks did not send representatives to my country at least. The Church did however and brought with it a lot of knowledge.
At a time of decaying social bonds, cultural fragmentation, and no consensus reality, i would much rather work somewhere with an explicit code like this than the countless "we are good people" places that will never define what "being good people" is until they are on the opposite side of a courtroom. Having shared values is very important for a team.
What’s your current religion?
I like the idea of such a code. But at the same time I see religions with that or similar codes and the folks following it seem just as interested in ignoring it or twisting it as a way to push on those not in their religion.
Now I don’t think that’s the sql lite folks and plenty of folks don’t do that thing… but just a splash of religion doesn’t make me feel much better about anything.
The code is an ideal to achieve. Some of the items are easy (#3: Do not commit murder) while others are a life-long struggle (#32: Do not curse those who curse you, but rather bless them) requiring a daily renewal of purpose. And like any worthwhile daily rule of life it should be something which requires continual effort, something which can never be truly accomplished (which keep complacency at bay).
I am not a prolific contributor in the open source scene, but I participate with some frequency. I've always thought Codes of conduct are simply platitudes to keep over-eager human resources personnel, twitter activists, and their ilk at bay. Never once have I ever felt the need to look over the codes on any service. Such pages are simply background noise that contribute nothing but the occupation of space to a project. This has been my impression thus far.
I do not subscribe to all the beliefs the author espouses, but I am sympathetic with them. Admittedly, I feel myself cheering him on for standing his ground against this vacuous criticism.
Not an open source project, but I’ve seen a Code of Conduct save a local user group when drama erupted between a founding organizer and a regular member.
Having a written agreement and guidelines to mediate conflicts is vital once a community gets to a certain size. Humans have been doing this since Hammurabi.
> Be in dread of hell.
This one’s in the Oracle Master Agreement too.
Super weird to make a COC about your Christian values but I respect the check-the-form hustle.
I think it's funny. "Need a code of conduct? Here, this one's a classic"
previously:
"SQLite: Code of Ethics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26547201 (March 22, 2021 — 37 points, 23 comments)
"SQLite updated Code of Conduct" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18313131 (October 26, 2018 — 41 points, 89 comments)
"SQLite: Code of Ethics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18297514 (October 24, 2018 — 34 points, 19 comments)
"SQLite: Code of Conduct" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273530 (October 22, 2018 — 338 points, 288 comments [flagged])
"SQLite: Code of Conduct" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273390 (October 22, 2018 — 157 points, 60 comments)
Wow, we often complain that HN has degraded, but the comments on that bottom link are very low quality
> 54. Speak no useless words or words that move to laughter. > 55. Do not love much or boisterous laughter.
I’m out.
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION;Ironically, the goal isn't to be humorless but to not inordinately seek or be attached to humor or fellowship. If you were truly humorless you would likely run afoul of #39.
It's truly about interior and exterior balance.
Ahhhh this explains the reason SQLite is so.. disciplined. It's created by a group of monks!
As good as the intentions behind them are, they work much better by leaving negations out.
Do not murder -> Leave other people alive
Do not commit adultery -> Be truthful to your partner
Do not steal, Do not covet -> Be content with what you have
Do not bear false witness -> Speak the truth
Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself -> Treat others like you want to be treated
Do not become attached to pleasures -> Practice moderation
Do not give way to anger -> Stay calm
Do not nurse a grudge, Do not return evil for evil, Do not curse those who curse you, but rather bless them, Do no wrong to anyone, and bear patiently wrongs done to yourself -> Practice forgiveness
Be not proud -> Be humble
Be not addicted to wine -> Drink in moderation
Be not a great eater -> Eat in moderation
Be not lazy -> Be diligent
(edit): formatting
I think commanding people instead of asking them is better if you want to achieve something. I think there has been some research on this (source anyone?) and it is particularly well know when talking to children, if you ask it as a question it is ambiguous what the answer might be so you opt in to not "be humble" nor "speak the truth"
Leave other people alive sounds weird to me. Sort of implies you go around accidentally killing people by default and a handy reminder to not do that is what this is.
“Be truthful to your partner” is not the inverse of “Do not commit adultery”.
Why is it a list and not a table?
Seems like a pretty simple case of CREATE TABLE ethics ( id INT PRIMARY KEY, rule TEXT );
For all we know it is stored in a table
What happens during downtime for maintenance?
Its mean you failed to spread the love horizontally
You say 10 hail Marys and 5 our Fathers.
Lots of Christian theology can get bogged down in the Trinity, what the Holy Ghost part means, etc.
There are also much more basic sects where the theology of the Gospel is considerably easier to preach, and where in particular the idea of God simply being other people, and our love for each other is prevalent. It is surprising to see this kind of Christianity here, in a piece of software. Surprising and uplifting.
It is all quite an Anglican perspective. I feel sorry for people who don’t have better access to Anglican Communion / Episcopalianism. The more deeply theological sects don’t hold a candle to it.
I forget who said it but I vaguely remember hearing an Anglican clergyman quoted as saying something like "Anglicans don't do theology" with the implication that Anglicanism is for people not gods.
In fact the few priests, both Anglican and Roman, who I have encountered have all been practical people more concerned with people and their mundane problems than religion or theology.
39. Be not a grumbler.
I have failed, but sqlite yields no grumbling
There are several points on this list that crudely translate to "don't be an asshole" at which I personally need to improve. #39 is one of them.
Robustness principle: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others"[1] is a good ethical rule.
A much better ethical rule than a technical one actually.
No less ridiculous than other similar documents out there
OTOH, no more ridiculous than (most?) other similar documents out there.
This sort of thing used to annoy me in my youth. But there is a lot of good stuff in there. These are directions on how YOU should live your life, so strike out as appropriate. SQLite is great and if pondering these rules helped, only a fool would avoid pondering them out of spite.
But they could just strike all the ones that mention god and hell and not lost anything of value. I also think the morality only rings true if you were raised in a Christian dominated society. No one living in the real world can afford to love their enemies. That's what people in monasteries can say but not ones who are responsible for protecting people.
> No one living in the real world can afford to love their enemies.
I’m reminded of a passage in Great Expectations that helped me understand exactly just what this means:
> "so you're the blacksmith, are you? Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
> "God knows you're welcome to it, so far as it was ever mine," […] "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur.”
Here’s a guy, an escaped convict, who stole from them, and yet, he’s still being treated decently, and with respect.
I might be way off base, but I feel like that’s what it’s about.
Charity and compassion are one thing, but sometimes you need to fight your enemies in the interests of justice. People in need or people who have made mistakes aren't necessarily your enemies. I thinking more like lying down in the face of unchecked aggression. I don't believe there will be justice in any sort of afterlife, so we have to deal with it now or never. I mean, what would St Benedict say about the Trolley Problem?
Well, it would lose the value of being nominally attributable to a 1500yo monastic document. This might not make a difference to you if you don't acknowledge the the provenance (nor, heck, if you think the provenance is shot in translation), but on net it probably matters a lot more that the small number of people agreeing to the document, presumably none of whom are you, do.
I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve the provenance, I just don't ascribe any value to a thing being old.
> I just don't ascribe any value to a thing being old.
I see some value in it: Being that old and still in widespread use proves its viability.
"I don't want to be beholden to Gmail [...] controlling a record of all of my conversations". Replacing Gmail: now THAT sounds interesting
In this world of bits and bytes, a lot of early principles set by the founders get compromised as time goes on. We, as developers, tend to take these as "that's just the way it is", and move on.
Sure, some of us, try. Root our phones, host our own emails. But really, isn't being a good human underlying all that goes above it?
I'm not a Christian. I'm not even religious. IMHO though, if any software that I've ever written or would write in future, would help others realize that in the big picture, a belief and faith in humanity is the most important thing above all else, I would consider myself privileged.
People should be concerned that Facebook is giving 24 hours bans for simply posting a link to the SQLite Code of Ethics page - asserting that it violates FB community standards about sexuality ...
So I am intrigued by the idea of the Axial Age transition - roughly 500BC and worlds big population centres (India China Persia) hit some kind of population tipping point, developed massive abusive slavery and wars and then developed much more restrictive religions as a means to control the larger populations.
The argument is tenuous but it reminds me a lot of the Shakespeare / Lope de Vega transition- sometimes population is dense enough to chnage something.
It's, in brief, the sort of pseudo-anthropology that's very appealing to systematizing minds, but falls apart immediately when you have to engage with the fact that the cultures in questions did not have remotely similar experiences at that time—it's telling that you seized on "big population centres (India China Persia)" in particular. But you have to squint really hard to make them look similar.
I get the "yeah nah dodgy" concerns about it. But humans have gone through several stages of civilisation that can be defined as "the number of people physically near enough me to be a threat" - from tribes that could go years without meeting others to football stadiums full of thousands.
Each of the above civilisations went through a population / density transition - and did so within a few hundred years - and came out with some surprisingly similar religious / cultural rules that were a) different to what had gone before b) similar in some respects to each other
I am certainly not arguing there was some shared kernel of religion, just that there was a new economic/ social pressure and the "solution" to it was a new form of religion / social contract.
In short - as human economics and civilisation changes, so does the way we govern ourselves (religion is a governing force). It seems reasonable to argue that as different civilisations go through the same pinch points they will find similar solutions.
We also should assume we are going through such as pinch point today (either the long term industrial revolution or the near term internet revolution).
And yes - systemising minds need to be aware of their own proclivities- a hard won lesson
Mostly, it just proves too much/doesn't predict enough, I think.
I love this, doubling down on personal beliefs in face of opposition
Honestly, 72 rules, most of which overlap to some extend, do not seem like they would be easy to follow.
I do think it’s nice that “respect your parents” has been modified to “respect everyone”.
I don't know why a technology company needs a "code of conduct" or "ethics". The management embodies the ethics they desire to display and enforce. Has the institutional hierarchy lost the ability to govern and persuade their employees? Posting it for PR reasons is too close to virtue signalling.
Having a code of conduct and explicitly informing the world that you are Catholic and run the place in a Catholic manner, can be divisive. Not because Catholicism is a Big Bad™ or whatever current scandal, blah blah.
Because Catholics have a very distinct management style that excludes free flowing ideas and a two-way relationship with management, and focuses on nailing down perfect form. Sometimes it produces great results, other times not so much.
When it doesn't, it can be even more difficult to offer an alternative method, because of a strict CoC. For employees, the rules are sometimes used by management as an unintentional denial of different solutions.
People who know how this management style impacts their work life, may avoid the company. The internal environment becomes over-specialized towards one particular way of thinking and enacting technological change. Which is probably fine for SQLite to forever be the same as it was, which is all most people want out of the project anyway.
As a general trend though, it's concerning that otherwise solid companies are closing the front door to new ideas and opening the window so the non-CoC thinking can fly away.
The relationship everyone wants in the corporate world, is with the most skilled people at the best price. It doesn't necessarily correlate with perfect form or political CoCs.
This is way more fucked up than any "code of conduct" but treated much less controversially on HN
That much concerning on the person of religion creates nothing except war. It is like when you are claiming in license that your sw can't be used for evil and get surprised that your sw is not compatible with free licenses.
When viewing this through the lens of "God is a proxy symbol for the first order derivative of your society" these rules make a lot of sense.
If you re-read this with that interpretation, it's pretty amazing stuff.
I myself am not a believer; but with the way things have been going in this world, I'm tempted to ask him to add a "Fork me on GitHub" to the end of the list.
I failed at step 1
> No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea.
Oh thank god for that...
We need one of those for the Church of Emacs. I bless your computer, my child!
Another one?
Looks like we get this every quarter..
Anyway, if you dont like it, fork it... or use another Db.
Anything couched in religious language immediately turns people off even if what is being said perfectly aligns with the reader’s beliefs.
Philosophize this has some good discussions about religious vocabulary when discussing Kierkegaard.
These rules sound terrible. What is it with people to put everything they do in God? Just do it because you're a good guy and you want to do it. Not because some galactic justice tolds you to do it. Really a shame.
> ...and you want to do it
That want, for some, takes root in their beliefs and faith. May sound ridiculous but many things do to anyone alien to it.
That concept wasn’t invented when the rules were written, and it’s lose the effect if you rewrote them.
Shouldn't we put "(2018)" label on that?
How do they interpret the self-flagellation rule?
It's breeze of fresh air compared to most code of conducts which sound like communist propaganda. This and the Linux code of conflict.
I'm not sure what you think communism is, but:
2. Then, love your neighbor as yourself.
5. Do not steal.
6. Do not covet.
14. Relieve the poor.
15. Clothe the naked.
18. Be a help in times of trouble.
38. Be not lazy.
Those are all pretty deeply in line with marxism. Jesus was a communist, after all.
He must have some sort of weird US interpretation of communism because "most code of conducts [sic!]" say absolutely nothing about proletariat-bourgeoisie relations in society. If anything, they're an instrument of capitalism.
I remember reading Vapor’s first code of conduct and feeling it’d been copied from an SDS rulebook. But that was New Left cultural stuff about marginalized people, not Marxist left.
For instance there were at least two rules about “tone policing”, which doesn’t even make sense (what is there to tone police?) and also seems to defeat the purpose of a CoC since moderation is a kind of “tone policing”.
I guess you mean this document?
https://github.com/vapor/vapor/blob/a7f340f64b7182e9e4202a9b...
The only bit I see about tone is
“Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial” on a list of things they said they would NOT act on complaints about.
I see nothing in there that isn’t obvious getting-along-with-others stuff. It still seems to me that it’s helpful to write those things out rather than have them unspoken. It would feel unjust and arbitrary to me if I was pushed out of a community for bad behavior but not pre-warned what was considered bad behavior. It would also feel unjust if i were to be pushed out of a community because people kept saying shitty stuff to me and I complained about the hostility and they said “we have no rules, so they didn’t break any, suck it up”.
> “Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial” on a list of things they said they would NOT act on complaints about.
Yes, that’s the problem. This is essentially the only thing that actually does come up on project forums that you need moderation for.
Substitute racial / identity references in place of proletariat/ bourgeoisie in Marx's ideas, and you have modern academia and left-of-left wing American politics in a nutshell. It's by design.
That comes from Hegel. You just think Marx invented dialectics because you (like everyone else) can’t understand Hegel.
Note if they “take Marx and replace the concepts” it’s not secretly introducing Marxism, it’s another antithesis of Marxism, just like the right-wing ones.
Free will
42. Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself.
59. Fulfill not the desires of the flesh; hate your own will.
60. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do."
I'm not seeing a lot of room for free will in this document.
Human freedom is the freedom to do good, not license to do whatever you want to do or can do.
Freedom to do good? That's already been covered: 42. Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself.
That's not your freedom or your will, that's god's doing. Or so this document says. So by your definition, there is no free will in this document.
Not at all.
Whether one chooses good or evil, it is an exercise of one’s free will; but the purpose of human freedom (what it is) is that a human person can choose the good.
But what is “the good”?
For a modern treatment from a Christian perspective see Veritatis splendor:
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
Free will is being able to decide to let it go
I was talking about the implementation, not what was it supposed to be like. I haven't seen something like "love your neighbor as yourself". On the other hand inclusion and diversity were important topics. Former communist countries have more women in STEM.
Jesus Peace be upon him was not a communist. Islam (Submission) is not communism. All previous prophets and messengers were Muslims (Submitters) to God.
Right, instead it's just Christian Fundamentalism, not like the U.S. doesn't have a problem with that
It's not mandatory, while fundamentalism is way stricter.
It does, but your left wing fundamentalists aint much different.
There are some questionable ones in between there.
> Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do."
This would have you willingly submit to sexual assault by a priest. And really should be revised considering the slew of cases against the church, or at least be revised with some sort of exception not just to “not do as they do, do as they say”, but to not obey them when they commit such acts.
And yes, I understand that this is in no way forced upon anyone and is just a “I believe” statement, but still I would argue that the suggestion that those who live by these rules live happier lives is countered by every choirboy who submitted and obeyed a person god had place in authority over them, and got assaulted as a result. Plenty of those rules I would agree, though it seems every mention of the institution which is “god” is irrelevant, redundant, harmful or downright sinister. I think it right to cut down the list a slight bit.
Yeah, one of the most problematic views indeed. "Don't touch the Lord's anointed ones" is a mandate commonly used for religious leaders to discourage any sort of criticism of their actions.
Beliefs like this do matter. They inform the actions of millions of people across the world.
I'm somewhat worried that there's a lot of 'love thy neighbour as thyself' combined with a lot of self-hatred/denial.
I don't hate it.
i'm getting Terry Davis vibes
The glow in the darks got him... :(
RIP
Damn. RIP Terry, true legend
RIP
SQLite is anti-fragile.
Madness
What if a dev wanted to work on the project and was a devout devil worshiper or an atheist wine bibber…
They merely have to provide contributions that live up to the technical standard of SQLite (good luck) and dedicate them to the public domain. Their religion or lack of is not a problem.
There’s that libertarian streak of “his project, his rules” in this thread. He can include or exclude anyone he wants because it’s his project.
Well, I read the very first line and see that he doesn’t want me, or people like me to be a contributor to this project. And that’s fine. His project, so I hear. But personally, I’ve felt welcome to contribute to every other open source project out there. I’ve felt welcome to apply to any job out there. It feels jarring to be excluded like this. I feel hurt. I shouldn’t be made to feel like this, just because of my religious views.
And no, please don’t split any hairs like “no, he’s not excluding, he’s actually describing…”. You wouldn’t be supporting him if the first line changed to be based on race instead of religion. Then why are you supporting him now?
> I’ve felt welcome to contribute to every other open source project out there
This is strange to me, because... we're not welcome in every other open source project. Many open source projects are maintained by a single person or a small team and are not particularly interested in accepting changes from outsiders. SQLite is one of those; they generally don't accept contributions.
> Well, I read the very first line and see that he doesn’t want me, or people like me to be a contributor to this project.
Reading from the top, he makes it abundantly clear it is a code their team adhere to, and external contributors are not expected to adhere to it or even respect it.
SQLite typically doesn’t accept external contributions and will rewrite their ideas themselves.
from https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html:
> SQLite is open-source, meaning that you can make as many copies of it as you want and do whatever you want with those copies, without limitation. But SQLite is not open-contribution. In order to keep SQLite in the public domain and ensure that the code does not become contaminated with proprietary or licensed content, the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain.
what makes you think that every open-source project should "make you feel welcome"? "I shouldn’t be made to feel like this"—where does that idea come from? "shouldn't" on what basis? many open-source projects' Codes of Ethics/Conduct/whatever make me feel explicitly unwelcome, but a.) I don't care, and b.) I don't feel entitled to feel welcome in everyone else's project. what makes you feel differently?
> many open-source projects' Codes of Ethics/Conduct/whatever make me feel explicitly unwelcome
Most open source projects Code of Conduct boil down to "don't be mean to other contributors, treat them well". I'm sorry this makes you feel explicitly unwelcome. That said, it's never been a problem for me to adhere to that.
This is a first time for me being excluded, and it feels bad. I'm commenting on why this person has gone out of his way to do that.
Exclusion is not the norm in online programming spaces. Nor would we tolerate it if someone started excluding people on the basis of something like race. But seemingly there are apologists for exclusion on the basis of religion.
until a few years ago, it was implicit that everyone contributing to open-source projects would treat each other respectfully, because personal politics or identity issues or whatever were wholly divorced from writing code to make computers do things. this is no longer the case, and people running many open-source projects feel the need to legislate morality upon its contributors, as though they were kindergarten teachers. I personally find this objectionable, and such "spaces" make me feel unwelcome... but, again, I don't care, I don't feel entitled to be a part of any online "space" other than ones I myself create.
what could possibly cause this sense of entitlement in your mind? what universal moral imperative do you believe exists that everyone is supposed to abide by with regards to publicly allowing contributions to their own open-source programming projects, and why do you believe it does or should exist?
> because personal politics or identity issues or whatever were wholly divorced from writing code to make computers do things
I'd disagree there. The free-software movement, for example, is fundamentally tied up with a certain set of political-moral principles; the open-source movement is similarly tied up with a somewhat different set of principles.
If someone's "not political" then maybe they're a weathervane, or professionally neutral, but it's probably more likely that what they think of as "politics" isn't currently fighting over a topic of salience to them.
> what could possibly cause this sense of entitlement
You keep typing this out in different words, almost like you're seeking to reinforce over and over that I'm entitled. I see what you're doing, you're heard.
And I'll say what I've said earlier - I feel entitled to be treated well because people generally treat me well.
And your brilliant contribution is "but why should that be the norm?" Thanks.
>I feel hurt.
>I shouldn’t be made to feel like this
this is entitlement.
somehow reading a Code of Ethics for an open-source project you had an extremely slim chance of ever contributing to has emotionally injured you enough to express said injury on the Internet. when you say "I should not be made to feel like this", you are saying that the sqlite devs are morally in the wrong for having their Code of Ethics written the way that it is, because just reading it caused you pain, because of their implicit disregard for your feelings, Random Person On The Internet.en·ti·tle·ment /inˈtīdlmənt,enˈtīdlmənt/ noun the fact of having a right to something.I'm having trouble seeing the disconnect between "somebody on the Internet has a project whose Code of Ethics caused me emotional pain because it made me feel unwelcome" and the word "entitlement". could you please clarify?
There's something about your line of commenting that just strikes me as dishonest and to be completely honest, kind of gross. I can't quite put my finger on why I feel that way about it though. Maybe the air of superiority that comes though, like you're talking down - 'so entitled, I however would never feel such a thing'. I dunno. Just thought I would say my thoughts out loud, take it as you will.
Frankly I thought the opposite.
It was a cogent breakdown of the flawed reasoning upon which then original author’s premise lies.
thank you—it's disappointing that trying to get people to articulate why they feel a certain way about something is met with such pushback. the parent comment to yours is especially baffling—I can't imagine publicly telling someone that what they've written is "gross" without being able to directly explain why, because that just seems unjustly offensive to me. as an amateur Internet ethnographer I have theories about the pathology of course, but there's no point in sharing them here.
Comparing the first rule to something based on race is a bit of a stretch.
Race is completely immutable. But religion is mostly immutable? Most people don't change their religious beliefs after a certain age. In practice, let's acknowledge that religion isn't changed. So telling someone, yeah you're fine to join us as long as you can change this characteristic about you that you almost certainly won't change ... how is that actually different?
I guess in practice I have seen a lot of race based persecution and discrimination, not so much religious persecution. Not saying it doesn’t exist anywhere or for anyone, but based on my own experience, saying “love the lord god” feels way less discriminatory than “white people are preferred to block people” or something.
Ah, fair enough. I come from a country where religion based discrimination is the norm. And I fucking detest it. Whenever I see it I'm going to call it out.
Thanks for the perspective. I see now why folks in this thread are acting so cavalier about this - they haven't seen what I've seen.
Hmm, is this some sort of Meta I’m missing? It feels strange to mix so many cultural ‘suggestions’ with a database product.
> Listen willingly to holy reading.
> Devote yourself frequently to prayer.
> Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future.
Anyway, sqlite is a good product and I don’t even mind all that much to have a code of Ethics associated to it, just not a thing you see often.
> "... No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish."
> "...[the developers] view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave. This is a one-way promise, or covenant. "
This speaks of the Founder and his team. Evangelism this is not, but an invitation to learn of the principles they pledge to adhere to.
I trust their sincerity, I trust the efforts they put into the products they shared.
> This speaks of the Founder and his team. Evangelism this is not, but an invitation to learn of the principles they pledge to adhere to.
I'm not sure that I claimed it's evangelism. For me personally it really did it's job of 'invitation to learn...' because I learned. I was surprised. This is probably not going to change my interaction with the product in any significant way, but it does make me wonder if 'ethical' reasons will in the future affect the technical decisions.
> I trust their sincerity, I trust the efforts they put into the products they shared.
Me too! They haven't given me any reason not to.
The point is that the other codes of conduct often embed other particular cultural suggestions and assumptions, but since they are those of your own you don't notice them as jarringly as those of medieval Christendom.
> but since they are those of your own you don't notice them as jarringly
Why would you assume this about me and not take at face value that I really believe you don't find these often in the wild. It's just my personal experience that I haven't seen these out in the wild all that much (I can't think of an example), and it was surprising to me.
> It's just my personal experience that I haven't seen these out in the wild all that much
What, OSS project codes of conduct?!? Weird; how the heck does one miss that whole phenomenon? There has been lots of controversy around (some of) them in much of online media about computing over the last few years, including huge threads of heated discussion here on HN.
I don’t think that is the point. I do think everyone takes it as the point though.
A Muslim coworker of mine once wrote a program that would log a prayer during startup. It was always fun when that block of text would randomly show up in one place or another.
I can see how something limited in scope, accepted by the team could be fun and quirky but what if every coworker started writing little scripts with their own beliefs popping up in one place or another?
The Slack channels would finally be interesting
A Code of Conduct was forced on them by dictate, so they did the right thing and made the process transparently absurd while also complying.
Edit: The unspoken part of the demand was a 'progressive' CoC.
I don’t think it’s meant to be absurd and I do think he actually believes it.
People here try to subvert expectations with their takes so much that it's no surprise that there are so many posts saying there is nothing wrong with this and to not use it if you don't agree. If the post wasn't specifically drawing attention to the unusual code of ethics, people would be dragging it through the mud for the potential to generate bad PR or some other example illustrating why 'successful companies keep their codes plain and boring for a reason'.
So... what is SQLite's stance on abortion?
[Edit] Found it: it's supported: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3912417/is-there-a-way-t...
His stance is his own and frankly private. If he chooses to open up about it publicly fine, but sitting on a soap box online demanding political and private questions wreaks of moral and intellectual false superiority.
> wreaks of moral and intellectual false superiority.
Reeks.
But yeah, that's what a lot of other Codes of Conduct feel like. (And the discussions about them.)
But it is in line with the 72 rules listed. If you're a developer who wants to contribute to SQLite, you might want to know beforehand if you will be expected to sign on to a 73rd rule.
One benefit of adopting a 1,500-year-old code of ethics is that it's probably not going to suddenly change on you.
SQLite: "When my mother was abducted by the Communists, she was with child.... but the Communists, they put an end to that! So, on this issue there is no debate! And no intelligent person can think differently."
According to the Search Engine, that's a quote from Seinfeld, nothing to do with SQLite.
The fact that repositories even have "codes of conduct" is Orwellian on one hand and a sign of idiocracy on the other.
"We (the maintainers) don't want to work with you if you do/believe X" seems quite sane to me, it's their choice after all. If you don't like it, fork it or move along. Code of conducts are supposed to regulate how contributors to the project interact. Especially nowadays, where projects can come with a significant social aspect/dynamic, this becomes important.
> Code of conducts
Codes of conduct.
If you want to participate in someone else's space you have to abide by their boundaries, an open source project is not yours to be an asshole in
Yeah, my commentary on this nonsense is at https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDU....
> Could J. K. Rowling require Harry Potter readers to follow a code of conduct? Could Werner Heisenberg demand that you subscribe to a code of conduct if you want to do quantum physics?
...
> Codes of conduct typically make laudable promises such as “We pledge to respect all people,” in an attempt to convince readers that they [the authors] will behave laudably. In my experience, though, people who put a lot of effort into telling you how laudably they will behave do not behave any any more laudably than other people do — slightly the contrary, in fact. ...
> ... I expect that I’ll be delighted if you send me patches and bug reports, but on that count I make no promises. Feel free to send them repeatedly through different channels if you don’t get a response at first, since I often don’t notice things. If you like how I respond when you send me patches or bug reports, then maybe it would be a good idea to do more of it. If you don’t like it, then maybe you would be happier if you stopped. I’ll do my best to be polite, but I screw that up pretty often, to be honest. ...
> But, as I said before, what humans tell you they will do is not a very reliable predictor of what they will do. If you want to know what to expect of them, look at their past behavior. Don’t just look at their self-reports of their past behavior, although admissions against interest there can be quite revealing; look at traces it has left that they cannot delete, such as your own memory, mailing list archives, past Gitlab issues, and other people talking about them.
> Could J. K. Rowling require Harry Potter readers to follow a code of conduct?
Nobody attempts to apply codes of conduct to users of software - that's the domain of the license agreement. They only apply to communities. Virtually every online community around harry potter has some set of rules for participating in that community. e.g. https://stories.jkrowling.com/terms-of-use/
> Could Werner Heisenberg demand that you subscribe to a code of conduct if you want to do quantum physics?
Heisenberg was the post-ww2 president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (quickly renamed the Max Planck Institute post war) - which was involved in human "medical" experimentation in nazi concentration camps.
During his governence: "after 1945 neither active participants in the Third Reich nor hangers-on were called to account" - https://www.mpg.de/history/kws-under-national-socialism
So a guy who presided over an organization that didn't bother to clean house after being directly involved in the fucking holocaust isn't exactly my go-to for how to run a healthy community.
I'm glad you started to pick up on the subtle point about Heisenberg, but it sounds like you stopped halfway. What would be the consequences of allowing Heisenberg to dictate codes of conduct for quantum physicists today, or Wagner to dictate codes of conduct for performers of his operas?
I addressed the point about when codes of conduct apply to users of software in the document linked.
> What would be the consequences of allowing Heisenberg to dictate codes of conduct for quantum physicists today
He couldn’t. All he could do would be to dictate the code of conduct for physicists working at the MPI. And if you don’t like his code of conduct, you can go to a different institute, or take it up with the community or the board of directors for the institute. Your implied scenario of “what if a nazi wrote a code of conduct” doesn’t scare me because the only thing worse than a nazi is a nazi in hiding. And if the code of conduct contains no nazi agenda, well then he can be held accountable if he does something against the code of conduct (like, for example, being a nazi)
> He couldn’t. All he could do would be to dictate the code of conduct for physicists working at the MPI
And that's precisely why I think it's absurd for a code repository to have a code of conduct.
What’s the categorical difference between the nodejs repo and the max planck institute that it’s ok for one to have a code of conduct but not the other?
One is a piece of software, governed (one hopes) by the terms of its license if at all, and the other is a group of people, or (according to some people's beliefs) some sort of incorporeal tulpa-like entity whose activities are carried out in the material plane by a group of people.
I don't know why you keep asking me questions that are answered in the document I linked at the top of the thread. It's less than 1000 words long, you can read it in three minutes.
Because your document doesn’t answer any of these questions, and I’m confused why you think it does.
You don’t actually specify any beef with what you call purpose #1 - an agreement within a group about how it should be governed. Except for, as you say, single developer or small group projects - that’s the stated purpose of ALL codes of conduct. Some may contain ethical postering or demands of users (i’ve never seen that) - but those are malformed codes of conduct and should be criticized for those flaws not for being codes of conduct
So, you skipped over the point and went directly to the ad-hominem.
Do you learn much with this approach?
I did learn a bunch, I went on a bit of a dive refreshing what I knew about the MPI and Heisenberg. Interesting stuff.
But back to your point. Your point was made using two examples. Bad examples, in my opinion, since the first doesn't apply (consumption of work vs collaboration) and the second one also doesn't apply (building on others work vs collaboration).
Your further point about watching what people do vs what they say they do is a reasonable point, but doesn't have much to do with the value of a code of conduct. I'm pretty much in agreement, that's the best way to proceed when collaborating with a single individual - but communities are more than the sum of their parts. If there are three people collaborating on a project, and one swears a lot in their commits, and one prefers a lack of swearing, and one doesn't care either way - how do you resolve that conflict? Nothing you've said offers a useful tool to navigate that situation.
You seem to have me confused with someone else.
Yes you’re quite right - I didn’t notice that that reply wasn’t from you.
Seems pretty self-important/pretentious. It's just a database, guys.
"This document continues to be used for its original purpose - providing a reference to fill in the "code of conduct" box on supplier registration forms."
I remember the code of conduct push overnight on all open source projects. It was such a bizarre time. What's worse is that pretty much everyone folded.
What would you consider the best response to the desire for clear boundaries and expectations from project communities?
The best response? “No”.
The code of conduct push was a transparent game of social aggression — an attempt to shift open source power dynamics in favor of:
(1) Allowing social activists, who could not acquire institutional power on the basis of their own technical merit, to co-opt open source institutions for their own aims and to extract resources. See also the contributor covenant, DEI consultants, et al.
(2) Securing the necessary power structures to enforce the beliefs of their particular vein of progressive political activism.
In my experience being very involved with a few large projects that were pressured into adopting a code of conduct, the historically most toxic and socially aggressive personalities in the project became the biggest proponents of adopting a code of conduct, engaging in bad faith and with extreme social aggression to tear down any detractors, hiding behind their newfound righteousness as a defense.
So a few bad apples has ruined the whole idea in your mind?
Are you also satisfied with the diversity within the project communities that you contribute to?
> So a few bad apples has ruined the whole idea in your mind?
It’s not a few. They’re primarily a tool for bad actors to secure institutional power.
However, even if we take the surface-level arguments for a code of conduct in good faith, the entire concept is rooted in the premise that a healthy community arises out of strictly codifying social norms and permissible beliefs, imbuing a central, unaccountable authority with the power to police and enforce those norms, and treating dissension with this approach as a moral failing in of itself.
> Are you also satisfied with the diversity within the project communities that you contribute to?
I don’t know how to answer that question; can you define “diversity” for me?
What personal attributes should I poll from all contributors to measure their diversity? Do you have a score sheet I can use? What does it mean if our “diversity score” is too low? What does that have to do with a code of conduct?
Without clear boundaries around conduct many communities become toxic. In gaming (playing and related projects) for example it pushes out girls and women, or at least to hide their gender.
Forums have long had rules, spoken or unspoken. Making them more explicit is helpful IME.
The point of explicit forum rules is more to control the mods than the users. Users don’t read them, they just pick up tacit knowledge from what gets moderated.
The most useful thing you could have in a CoC would be declaring who’s responsible for making decisions about it.
Being part of the most diverse possible team simply isn't a priority and mostly seems to function as a distracting sideshow for the benefit of the fundraising wings of the organization/project.
>Are you also satisfied with the diversity within the project communities that you contribute to?
No, every project needs to be completely homogeneous. All members should be interested in creating the best piece of software they can. Anyone who doesn't agree with this goal should be removed from the project.
Mockery and derision.
Anyone who needs a document to understand what is acceptable and what isn't is not someone who you want in any project.
We were all young and ignorant once. My journey to community projects started at 17, and the forum rules common in that era did help me grow up a bit. Even if I was sometimes a nuisance.
Answering reasonable requests for clarity in a community with mockery and derision doesn't sound like a very welcoming place.
It doesn't.
Which is why it gave us Linux.
Wait, what gave us Linux? An unwelcoming culture of mockery and derision?!
If so I'd argue Linux succeeded in spite of Linus's prickly personality. Certainly not because of it.
There are a dozen open source kernels yet only one succeeded.
It was absolutely Linus's no bullshit policy that made it a success and a target.
Plenty of projects are run by assholes. Finding one that is successful and attributing that success to abrasive communication style is confirmation bias.
Even Linus has said his past behavior has been a problem.
If you don't like it fork and run it better.
You, and everyone who thinks code of conducts are good, can't because you're too incompetent to.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"
You didn't know SQLite cures cancer?
This scares me slightly. When I see a code of ethics bound to faith, I have to wonder what happens if the faith disappears. Experience says lots of people get hurt. I don't wish that on anyone.
Ethical stance must stand alone unconditionally.
As for the actual rules, picking one in particular, respecting someone purely for being senior is stupid. Respect is simply earned. I respect more people younger and in more junior positions than myself.
>When I see a code of ethics bound to faith, I have to wonder what happens if the faith disappears.
Let's do the math:
Christianity has been around for around two orders of magnitude longer than any of the compilers or dev tools you're using on your project.
There are probably three orders of magnitude more people who use Christianity than are using any of the languages used in your project.
There are probably six orders of magnitude more priests and churches than there are maintainers on all but the top 1% of libraries (open source or closed source) you're using on your project.
I'm pretty sure the complete disappearance of Christianity from the face of the earth is not the highest probability risk to worry about for your project, and if it were to completely disappear there would probably be enough other stuff going along with that disappearance that we probably all have bigger things on our mind than the code of ethics published by a software team.
If the concern is just "what if the maintainers give up on Christianity," they're probably far more likely to get tired of programming (that happens far more often), but we can observe that their need to make a PR to edit their own code of conduct is not really going to be a particularly hard thing for them to pull off.
I think you entirely managed to miss the point there.
People don't tell you they lost their faith. They just stop following their code of ethics that was bound to it.
I trust a faceless corporation over this attitude.
> People don't tell you they lost their faith. They just stop following their code of ethics that was bound to it.
Not sure if this is true. Most Western values came from Christianity, even though the society today is not as religious as it was in the past.
> Most Western values came from Christianity, even though the society today is not as religious as it was in the past.
I think it's the other way around: Like with many holidays, Christianity usurped previosly existing ethics and claimed them as its own. It's not as if there were no ethics in the years we write "BC[E]" after.
You trust a faceless corporation more than someone who demonstrates the ability to learn, grow and adapt their thinking over time?
You and I see this differently.
The corporation is more likely to be accountable from experience.
Corporations and accountable? Those things all too often don't belong into the same sentence in Western societies. Individuals get into prison all the time for transgressions much more minor than what corporations can get away with just by paying often a ridiculous fine. I'd say that individuals are much more beholden to accountability.
> don't belong into the same sentence in Western societies
don't belong in the same sentence in the United States.
There are other societies in the West.
Sadly I'm not that much of an optimist.
Yes orders of magnitude more accountable than the religious contribution to ethics of an individual.
Sounds like a category error to me.
It is power which cannot be held accountable, regardless of who holds it. Depending on character means you are depending on self accountability, the most wishful of all forms of accountability. Self accountability is for weight loss.
> Self accountability is for weight loss.
Medication works better.
I shouldn't ask, but what happened to drive a negative view of faith?
any system of ethics ultimately must rest on axioms held on faith, there is nothing special about that faith being explicitly religious
By the numbers far more people have suffered under these dithering superstitions, that doesn't make them objectively better.
> far more people have suffered
Compared to what?
Compared to modern sensibilities like equality for women, prohibition of slavery, trial by a jury of peers, medicine based on evidence, etc.
Christians and their faith lead the slavery prohibition movement.
I don't know the history of the other things you mentioned.
After only two thousand years of enabling slavery. Slow clap.
That's a human problem, not a Christian problem. Cultures around the world enabled slavery.
Christianity's own scriptures and holy men called for the return of slaves to their masters.
Just because other cultures also supported slavery doesn't mean Christianity didn't contribute to that horror.
Than if they didn’t exist
The SQLite Code of Ethics has no relevance to you using the license. A code of ethics base on a whim rather than faith wouldn't be any more reliable.
I've used SQLite in the long past (early 2000s) and had fun with it, but I had never seen this. Imposing your religious beliefs through a ..code of "ethics" no less, in exchange for some (arguably small) thing you've done that is completely irrelevant to these beliefs is ludicrous. While I secretly hope that the author is light-spirited in writing this, I will err on the safe side and never use, and actively steer folks away from using, SQLite in the future.
Incidentally, the page has some internal consistency issues:
``` Honor all people. ```
has historically not played well with:
``` First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength. Deny oneself in order to follow Christ. Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ. Put your hope in God. Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself. Fear the Day of Judgment. Be in dread of hell. Desire eternal life with all the passion of the spirit. Keep death daily before your eyes. Know for certain that God sees you everywhere. When wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ immediately. Listen willingly to holy reading. Devote yourself frequently to prayer. Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do." Do not wish to be called holy before one is holy; but first to be holy, that you may be truly so called. Fulfill God's commandments daily in your deeds. Pray for your enemies in the love of Christ. Never despair of God's mercy. ```
While I would never agree to this particular Code of Ethics, this document isn't intended to be some license you agree to in order to use SQLite. See "2.1. Scope of Application" -- It makes it clear that this is intended to be the developer's promise to the user, not the other way around.
> in exchange for some (arguably small) thing you've done
I dunno that I'd describe the most deployed database in the world "some (arguably small) thing", really?
Scale is relative: my day-to-day involves working at a planet-scale serving infrastructure that handles trillions of documents. I've always thought of sqlite as "this little library that you drop in for handling small datasets reliably". For the sake of argument though, let it be a library that is deployed everywhere: its usefulness or technical prowess was never in question.
There are religious folks whose work I reference or use frequently, but they keep their beliefs to themselves. Don Knuth is a canonical example of this for me. No issues there, anyone should be free to believe whatever gets them through their day.
In my (subjective, biased, maybe incorrect,) opinion, people whose code of "ethics" includes phrases like "keep death daily before your eyes, fear the Day of Judgment and be in dread of hell" are dangerous. I doubt they're even aware that hell was voted in existence centuries after their savior was crucified. The amount of life lost and the intellectual stagnation stemming from these religious fanatics, these broken people, is staggering. We'd have reached Alpha Centauri by now were it not for them.
> In my (subjective, biased, maybe incorrect,) opinion people whose code of "ethics" includes phrases like ... are dangerous
Yeah, definitely biased and incorrect opinion. Are you aware that these tenants are not just in Christianity, but also in Islam and overlap with Judaism? That alone is way over 50% of the world's population.
> their savior was crucified
Not everyone who believes in God believes that Jesus Peace be upon him was crucified.
> The amount of life lost
Compared to what? The number of lives lost due to secular and/or atheist people like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc. are orders of magnitude more than any religious wars combined.
> and the intellectual stagnation stemming from these religious fanatics
Which religious fanatics? Are you aware that many of the things we take for granted today stem back to discoveries made during the Islamic Golden age?
It takes a special kind of arrogance to believe that you can rewrite the 10 commandments.
But to rewrite them, see them there on the screen and not realise you have done it, in a much more inefficient way, and also much, much worse. Thats just a breakdown.
Tell it St Benedict. He's the one who wrote it.
I fully intend to. I have a few arguments to have with a few others before i get to him though, he's far from the worst.