Re: The anti-GNU defamatory group of Ludovic Courtès - Re: assessment of the GNU Assembly project

[Jean Louis]

* Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss) <936-846-2769@kylheku.com> [2021-04-29 10:30]:
> A code of conduct document is little more than a condensed set
> of corporate or governmental HR policies, disguised as some
> sort of "organically grown" community document.

Every organization may have its own codes, variety of codes are out
there, and there is nothing wrong in attempt to harmonize behavior of
its members.

Here we have the context that is different from commonly used
organizational codes, the new context encompasses new politics such as
feminism, gender problems, and may be construed often as a general
method for thought police. Say something wrong and you are done.

Problem at hand here is that we have various people, some people are
more sensitive than others, but don't want and cannot express
themselves. Some others will come along and inevitably have different
opinions. Those sensitive want to survive well and without being
offended, Code of Conduct mostly serves those who are unable to tell
others how they feel, why they feel so, and unable to provide concrete
objective reasons for it.

As Codes of Conducts are very generalized, not well defined such as
attorney made agreements, they are often abused by their own authors
or by the managers who wrote those Codes of Conducts, they allow wide
range of interpretations and thus misrepresentations.

Example is the Guix' code of conduct as adopted from Contributor Code
of Conduct: https://github.com/pjotrp/guix/blob/master/CODE-OF-CONDUCT

Where it says that they are committed to avoid (among other things):

- Personal attacks
- Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments
- Public or private harassment

Despite that Guix has its own code of conduct and GNU project does not
have code of conduct, in other words they are not same entity, Guix
finds it appropriate to gather group of people, incite them to provoke
personal attacks, annoy others, and make derogatory comments on RMS:
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/

and to tell "we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over
the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the
empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission
when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we
want to reach out to."

That is "derogatory" statement as by definition 1. derogative,
derogatory, disparaging -- (expressive of low opinion; "derogatory
comments"; "disparaging remarks about the new house").

Despite that it is quite clear how people are in support for RMS, the
small group of Code of Conduct people continues with their derogatory
statements.

What is even more interesting is that they use the subdomain
guix.gnu.org which is on GNU.org domain and are able to make such
derogatory statements, and personal attacks.

None of them signers of those defamatory statement did not tell of any
personal issue with RMS, neither how they wanted to handle it in a
good faith.

It is personal attack and public harassment.

It is in contradiction to Guix's Code of Conduct.

The Guix's code of conduct and so many others may have this clause:
"Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior
may be reported by contacting a project maintainer at
guix-maintainers@gnu.org.  All complaints will be reviewed and
investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary
and appropriate to the circumstances. Maintainers are obligated to
maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident."

That clause basically say that accuser will be held anonymous and
maintainers or whoever will be judges to punish the accused. This is
in contradiction to the legal system and established norms of our
civilization, including any mediation process, that accuser and
accused must be brought together in a hearing to make issues evident,
without words, without evidences and hearing, nobody shall be
considered criminal neither should be accused.

Now GNU came first, then came Guix under GNU umbrella. GNU does not
have Code of Conduct, Guix has. Would GNU have Code of Conduct, that
Guix statement would be removed right away.

It is not removed, as the purpose of GNU is not politics, but
distribution of free software. When looking at purposes, the purpose
is stronger and has to be supported foremost. GNU project does not,
obviously it does not practice the methods of thought police.

Here is a story of injustice where Code of Conduct has been applied
and how cruel it comes over:

From:
https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/

> Summary: NumFOCUS found I violated their Code of Conduct (CoC) at
> JupyterCon because my talk was not “kind”, because I said Joel Grus
> was “wrong” regarding his opinion that Jupyter Notebook is not a good
> software development environment. Joel (who I greatly respect, and
> consider an asset to the data science community) was not involved in
> NumFOCUS’s action, was not told about it, and did not support
> it. NumFOCUS did not follow their own enforcement procedure and
> violated their own CoC, left me hanging for over a week not even
> knowing what I was accused of, and did not give me an opportunity to
> provide input before concluding their investigation. I repeatedly told
> their committee that my emotional resilience was low at the moment due
> to medical issues, which they laughed about and ignored, as I tried
> (unsuccessfully) to hold back tears. The process has left me
> shattered, and I won’t be able to accept any speaking requests for the
> foreseeable future. I support the thoughtful enforcement of Code of
> Conducts to address sexist, racist, and harassing behavior, but that
> is not what happened in this case.

I just wonder HOW MANY OF THOSE CASES will be left unheard? HOW MANY
WILL NEVER WRITE on what happened?

Not everybody is like Pocock who can open up the website and tell the
truth. People cannot communicate when they are blocked to communicate
or told to shut up.

We have numerous statements from the AntiGNU Assemble where Ludovic
Courtès said how hard time he has to censor all the people who
disagree with him on the IRC channel. It is lack of his communication
skills. He cannot address the issue, he feels attacked as soon as
somebody speaks in disagreement and uses "Code of Conduct" to justify
the thought police actions.

And here is what people discuss about Code of Conduct and that sad event:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214

Quotes:

- I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media
  groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one
  side and never gives the other side the chance to get details on how
  things were perceived or why it’s a violation?

- This CoC needs to be torn apart and rebuilt, and the people in this
  particular committee must be sent to other areas where their
  expertise can be best used

- The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example,
  arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC
  prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If
  someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to
  go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.

- Exactly. 99% of the time, CoC gets ignored. The 1% of the time it is
  exercised, it's because some random person with a chip on their
  shoulder from Twitter is looking for blood. "Boot this developer
  from your project because they made a remark on social media I was
  offended by."

- The problem here is not the CoC, it's that the organisation doesn't
  enforce the CoC, violates it, and punishes people who didn't violate
  it. They might as well not have a CoC in that case.

- It just gives power to the accuser to say "Please refer to article 3
  section 2 for compliant behavior. BANNED". But unlike a proper
  ruleset, the defense cannot do the same, because there's no actual
  definition of rude specified that I could say "In fact, I did none
  of those things, your honor"... and the accuser must iteratively
  prove his case.

- These are rules in the form of "don't be someone I don't like", and
  at best follows the fashion "the accused is presumed guilty until
  shown otherwise"

- Guidelines != CoC. People break the HN guidelines all the time and
  it is fine, they are there to help make people become better
  contributors and not to punish people.

- An CoC on the other hand is exclusively about removal of members to
  achieve additional goals set by the CoC. It identify who is an
  "other" and gives power to a small group to opaquely remove the
  individual without constraints or liability. It also usually
  supersede any existing rules, goals and processes already existing
  in the community.

- Sounds like a classic case of selection bias.

- Entirely possible, but it's impossible to tell because most of these
  committees and panels are completely opaque about their
  actions. Hence the need for standards from common law like not
  allowing anonymous accusations, etc.

- From the article I don't see any attempt of conflict resolution
  between Joel Grus and Jeremy Howard. I don't see any process by
  NumFOCUS towards deescalation and refocusing towards a common
  goal. The process seem to have been opaque, the accusation hidden,
  purpose unclear. The authorities (the Code of Conduct committee) not
  held accountable. As a result it seems that their explicit rules did
  not serve a purpose of creating a professional environment

- Attorneys aren’t writing these Codes of Conduct

- Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Because they will be used to
  lawyerize innocent people out of the organization by entryist
  grifters. That's what they're for, that's what they're used for.

- Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Because code of conducts
  makes it easier to harass people. If there are formal rules then all
  a harasser has to do is to find something out of context and then
  start harassing the person by starting a CoC breakage
  investigation. Doing stuff like that without a CoC would get you
  kicked out.


Jean

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