Re: Debian's Code of Conduct, and our technical excellence
* Matthew Vernon:
> There have a few posts in recent discussions by people suggesting (or,
> at least, appearing to suggest) that there is a conflict between
> technical excellence and our Code of Conduct (or aiming to increase the
> diversity of our membership, or similar).
>
> I think there is no such conflict, and that the idea that there is is in
> itself harmful.
I've also seen a suggestion that Debian is falling behind. Which I
found even more puzzling because Code-of-Conduct-less Linux
distributions aren't easy to find these days, particularly among the
collaboratively developed ones. So even if it were an impediment,
everyone else would be similarly afflicted.
> In particular, "X does excellent technical work, so we should turn a
> blind eye when their violate our CoC otherwise the technical excellence
> of the project will suffer" is both wrong and harmful. If we want to
> achieve technical excellence, we will do so by having many talented
> people working together. If we restrict our talent pool to "people who
> are prepared to tolerate a toxic environment", then we are harming that
> goal.
Sure. And we can even take their patches, but do not invite them into
the fold (where they probably wouldn't be be comfortable anyway). We
know that some upstream developers have political convictions and have
made choices in life most of us find completely unacceptable, but that
hasn't led us to backing out the code they've written.
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