Code of Conduct

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

A couple of people (me, Janek, Werner),  want to add a CoC to the LilyPond
project, and there were some questions about why we would want to do that:

There is a definite advantage to having a community with gentle
interactions and without flames and personal attacks. It makes being part
of the community more fun and rewarding, which in turn helps us attract and
retain contributors. For almost all of us, working on LilyPond competes
with other things in life, and if participating is net drain of emotional
energy, those other activities will end up winning, and we'll see
contributors leave.

Having a CoC gives us a set of guidelines, a process and a set of
corrective actions to take to help keep things nice. They are not an
iron-clad guarantee that bad things won't happen, just as laws cannot
prevent dictators from taking control always, but at the same time, most
people prefer to live in societies that do have laws and means to enforce
them.

In open source projects, the BDFL model is pretty common, but if there is
no process around how things work, the model falls apart if the BDFL
departs. As a former Benevolent Dictator, I have been guilty of this too.
Instituting a CoC is a tool to manage the community atmosphere that can
outlive individuals responsible for doing so, and that spells out what the
community can expect from those individuals.

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen