On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 11:10 AM, Dave Page <dpage@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > That wording has been in the published draft for 18 months, and noone > objected to it that I'm aware of. There will always be people who don't like > some of the wording, much as there are often people who disagree with the > way a patch to the code is written. Sooner or later though, the general > consensus prevails and we have to move on, otherwise nothing will ever get > completed. It's not clear to me that there IS a general consensus here. It looks to me like the unelected core team got together and decided to impose a vaguely-worded code of conduct on a vaguely-defined group of people covering not only their work on PostgreSQL but also their entire life. It is not difficult to imagine that someone's private life might include "behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute." However, I also don't think it matters very much. The Code of Conduct Committee is going to consist of small number of people -- at least four, perhaps a few more. But there are hundreds of people involved on the PostgreSQL mailing lists, maybe thousands. If the Code of Conduct Committee, or the core team, believes that it can impose on a very large group of people, all of whom are volunteers, some set of rules with which they don't agree, it's probably going to find out pretty quickly that it is mistaken. If people from that large group get banned for behavior which is perceived by other members of that large group to be legitimate, then there will be a ferocious backlash. Nobody wants to see people who are willing to contribute driven away from the project, and anyone we drive away without a really good reason will find some other project that welcomes their participation. So the only thing that the Code of Conduct Committee is likely to be able to do in practice is admonish people to be nicer (which is probably a good thing) and punish really egregious conduct, especially when committed by people who aren't involved enough that their absence will be keenly felt. In practice, therefore, democracy is going to win out. That's both good and bad. It's good because nobody wants a CoC witch-hunt, and it's bad because there's probably some behavior which legitimately deserves censure and will escape it. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
