When should behaviour outside a community have consequences inside it?

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50099.html

by robin_reala • 9 years ago

116 240 9 years ago

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

The answer is simple: never.

pjc502• 9 years ago

It's very easy to not read the article, isn't it? Then drop in a sweeping generalisation that says it's completely fine to have a murderer write your filesystems.

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

I read the article, thank you. It is completely fine to have a murderer write your filesystems. Accepting patches from someone who writes good code and treats everyone involved with respect is the right approach.

Sephr3• 9 years ago

Why do you care if a murderer wrote your filesystems?

I care about the security and correctness of the code. I only care about the author who wrote it if they are someone known for low-quality, insecure, or malicious code.

If Linus Torvalds is convicted of genocide and child abuse tomorrow I'm going to continue using Linux as usual.

Cthulhu_• 9 years ago

You're changing the contents of the article though; it's about "communities", not software products. It's much easier to separate code from persons; strip off the committer name / email and you're left with code which rarely contains anything behavioural besides maybe inappropriate jokes / puns which are usually easily fixed. Not so with communities, which are much more about people and interactions.

jjII2221• 9 years ago

For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

codinghorror• 9 years ago

I suspect the answer is not, in fact, that simple.

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

I encourage you to submit counterexamples. I'm about to get on a plane, though, I'll have to present my counterargument in a few hours.

virgilp2• 9 years ago

Not really "never". I get where you're coming from, but sometimes, the behaviour outside the community does have consequences for the community; at least in those circumstances, it is appropriate - imperative, even - for the community to react and weigh in on the consequences. And you can easily imagine other cases, too (e.g. where behaviour outside community raises reasonable suspicions about behaviour inside the community - there should at least be the consequence of "increased oversight")

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

This comment appears carefully composed to provide a lot of words that look engaging without much I can actually respond to. How about some examples?

mannykannot6• 9 years ago

This is what is simple: people who have demonstrated a willingness to act in a deceitful or otherwise destructive way cannot be trusted, at least until they have demonstrated rehabilitation. Community does not complicate this simple fact.

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

This is precrime. And how do you rehabilitate them without giving them the opportunity to participate in the community? Deal with problems when they occur.

1337biz• 9 years ago

I don't think this holds up. If you take any crime organization they are almost built on substantially differen behaviors vs group members over non-group members.

orwin• 9 years ago

If you're convicted of pedophilia (or rape) in a country, you should not be allowed to be alone with kids (or women) in another (like Polanski in the western world, but other examples exist). Should you?

But if you think that "passive" political action (i.e just being present at a rally, not being a speaker) outside a community should not have consequences inside the community, i think i agree with you (for now, i don't have put much thought into it, my opinion is not definitive).

kazagistar• 9 years ago

The first part is a separate issue, that of forgiveness and redemption, and if they should be allowed in a society. The second part is about if judgements about smaller issues should spread beyond their original contexts.

I think for most people, the lines are determined by the magnitude of the crime, but where those lines lie is a personal and communal preference. At what point is an injustice so great that it cannot be overlooked even in different contexts? And at what point is it so great that it cannot ever be redeemed in thr future?

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

If you're convicted of pedophilia (or rape) in a country, you should not be allowed to be alone with kids (or women) in another (like Polanski in the western world, but other examples exist). Should you?

No, but what does pedophila or rape have to do with software? You don't let convicted child molesters hang out with kids for obvious causal reasons but no such relationship exists with software.

Jonimus• 9 years ago

This is rich coming from someone who has been banned from as many communities as you have. I've seen at least 3 cases of you joining a community and then getting banned for poor behavior and would think no less of any community choosing to prevent you from joining in the first place.

Sir_Cmpwn10• 9 years ago

Ah, the classic ad hominem attack from an old member of the cancerous TI community. Never gets old.

eponeponepon2• 9 years ago

This is a question worth discussing. But I'm not sure I like the implicit assumption that a "community" is a discrete entity entirely divorced from all other such entities. If you're contemplating a person's activities outside a particular social group, you aren't asking "does this affect my social group?", but rather "what impact does this have on society at large?" I can't see that it's controversial to suggest that someone may act in one context in a way that should have consequences for their activities in another context - we quite happily accept, for instance, that a violent drunk ought not to be permitted to teach children, even if they have never been drunkenly violent towards children. I don't see that a software development project should be any different from any other subset of human society in this respect.

mjg593• 9 years ago

Software development projects are somewhat different in that they frequently include a large number of people from very disparate cultural backgrounds and little in-person social contact. The lack of the sort of social cohesion that we see in more traditional social groups is part of the reason that open source projects are increasingly adopting explicit behavioural guidelines, but the risk there becomes that those guidelines are considered the totality of what should be taken into account when determining whether someone does more harm than good within a community. Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there.

eponeponepon2• 9 years ago

I don't think this is peculiar to software development though. The same is true of discussion fora, gaming organisations, multinational businesses - the extent to which it's an issue in the modern connected world is greater, sure, but it's not a direct result of wider communication. I'm willing to bet it was an issue thousands of years ago in busy trading centres too.

edit: this is an interesting aside: "Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there." Isn't this to some extent what religions have been trying to do for millennia?

VLM3• 9 years ago

Could you elaborate on how the given postulate of "very disparate cultural backgrounds" correlates with the assumed authoritarian outcome of convert to a set of religious purity laws and rituals and (very long) list of groups and opinions that must be hated and shunned, at the point of a sword, or die? Am I missing the chronological component, perhaps today's revealed truth is permitted goodthink, but converts from historically variable backgrounds are permitted as long as there is absolutely no variation in current opinion, sorta a sinners redemption argument?

"very disparate cultural backgrounds" should mean more than "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" level of disagreement between authoritarian fundamentalist sects, or in the context of the actual demographics of software development, which ivy league school a young wealthy urban coastal left wing white male attended. In a field suffering from a demographic crisis of non-diversity, it seems weird to propose a religious purity test to kick out the non-believers as some kind of inherent good, because the result of implementing a religious purity test can't possibly be good for diversity. The argument seems to be "If we just get rid of everyone who thinks differently than us using ever more elaborate formalized and authoritarian religious purity tests, then we'll have all the benefits of diversity with none of the costs" but I don't think the real world works that way.

Historically trying to strengthen a dying movement by radicalizing it even further from mainstream has generally failed to revive the movement. Its an interesting chicken vs egg problem where dying ideologies and radicalization usually correlate, and the question is causation, which causes the other? I'm assuming, given your support for radicalization, you're on the team that sees dying ideology as a cause of radicalization. I realize using logic in a discussion about religion is irrational in and of itself, but thinking purely logically, if you see the legacy ideology as dying, then why not "switch over" ahead of time and be ahead of the pack if the legacy view is going to die out and be replaced anyway? Or do you see it as, yes 99% of the time, historically radicalization has destroyed the movement, but this time radicalization is the occasional rare situation where it'll work? And if so, why this time with this movement? There doesn't appear to be any observable reason to think today's movement is unusual.

aeorgnoieang5• 9 years ago

Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there.

I think this is backwards – the more formalized such considerations are the more conflict there will be. Formal rules invite 'lawyering' and lobbying and now your project or community becomes another battleground for never-ending political conflict. Empirically (but not rigorously, by me anyways), the best groups seem to regulate themselves informally.

arkades• 9 years ago

Problem with these sorts of discussions is that they torture the meaning of the word “community.” Most of these aren’t.

Rephrase as: when should your public reputation among one set of people affect your public reputation among another set of people? When should that latter effect result in consequences?

And then the answer is obvious: whenever the latter set of people find your public behavior to be unwelcome, regardless of which context you chose to unveil it in.

vlehto• 9 years ago

I see your point but you didn't really tackle the problem at hand.

To detach the situation from current feelings, let's take a time trip back to hypothetical year ~1975.

Let's say it's illegal to register a NGO, company or anything that has a rule of "no sexual group X allowed". Now let's say that there is some guy who is absolutely brilliant at playing the violin, but has at some point allegedly done some homosexual approach to straight guy. Which any gay would have just brushed away, but now it was taken as harassment.

We have obviously created a situation where it's impossible for that violinist to take part in any orchestra. No "only gays & women orchesta" is allowed by law. Society completely wastes that human resource. Some male musicians somewhere possibly have slightly better work security. But the cost is that millions of people never hear the recordings of that great violinist.

You have to pick:

A. Allow organizations to be completely self selecting. This would have a set of short term problems and it's currently not kosher at all.

B. Allow alleged transgressors to somehow wipe their record clear. Seems practically impossible during internet age and click headlines.

C. Force people to be cool about people who have allegedly transgressed in some way in some other social setting. But now you lose productivity of whole teams, not just some individuals here and there.

D. Lose a lot of human resources. And probably for petty reasons. If allegation is enough, you can destroy too competitors easily. As shown by the red scare, Stalins purges, etc.

This was originally a case about a programmer allegedly groping some women. Seems like if you could start a company of "former sexual harassers inc", you could soon hire lots of splendid talent dirt cheap. Then you just need to somehow hide the origin of the products being made to the consumers. But soon even that won't matter much if there is anything to be learned from the music industry.

explainplease10• 9 years ago

You need to define "should" and "consequences".

heisenbit2• 9 years ago

Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society. The advances in technology and more so the pervasiveness and persistence of communication is eroding the previous boundaries between groups, places and time.

Past transgressions now have an impact today often way beyond the statues of limitation. In most of these discussions the reason these statues exist are ignored. Discussions in one place affect another place. Behavior that is questionable in a classroom becomes national news. Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software.

When boundaries are torn down cultures clash. Some of it may be healthy. But without boundaries would there be culture?

candiodari2• 9 years ago

Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society.

Looking at history I would even say that boundaries, as in the "need" to give a superior moral position to a favored class, whether an economic class, intellectuals, a military class, or priesthood, was always where these boundaries were. The thing you can't see is that your/our "boundaries" are no different.

And every single time, those boundaries turned out to be, not "for trade" (e.g. the Roman Empire), "for the military" (e.g. the second Islamic dynasty), intellectuals (e.g. the French revolution - the first part, or Communism in Eastern Europe) or "for morality" (e.g. the West in the middle ages). I mean, I'm sure there was a period of, say, a decade, where they actually did what it said on the label. It never lasted.

Every single time, those "boundaries" served to guarantee the comfort of a favored class. Firstly, to safeguard their positions of power and comfort, their fortunes, but later even their ideas and egos.

The real boundary we are wanting to impose is that "we are right".

And it's real, real simple. There is a tiny little issue:

Are

Wrong

Boundaries do impose structure. The structure does not change, and the world does. That's fundamentally why the boundaries are wrong and the structure will not hold.

I do not know how or where exactly we are wrong, but we are wrong (although I have some ideas: any 5 year old, old enough to talk intelligently, but not old enough to be assimilated yet, will tell you when you walk with them through any city what we are terribly wrong about. There's plenty, I might add).

And that sucks. If it turns out that we are most catastrophically wrong about a moral issue, it will suck REAL bad. And that's happened before. Plenty of times.

It is funny how you see the bay area aging. When we started out, most were in our late teens, early twenties at best. And of course we all felt the same: society is VERY wrong. In all sorts of ways. For instance, women are not different, and certainly not inferior. We KNEW that 20 years ago. But now we're 40, and we feel that, dammit, we're right. And these kids, who seem to prefer economic gains over social issues. Lazy bastards !

And, like the rich 30 years ago, we've decided (whilst having pretty much every creature comfort we like) that moral issues (that just happen to keep our place in society safe and secure) are real important. And these upstart youngsters (who do not in fact enjoy many of our creature comforts), they're bad, mmmkay ! Dammit ! They MUST be stopped.

They will, of course, defeat us. Nothing can stop them.

And they will clobber more than some of our ideas.

And, they will abandon some of our morals.

The thing is, this is a good and healthy thing to happen.

mooseburger• 9 years ago

The young aren't always right. Respect for due process, and freedom of speech, are absolutely not values that should be abandoned, even if it seems many of the young are in favor of that. I say this as one of the young.

What are the ideas and morals that you think will be abandoned?

heisenbit2• 9 years ago

The value boundaries provide is shorter feedback loops. Until you have experienced organizations that lack them you will not appreciate the disasters that can be prevented that way.

Boundaries are also essential for freedom. Without boundaries there is interference. Would you like to house anyone in your place? Would you like anyone to have a say how you spend your money? Do you understand the role of budgeting in an organization and the freedom that is bestowed to the budget holders?

794CD012• 9 years ago

Why not? Even the most toxic echo chambers are a type of culture, just one many people here look down on.

Cyberdog• 9 years ago

Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software.

Okay. Under my real name/identity, I was once upon a time a substantial contributor to the Drupal project, a PHP-based CMS/web dev framework.

Earlier this year, we had a kerfluffle where someone had a grudge against Larry "Crell" Garfield, a core developer, liaison to the wider PHP community, and just general pillar of the Drupal community for over a decade. This person shared activity that Crell had done in the "Gor" (kinda BSDM plus fantasy cosplay) community, which, IIRC, included private forum posts, a dating site profile, and a slideshow deck he had presented from a convention. All of this stuff was from private web sites; eg, ones where you'd have to at least sign up for an account to get access to.

The person with the grudge, who, as far as I know, has yet to be identified, provided this material to the Drupal Association as evidence that Crell, a typical SV leftist in most respects, was actually a closeted unrepentant misogynist who needed to be kicked out of the community. Battle lines were drawn, with some agreeing that he was trash while others felt that his out-of-community behavior had no effect on all the hard work he had done and could still do within it. And bickering happened instead of collaboration and coding.

Ultimately the Association came down on the side of the agitators and disinvited Crell from his speaking position at the next Drupalcon, where he had always been prevalent. Expectedly, he became quite bitter about this and has somewhat voluntarily withdrawn further from the community.

So now a talented developer and decade-plus community member has been effectively kicked out of the community for personal, private kinks he, by all accounts, took great care to keep private and separate from this community.

Due to this and other reasons, I now use pseudonyms when joining new communities, and now some of my best OSS work is being done under a pseudonym I have taken care to keep air-gapped from my real identity - not great for my career, but I know that I, as a human, have quirks and kinks as well that others would just love to judge me by, and it's apparently what we have to do nowadays in order to be judged by our work rather than our pasts and out-of-community activity. And, frankly, I'm so disgusted by what happened to Crell that I too have disengaged from the community and no longer use Drupal as my framework of choice (though there are other reasons as well for the latter).

So, no. Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature only affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software if you make it so.

Crell's first post about the incident: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing - see others on his blog for more.

joncrane3• 9 years ago

Damn. This is powerful.

matt40772• 9 years ago

“The private is political” comes to mind...

It used to be that you interacted almost exclusively face-to-face, within a small community. One of the better consequences was a sort of instant feedback loop, where your actions that hurt others were quickly reflected back onto you: abandoned your ailing grandmother? The local grocer will stop giving you credit.

These were social feedback mechanisms. They have the benefit of being much more subtle than the criminal justice system, and kicking in much earlier.

It’s ridiculous how some in the tech community pretend these mechanisms don’t exist, or that they should not exist: every time you have decided who to invite to your birthday party, or who to sit with at lunch, you have taken such considerations into account.

People are social animals. They use social cues to reward beneficial actions, and punish even slight misdeeds. This is necessary to establish standards of behavior, or basic human decency.

There should be limits to this process, the most important of which is time. No one should be forced to reveal to his neighbors that he is a “sex offender”, ten years after drunkenly taking a piss in a public park. Nor should your teenage shenanigans be the top hit in google for eternity.

But standing a front of a synagogue on a Saturday, with a torch, a gun, a swastika flag? Yeah, you better believe your friends and coworkers will look funny at you come Monday.

rthille• 9 years ago

But what if my teenage shenanigans were really really good? Can I keep the top spot for eternity then?

Dowwie• 9 years ago

A growing challenge that communities face is where an activist minority act against a member based on an agenda that is not representative of the larger community yet influences as if it were.

lkerrekfjk• 9 years ago

Opal gate is the canonical example of this:

https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

It's interesting the "complainer" ended up being hired by github then fired from the same github.

rubyfan2• 9 years ago

I think having online anonymity and a reasonable ability to create pseudonyms to keep your communities separate is important and often overlooked. I think it’s not OK for one community to be the moral authority over aspects of ones life, most especially a community in which you are volunteering and contributing in good standing.

croon• 9 years ago

As with a lot of things, I believe in a balance. I agree that anonymity in a lot of areas are crucial; oppressive regimes, whistle-blowing, private/sexual preferences, whatever have you.

But as we've seen in the last year, complete anonymity and untraceability everywhere can have bad consequences; astro-turfing, smurfing, attention-ddos:ing, FUD, anti-net neutrality-comment identity theft.

In some of these cases a central e-ID (which a lot of nations have) could have mitigated those issues, in others, not so.

Ideas should live on their own merit, in which case the identity of the source is irrelevant, but (pardon my French) idiots make the case that logic and merit of ideas don't take center stage. In those cases I believe it's kind of relevant to know if you're buying into group think that is 80% bots, 5% trolls, 5% adversarial agents, etc.

Anonymity is one solution to the problem of being able to keep dissenting opinions, but a solution with severe side effects. Transparency with a strong protection of freedom of ideas is another route.

I guess to put it succinctly: I don't need to know the names or faces of the people I carry conversations with, only that they're real, unique people. It shouldn't matter, but recent history shows otherwise.

rubyfan2• 9 years ago

Great perspective. Without question there are definitely risks that anonymity introduces. But there is an effective tyranny of free expression when parties are forced to use their names.

The protections of liberty afforded on paper don’t always play out in real life. In theory we have protections of free association, freedom of religion, free speech and we’re all entitled to equal protection under the law - this doesn’t always play out.

Too often mob rule has resulted in oppression of dissenting views and oppression of classes of people. Privacy, private communication, anonymous communication and pseudonymous communications are all essential for healthy society and discourse and cannot be written off because some would use them for nefarious purposes.

cs1717p8• 9 years ago

This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for 'intelligent' people to overestimate their general expertise, and then apply their value judgements to individuals in their social circle, regardless of its utility or relevance.

Examples of this:

Alan Turing -- father of Computer Science shunned, at the time, because everyone had value judgements regarding his homosexuality (completely irrelevant to Computer Science).

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives, and formerly Communists.

The solution is simple:

Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.

If I am deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.

If I strongly believe in UFO visitations, and disbelieve climate change, but am a great graphic designer, that should not affect my reputation as an artist.

Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.

This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.

There are enough problems and difficulties getting skilled people together to work on something great -- there is no use at all in reducing that crowd of people further by limiting it to those who share ones views in any number of hot button issues.

Leave politics to your political circles, make your own impressions of people before making personal judgements from reputation, find every reason to work together, not any excuse not to.

pjc502• 9 years ago

deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused

Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-contributors in this case?

Being inclusive is great, but you have to recognise that including certain people drives others away from the project.

cs1717p8• 9 years ago

Can a vegan work with someone with a non restricted diet?

Can an atheist work with a muslim?

In either case, the answer is the same: if the individuals behave professionally, yes.

If the married gay couple are the ones freaking out at work about my hiring someone who posted against gay marriage on his blog two years ago, they are behaving unprofessionally and should be let go.

If it is the anti-gay marriage advocate who is making snide comments about his colleagues at work (or, in the context of a non work environment, in a shared community forum), then it is he who should be excluded.

ungamed• 9 years ago

Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-contributors in this case?

Yes.. But to be fair, adults are in short supply these days.

Jare3• 9 years ago

I know a number of gay and gay-friendly people who disagree or oppose gay marriage laws to various degrees, for a variety of reasons. So, huh, of course yes I think they can!

Important: disagreeing with or opposing a gay marriage law is really not the same as being against inclusivity, diversity, or gays. Some people will have both traits; the problematic (for lack of a less polite word) one is the latter, not the former.

LyndsySimon2• 9 years ago

Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-contributors in this case?

I would expect so, yes.

Firearms are a huge part of my life, as is political advocacy for self-defense rights. I've worked with many people who disagreed with me on that issue to the degree that I expect that many people disagree with gay marriage. For the vast majority of them, it wasn't an issue.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 9 years ago

Part of being a professional is working with people you disagree with. If he can't manage that, then yes he should be let go, but that wasn't the logic at work in this case.

syshum7• 9 years ago

Yes, people with opposing personal views have worked together for the entirety of human civilization, if that was not possible we would have no civilization.

When people with opposing personal views stop working together is when the problems occur. Echo Chambers and Mono Cultures lead to extremism in most instances. This is true no matter what your political or personal world view is.

Peaceful Collaboration in one area of life even with people that in other areas of life you disagree is essential to a functional society.

testvox• 9 years ago

So because the guy might have problems with his co-workers all his co-workers should definitely have problems with him? Shouldn't he be judged on his actions towards his co-workers not by your stereotype of a anti-gay marriage supporter?

dekhn• 9 years ago

Yes, you can be opposed to gay marriage and still work effectively. Accepting that idea is consistent with the principle of epistemic humility.

alexandercrohde2• 9 years ago

Could you not flip the argument, and ask "Do you think a gay-married person could really work effectively with somebody who 's made a donation..." and thereby flip who we fault for the alleged incompatibility? I think both ways of framing it are equally preposterous.

SolaceQuantum5• 9 years ago

I think an issue is that by including some people you are by necessity working to make other groups unwelcome: the choice to be apolitical is a political choice.

cs1717p8• 9 years ago

No, the only people you are making unwelcome are either:

1) those who don't know the time and place for their non community relevant outbursts ('meat is murder', 'homosexuality is a sin' are both irrelevant to 99% of tech or other industry community/work discussions) -- leave that for your vegan blog, or your church group.

2) those who are unable to behave courteously in the presence of someone they know holds differing views in some area they are passionate about. Just because I have read Jennys vegan blog, and know and disagree with her 'meat is murder' sentiment doesn't mean I can't work effectively with her.

People need to be able to separate their general leanings and passions from their commitments to a job or other community.

raguuu• 9 years ago

Plenty of gay people oppose too marriage too. The most powerful gay couple Dolce and Gabbana for instance.

menacingly6• 9 years ago

I respectfully disagree. I think this idea is one of the subtle evils at the root of this damned politicizing of everything.

I believe it can come from a good place, but it's at its heart a deliberate agitation step designed to create this friction. That's seen as a good thing, for now, until the prevailing societal winds decide to blow another direction, then we'll all realize it was a bad idea to force neutral parties into the fray.

I think it's perfectly fine to expect a gay man and someone who has antiquated ideas about gay men to be professionals, and equally fine to terminate either one if they can't be.

ChrisSD2• 9 years ago

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

He was fired as CEO, not as CTO or any other technical position. The CEO is meant to represent the organisation. Denying rights to individuals goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals. Put simply, if the CEO isn't supported by their org then they are an ineffective CEO.

syshum7• 9 years ago

> goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals.

Mozilla violates its ethos and detracts from is stated goals all the time. From DRM Embedded in the browser, to Cliq Spyware, to the latest Adware forced installed on all users.

The idea that Mozilla is a virtuous organization fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised is long dead

dsacco4• 9 years ago

The CEO is meant to represent the organisation. Denying rights to individuals goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals.

This implies Mozilla is intrinsically a political organization, because that’s an explicit stance on a political topic. I can buy your argument here about a CEO’s personal views being incompatible with their position, but it means we need to accept that the reason for that incompatibility is the organization must have political opinions.

Does Mozilla describe itself as a political organization anywhere? I can’t immediately find a statement of its principles/values.

bobthechef4• 9 years ago

That presumes that gay marriage is a right.

xwvvvvwx3• 9 years ago

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

Probably quite relevant to his position as CEO of an organisation that employs (and would like to hire) LGBT people.

cs1717p8• 9 years ago

No more relevant than a CEO of a company that hires people of all diets being a passionate vegan who believes eating meat is immoral.

As long as his personal views don't impact his professional behaviour, the two are not connected.

gadders2• 9 years ago

I would modify your statement slightly:

>If I am deeply opposed <<a particular cause or ideology>> [but don't let it affect with how I interact with people in my role], but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.

rmc2• 9 years ago

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage.

He wasn't fired, he stepped down.

wilde• 9 years ago

Do executives get to have private views? It’s unfortunate, but the media seems to love using personal actions by executives as representative of the company they work for. So in Eich’s case I think Mozilla had a legitimate concern that his personal views would be perceived as the company’s stance.

naner• 9 years ago

So you're saying the solution is simple, everyone just needs to change their behavior?

wolfgke• 9 years ago

So you're saying the solution is simple, everyone just needs to change their behavior?

I think his argument is: Everybody should do their work that is the purpose of the community. This is why they are member of the community.

menacingly6• 9 years ago

The Brendan Eich situation is really interesting. I've personally cited it as a gross overreach into his personal life. But it has been really fruitful to play out scenarios with it and explore my own ethics system, perhaps exposing some gaps.

I personally tend to break conservatively in my views, but I would be equally outraged if a liberal were fired for supporting, say, communist revolution. I certainly understand why people who hold certain views would want that person fired, but I have no problem separating that from their work. I wouldn't want them running my country, but Mozilla is fine.

I ultimately arrived at the outcome that in order to be consistent, I don't think it's OK for any _position_ someone takes to be considered for work performance. Actions, sure, but a position must have absolute freedom. So, if my CEO were to consider people who vote for republicans subhuman (not an entirely unlikely scenario today), but otherwise conducted themselves fairly, I'd be OK with it.

So, did Eich take a position, or an action? Are you really allowed to have a position if you aren't allowed to support it?

I'll say action, despite my bias urging me to say position. Was this action taken to support his desire to preserve something, or to deny someone else of something? If you're one of the people impacted by this action, does it matter?

These questions make it easy to see the tough position Mozilla was in. I'm not sure what conclusion I'd have reached in their shoes, despite my from-the-hip decision that he did nothing wrong.

Toboe3• 9 years ago

So, if my CEO were to consider people who vote for republicans subhuman (not an entirely unlikely scenario today), but otherwise conducted themselves fairly, I'd be OK with it.

So, lets pretend you work for Mozilla, you like the mission statement* and seriously believe in it/that your work is helping that cause. You also think it is a relevant part of your branding.

You really wouldn't have a problem with your CEO saying repub voters are subhuman? No clash between "open and accessible to all" and "subhuman"?

You wouldn't be upset at that violation of the creed/mission statement?

You wouldn't think it to be harmful to your companies branding? (And therefore to your company)

You wouldn't think it harmful to the "team spirit"/motivation?

I find that surprising, to be honest. ("Reason to fire" questions aside)

"Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent."[1]

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

matt40772• 9 years ago

There's no difference between an "action" and "taking a position". If speech were meaningless, had no effect on peoples' lives–why would anybody care about free speech?

PhasmaFelis• 9 years ago

It's worth noting that opposing gay marriage is not substantially different than opposing any other sort of human rights. Would you have been fine with Brendan Eich donating in support of an anti-miscegenation law, or funding an effort to revoke women's suffrage? If so, that's at least consistent, and I suppose I can respect that. But too many people acted like gay rights are just a minor thing, not worth getting fussed about, compared to other human rights.

SomeHacker44• 9 years ago

The post by cs1717p seems somewhat reasonable on the surface but causes a massive visceral backlash in my gut as I read it. So, while I haven't given it enough thought to figure out why, I vehemently disagree.

I disagree about the Mozilla CEO comment specifically. If something is antithetical to you and other community members, regardless of the original "purpose" of a community, so be it.

danielhooper• 9 years ago

I feel you. Once again I'm finding HN's culture very reminiscent of the "techbro" epidemic that we are only pretending to be against.

Can people here just not imagine what it would be like to be gay and also be working for someone making political donations to anti-gay groups? Would you not think that would feel fucking awful???

explainplease10• 9 years ago

The post by cs1717p seems somewhat reasonable on the surface but causes a massive visceral backlash in my gut as I read it. So, while I haven't given it enough thought to figure out why, I vehemently disagree.

I just wish you could hear yourself. Were you writing in a different context, I'd think you were writing satire. It's the same reasoning that actual bigots used against people of different races: they had no rational reason to discriminate against them, but they had learned a massive, visceral backlash reaction, and rather than challenge themselves to overcome it, they just went with it and acted on it. Rationalizing away the cognitive dissonance, racism lived on. So, we got Jim Crow, etc.

lordCarbonFiber2• 9 years ago

The issue is statistically you aren't a fantastic coder. At least not so much so that any organization can't find an equavalent person who isn't on the wrong side of history.

The paradox comes from the fact most people (and it seems even more than most in this industry) believe themselves "special" or "above average" when in reality that can't be the case. You don't get to (or at least shouldn't) "buy out" of the social contract just for being spectacular (and again, odds are very poor as to whether you actually have anything unique to add).

This can result in tragedy, as in the case of Turning, or justice, as in the case of the laundry list of sexual predators falling from grace currently. Pretending everyone you disagree with is just "politics" ignores the fact that no man is an island and everything is connected. Once you realize you aren't special; the world/society doesn't owe you shit life will get a lot easier.

mschuster91• 9 years ago

This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives

Hollywood does not blacklist "conservatives". Hollywood (finally) blacklists people who have outright abused their positions, sometimes for decades, to rape women.

wastedhours2• 9 years ago

This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.

However, I see people's personalities informing how they behave in their occupation all day, every day. The notion you can subconsciously remove all of your biases before undertaking a project is, surely, inherently flawed?

We also deal with associations - the body of your work will be judged based on its context. Its context comes from who you are, what you believe, and your values (both work and personal based). Of course an artists' work will be looked at differently if they're a UFO believer or not. Of course people will question whether someone championing an inclusive organisation can really not support gay marriage. Of course people will look at the works of Roman Polanski through a different lens because of allegations. It's not enforced "political correctness" it's default behaviour of humans to make these links, correct or not.

Personally, I'm tired of the "leave politics to your political circles" response - politics has an impact on your worldview and thus influences your work.

I'm not claiming everyone should hold the same views, but the expectation that people with diametrically opposed outlooks on the world should "just get along" for the sake of a project seems absurd to me. It's why most companies have values, and is pretty much the only non-BS use of "company culture".

philwelch• 9 years ago

So I’m assuming you’re comfortable with Hollywood blacklisting communist screenwriters?

creaghpatr2• 9 years ago

...but the expectation that people with diametrically opposed outlooks on the world should "just get along" for the sake of a project seems absurd to me. It's why most companies have values, and is pretty much the only non-BS use of "company culture".

Replace 'outlooks' with 'skin color' and you can see why some people think that people should, in fact, "just get along".

appearsonline• 9 years ago

I find it funny how you go from

This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for 'intelligent' people to overestimate their general expertise

Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.

and then justify that with

Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.

I'm not sure you agree with yourself.

cs1717p8• 9 years ago

I'm not sure what your point is. Can you clarify what you're trying to get at here?

ManlyBread• 9 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly. Code has no gender or race.

ebbv• 9 years ago

I am so tired of people bringing up the Brendan Eich thing as if it was unfair. Let's be clear; he wanted to deny civil rights to LGBT folks. That's not ok for a CEO of a large organization. It's not like he was ousted for wanting to abolish the estate tax.

haltingthoughts• 9 years ago

He monetarily donated to support a position that half of America supported. One simply can't expect demand that level of moral purity in a free society.

bobthechef4• 9 years ago

What rights? I'm serious. It's not a mantra. It's a very radical claim, to say the least, that gay marriage is a right. I have yet to see an argument for its recognition as bona fide marriage.

coward00001• 9 years ago

Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.

I would add that for contributions outside of the community, they should be judged if they relate to that community.

For instance, if a a security expert, goes out to conferences telling people to use MFA, but privately tells people not to use it because it is "too complicated" that person would rightly be judged by the community. (Note: I mean they regularly make that reccomendation privately, not a one-off because they don't want to tell their grandparent to use MFA).

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

This is complicated for roles like CEO, they don't have a specific _technical_ role. Their role is the define the vision and direction of the company. I believe that part of the CEO job to define the values and mores for the organization, if this is wrong, let me know as that is kind of fundamental to my point.

In that case, wouldn't it be right that that a CEO is fired for their values? Their values and what they want is the reason a CEO was hired at an organization. If the CEO's personal values do not match the values for the organization, it's a bad fit and they should part ways.

jakobegger2• 9 years ago

If we are talking about an individual contributor, who only contributes code, who doesn‘t talk to press or customers, then I agree, their political beliefs shouldn‘t get them fired.

But if someone represents an organisation, whether internally or externally, their political beliefs are relevant; their actions are reflected as actions of the company.

Humans don‘t differentiate between personal and official life as much as you think they should, so unfortunately companies and organisations can‘t ignore what their representatives do in their spare time.

wisty• 9 years ago

The risky assumption seems to be "we're the ones with all the power, and we'll only use that power to punish people who deserve it".

Also, just for fun, google "Ted Ts'o".

joncrane3• 9 years ago

AFAICT, the guy went a little too far out of his way to say that lots of rape accusations are fake? But the guy still has job and status, right? Just some social ostracism?

syshum7• 9 years ago

Behavior outside a community should very little consequences inside of it. Of course there are some extreme cases where this might be a problem however those cases are extremely rare and should not generally be used for the basis of creating a Code of conduct or rule set

The wider political climate in world today is making have to be that simple.

While the article talks about more extreme cases like actual physical sexual assault, today far far far too many communities are using simple political disagreement and criticism and framing that as "harassment" using that "harassment" as method to remove any political dissenters from their ranks

I have seen it attempted (some times with great success) in several open source projects.

Personally I dislike the very concept of Codes of Conduct and I generally oppose most of the terms in many of the more modern Code of Conduct being pushed forward, likely as a result of my very libertarian political views. That said Codes of Conducts (should a community or project adopt them) should only be enforced based on actions WITH IN that community and/or toward people that are IN THAT community.

Not generalized actions of people taken in other communities with a different set of conventions and rules.

Code of Conduct should be seen as a contract of Behavior that all people agree to when voluntary associating with the community to treat all other MEMBERS of that community based on that code of conduct, it should not apply to conduct when interacting with people not a part of that community and thus never agreed to the code of conduct.

naturalgradient• 9 years ago

I completely agree, the code of conduct has been used multiple times as a trojan horse in the sense that it only contains things nobody could reasonably disagree with (because who would not want a welcoming environment), only to then be used to shun /outcast people based on views particularly on gender and diversity. This is one of the issues Sam Altman referred to in his blog that simply cannot be talked about in Silicon Valley currently.

DanielBMarkham• 9 years ago

I'm going to upvote this, even though it's another in a long line of "I don't understand classical liberalism or the roots of our modern secular society" posts by various authors, both famous and not.

At the heart of a lot of this is the simple question: is our larger world supposed to be one big social group? Some folks think yes. For those folks, if you have a small community, it's a legitimate question as to how much "control" you should have on members when they are outside that community.

To me this is an answered question and the answer is no, small groups and large groups of people are completely different things. Trying to shoe-horn experiences and ideas about one group into the other group leads to nothing but heartache and disappointment.

But since so many folks are struggling so much, it's a conversation that needs to continue for a while. Hopefully it will lead somewhere positive.

ADD: I will, however, admit to having much frustration watching my tech friends struggle so much with concepts that should have been part of their early education. Speaking humorously, I reserve the right to buy an inflatable copy of "On Liberty" and start beating a few of them about the head with it if things don't change.

danschumann• 9 years ago

Well, when the inner community relies heavily on trust, such as a company where you handle peoples' money, or even teach them about money, I think integrity is such a highly valued quality, that you would be extremely sensitive to any sign that an individual lacks it ( ie acting differently in different situations, or cheating on their spouse, for example ). "If a spouse can't trust a person, why should I trust them as their boss?" -Dave Ramsey

alexandercrohde2• 9 years ago

I think this article doesn't take a broad enough view of the question. As stated, it's a very large (and non-trivial) question.

For example, as stated, the question includes questions like: - Should America care if somebody is convicted of a crime by a foreign nation?

- Should a school care if a candidate to be a teacher was discovered viewing child pornography?

- Should a job care if/why you got fired from your last job?

- Should you care why your ex's last relationship failed?

The answer to all of these is obviously "depends on the specifics." It's tempting to draw hard boundaries so as to prevent people from weaponizing politics. Unfortunately, I just don't think hard-boundaries are coherent here.

quotemstr• 9 years ago

The answer is clearly "never" --- the attitude expressed in the article leads toward totalitarian control over people's personal lives. Toleration, as Europe took hundreds of years to painfully discover, is the way you build a cohesive society around people who disagree. When you ban cooperation among people with divergent political opinions, you not only lose out on any positive-sum productivity gains from the interaction, but also intensify these political differences and turn them into real rifts in society.

I am disappointed in the contemporary trend to invest imaginary "harms" and propose remedies that, in the end, boil down to persecuting people for their beliefs. Altman is definitely right about the social atmosphere in tech. Imagining that we should, say, ban contributions to an open source project from someone who also participates in 4chan is part of the problem.

saalweachter2• 9 years ago

SATSQ.

Behavior outside a community should have consequences inside it when it has consequences inside it.

If your behavior outside of a community causes an uproar and crisis inside the community when it becomes known, it has already had a consequence inside the community. It will already have future ramifications. All you can do at that point is decide whether you want the future ramifications to include a commendation, condemnation or silence from the community.

Communities are not hermetically sealed environments. In my opinion it is silly and childish to pretend they are.

fzeroracer3• 9 years ago

This is one of the issues with this debate. As you mentioned if your behavior has caused an uproar/crisis, then it already has and will have consequences. People might quit, they might get angry and so forth.

When people seem to talk about consequence in this manner they seem to mean that 'People should stop caring about what other people have said or done', even if it means ignoring things like how a person believes you are literally a lesser human being due to some trait you were born with. 'Diversity of Thought' as a statement has been latched onto as being an excuse rather than its original purpose.

explainplease10• 9 years ago

when it becomes known

When "it becomes known" is a matter of one person going on a moral crusade to destroy the other person's reputation and position because of something about them, wholly unrelated to the project, which they personally dislike--is it still valid for there to be "consequences" within the community?

If so, it seems like only a matter of time for all of us, because surely all of us do things or hold opinions that someone else in a community we participate in would find unacceptable. Therefore, all that is required for anyone to destroy anyone else is to "cause an uproar and crisis" about them.

What will you say when someone causes an uproar and crisis about you?

saalweachter2• 9 years ago

I'm not going to say it doesn't suck.

Unrequited love sucks. Losing an election sucks. Being kicked out of a community sucks. Losing your job sucks.

Doesn't matter if you "deserve" it or not. Still sucks.

Maybe it sucks more when there's malice in the revelation, than if someone just sent an email to the wrong mailing list or if two people unexpectedly ran into each other somewhere neither expected the other to be.

But the bell has been rung. What do you want people to do, to treat their feelings like jurors, "that evidence has been obtained improperly, you are instructed to disregard it."?

junkscience2017• 9 years ago

its quite simple really, if you are a conservative at a Silicon Valley company, just lie to anyone who tries to reveal your belief system.

real shame we don't have a President Sanders...yes, really, oh yes I agree...

geebee• 9 years ago

There's a difference between behavior and speech, though it can become a fuzzy line (is a large donation behavior or speech?).

One thing some of the comments have touched on is the notion of "beyond the pale" - a term that somewhat ironically (for this discussion) refers to occurrences outside the bounds of British law. There are opinions that fall outside the standards of decency, and this can, legitimately, make organizations reluctant to work with some people.

Many issue positions, over time, can go from widely accepted, to controversial, to widely discredited, to beyond the pale, essentially and uncontroversially indecent. If this is the case, it's almost certain that we're going through this process right now. Unfortunately, there is also a strong political tendency to scold and smear and be as uncharitable as possible to the other side. In aggregate, people get accused of being on the "wrong side of history" at least twice as often as they actually are, since these accusations go in both directions on virtually every controversial topic.

CM30• 9 years ago

I still think the answer here is 'never', communities should be as self contained as possible and not try and take over personal lives. To do otherwise reminds of those schools that try and punish students (and sometimes teachers) for actions done in their free time; an absolutely ridiculous overreach that makes things worse rather than better.

And I stick by that for communities I run. On every site I'm an admin/founder, the rule is that (legal issues excepting), we won't punish you for things done outside of the community. It's not our place to do so, and we have no interest in witch hunting or trying to find reasons to deplatform people for things they do in their free time elsewhere.

smoyer• 9 years ago

This is an interesting post - not because of the content provided by the author but because of this discussion thread!

When should behaviour outside a community have consequences inside it?

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