Visual F# Forked, Removing Abusive Code of Conduct

[Bryan Edds]

I've forked Visual F# Github repository, removing the abusive Code of Conduct - https://github.com/bryanedds/visualfsharp

This repository will be kept up to date, and any submissions will be posted to the original repository, minus the removal of said Code of Conduct.

This is just another logical step in providing an alternative F# community where the participants do not need to worry about abuse by corporate power or social justice harassment.

Other links to the alternative F# community include -

fpchat.co

https://voat.co/v/fsharp

That's all for now!

[Stachu Korick]

I understand there is some sort of pain here in regards to this whole Code of Conduct thing.

At this point, I'm a bit lost, and have no strong opinion one way or another, but it'd be nice to resolve any community-wide issues quickly, rather than let them split the community in any way.

As far as I've seen, the F# community has been very loving, liberal, and generally low-drama.

It's one of the things I love about this language and the community surrounding it.

As such, I have a few questions:

- Could someone point me to any history of this problem in our community? I think I vaguely remember this being brought up some months ago, but forget where.

- What's an appropriate place to talk about this issue as an F# community?

- What's an appropriate place to talk about this issue as a software development community as a WHOLE? I consider myself a polyglot developer, and want the ability to freely jump between languages and communities with little drama. It'd be nice if we could come to some sort of consensus.

Of course, not all decisions have to reach a middle ground.

That said, while we may have political difference about COCs, we don't need to be COCks about it. (I hope that was as funny as intended)

Thoughts?

[Gauthier Segay]

> Could someone point me to any history of this problem in our community? I think I vaguely remember this being brought up some months ago, but forget where.

I think the thread which had the most exchange in the past is this one:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fsharp-opensource/pwyRoEgEpyE

> What's an appropriate place to talk about this issue as an F# community?

I think here is a good place, this mailing list is / should be the
main meeting point of the community to interact in the open.

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[Keith Dahlby]

That linked thread and https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/pull/772 are the only discussions that I know of. Unless I missed something, the introduction of a Code of Conduct is not a reaction to anything specific to the F# community. Rather, having one is viewed by FSSF and Microsoft leadership as a positive signal to would-be contributors. A vocal minority disagrees. Judging from participant count, most simply don't care. Which is fine - again, the community seems to have adequately self-regulated until now. Hopefully.

But in a thread about conduct, we have a "COCk" joke. With a parenthetical note that all but acknowledges it may have been in poor taste. That's why CoCs exist - as affirmation that we would prefer that you listen to that voice in your head. Because we would rather be intentionally inclusive rather than unintentionally exclusive.

[Stachu Korick]

Is it not exclusive to disallow people to use the mannerisms they possess?

You don't like my humor - that's fine with me.

Why should that mean I don't get to use it?

I'm not about to get deep into a political battle, though. I don't have time or patience for that.

More so just an inquiry, but I appreciate the references sent both publicly here and also privately by email outside of this chain.

Cheers,

Stachu

[Keith Dahlby]

> Is it not exclusive to disallow people to use the mannerisms they possess?

It would be exclusive to dismiss an individual with Tourette syndrome who is literally incapable of avoiding potentially offensive language. Outside of that sort of condition, mannerisms are a choice, thus being excluded because of them is a choice.

> Why should that mean I don't get to use it?

Do you truly believe there is no reason to ever moderate what you say or how you say it? This isn't a casual gathering among friends, this is a global organization with a potential audience of literally anyone online. How much of that audience is it acceptable to alienate to make room for COCk jokes?

It comes down to this:

"You are not welcome because of how you choose to conduct yourself."

"You are not welcome because of who you are as a person."

[panesofglass]

Unfortunately, no one quite agrees with what is and is not "choice," thus the problem of the CoC. Interesting perspective to consider: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. I would disagree with him about some things, but I found his book quite interesting.

[Stachu Korick]

Thanks Ryan, I'll give it a read.

Keith: decent points. I haven't yet formed opinions. Will let marinate.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 10:35 AM, panesofglass <ryan....@panesofglass.org> wrote:

Unfortunately, no one quite agrees with what is and is not "choice," thus the problem of the CoC. Interesting perspective to consider: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. I would disagree with him about some things, but I found his book quite interesting.

[panesofglass]

Stachu, interesting point in the book is that all our behaviors are predictive scientifically, even though that isn't yet proven. This, morals are real and embedded in our DNA, etc. At least, that is how I understood the premise.

[Mark Rathwell]

Code and state is all we are.  Just like any other system of code and state, when both the code and state are completely understood, behavior and response to inputs can reliably and repeatably be predicted.  

For example, the input of this thread (along with any other relevant environmental parameters), to the code that is me, with the current internal state that I have, will, for some reason, always result in my responding to the thread.

When you attempt to change the behavior of others, you are actually attempting to change either the code of that person, or manipulate the internal state such that the code behaves differently.

We don’t like to believe this, though.  We like to believe we are special, that morals are a universal constant, etc., but we believe these things because nature has selected those traits in us…because believing those things has offered a survival advantage for our species. 

Personally, I’m not crazy about saying “if you have one set of genes, then I will allow you to be yourself, however, if you have another set of genes then you must try to be more like me”.  That said, some balance of behaviors has to be agreed upon for any group that reaches a certain size, and I am not in any kind of position of power or influence in this community to say what that balance should be.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 10:41 AM, panesofglass <ryan....@panesofglass.org> wrote:

Stachu, interesting point in the book is that all our behaviors are predictive scientifically, even though that isn't yet proven. This, morals are real and embedded in our DNA, etc. At least, that is how I understood the premise.

[Stachu Korick]

Ryan: 

Bought the book - will read it in the coming weeks after it gets here. :)

Thank you for the thoughts.

Mark:

I love the analogy!

Glad I could bring this conversation to an existential conversation, ha.

[Nicolas]

Keith, you are not faithful in your representation.

Most of the thread was about what exactly were the material evidence backing up the claims that such a code of conduct was necessary : 

- first on legal basis (as in, here are some laws 1, 2 and 3) 

- after those laws (which would be purely US anyway) were not found, it was hinted that repeated suggestions by some lawyer were made. we still have no evidence that it was the case. 

- as for the discussion of such code of conduct, the version history proves that it was inexistent and pertained to syntaxic issues

We still have no confirmation as to any of the reasons put forward were for real.

The concept of agreeing of disagreeing is completely different matter, and does not pertain to any common (US) legal framework.

To close off on the legal perspective, we do know contracting over public order matter is plainly illegal in many countries, notably those of roman centralized tradition. So the idea of "agreeing" or not is further off topic.

[Jacqueline Homan]

Hey ya'll,

My apologies for being about 3 months late to this convo, but I was just made aware of it a few days ago while recuperating from double pneumonia (around chasing down my startup boss for the two paychecks she and her co-founder owe me for a horrid legacy CakePHP project - YUCK!)

I am an escapee from the OOP field and F# was the first functional programming language I was exposed to. I have found the F# community to be a really great group of people, and really brilliant engineers that are very welcoming of ANYONE who wants to learn F# and promote its use and contribute to its growth.

Aside from the functional programming things that F# really makes cool, the one thing I really was impressed by was the fact that the F# community was not full of politically charged drama and profesional drama queens. I really liked that! 

Every time I poked my head into the F# slack channel, it was full of coders who were talking about coding and F# and more coding and more F#. It's GREAT! I LOVE the F# community! The only "community issues" I ever saw was squabbles over which direction the F# language should go (i.e. whether or not to be more C#-like or not). But nothing at all about what the CoC pushers claim there is that would necessitate a CoC.

As Ryan Riley and Bryan Edds and several others in the F# community already know, I am someone who came from generational poverty and  I am also a human trafficking survivor who had been very vocal in the trafficking survivors' rights movement - i.e. fighting for basic human rights for a deeply stigmatized group of crime victims because we were condemned to unrelieved abject poverty and lifelong joblessness due to the prostitution records we were slapped with as a direct result of having been trafficked as homeless children and teens. 

Bottom line: you don't get much more downtrodden and systemically oppressed than that.

As a woman who is probably from the most un-represented group in tech, I would like to say that those who are aggressively promoting (pushing) for a CoC do NOT speak for me.

Terms like "micro-aggression" are nonsensical to me. I've suffered and survived a degree and depth of brutality, exploitation, abuse and ongoing systemic injustice that has been anything BUT "micro", so I tend to see things from a very different perspective than people who go out of their way to be offended and who never leave home without a stack of Butthurt Report forms in their backpacks—these are people who have not suffered any real, actual injustice economically, psychologically, and physically.

I am very happy to be a part of the F# community, and the larger functional programming community at large. I don't think those who are trying to create dissension by trying to force this CoC on the F# community genuinely care about "increasing diversity" and breaking down barriers of entry into the IT field.

They're professional shit disturbers and bullies who don't really give two figs about the F# community (or any other IT community, for that matter), or about real victims of actual oppression and discrimination.

They use disadvantaged, marginalized people to give "street cred" to their political platform which, from everything I've seen, has been all about bullying and NOT about truly providing any door-opening or helping hands up into job opportunities for poor disadvantaged and marginalized people who want to break into the software development field—something for which I personally have called them out on repeatedly.

And I am not the only impoverished woman or minority struggling against tremendous obstacles to break into IT who has voiced disgust over their tactics, either.

I was present at Oplagate last summer. CoC pushers led by Coraline Ada Ehmke, opened an issue tracking ticket on the Opal repo, demanding the removal of a top contributor to the Opal project, Elia Schito, for the "hate crime" of posting a "transphobic" Tweet on his personal Twitter page against transgendered people. (This "hate crime", BTW, consisted of a carton picture of a T-shirt that reads "1 + 1 = 2, X + Y = man, X + X = woman").

Not only were they demanding that Elia Schito be kicked off the Opal repo, they were even going so far as to try to professionally blacklist him, crippling any future employment opportunities for him.

And Elia Schito was not the first developer that this sort of lynch mob justice happened to. One of the guys kicked out of PyCon 2013 suffered similarly, as also did Adria Richards who actually started that whole Donglegate drama (which again, was much ado about nothing).

They also targeted the guy (I forget his name, but he's a Python developer) who started up the Gittips platform, from which SJW's who are NOT hurting economically due to any systemic discrimination, were the biggest beneficiaries! The result: The Gittips platform was wrecked and as a result of that, those software developers and aspiring software developers who are truly poor and in need of some IT community financial support are without the means to get any financial support in order to be in a position of being able to afford to work without salaries to contribute to the open source community.


Now,  I am relatively new to the F#/functional programming community and I have only started learning programming a little over 2 years ago. So what I have to say may not carry much weight. But if you want my opinion on this CoC matter: The F# community does NOT need a CoC and it would really sadden me greatly to see a really good community being bullied into accepting that Trojan horse. Because it really is not about increasing diversity or helping people disadvantaged by poverty and discrimination to break into tech or creating "safe spaces" for us. It's all about bullying. And I am very deeply concerned about that.

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 7:09:21 PM UTC-5, Bryan Edds wrote:

[Isaac Abraham]

Hi Jacqueline,

 

I don’t want to enflame this situation any further but I do want to briefly reply. Obviously this is something that you feel passionately about. But there are people who are affected by this, and there have been cases of strong abuse being directed at individuals in the past. Perhaps you are not aware of those incidents.

 

All I can say is that whilst a CoC is not something that I was personally crying out for before it was announced, it doesn’t affect me on a day-to-day basis and I think it is a positive thing for a number of people that have been affected by negative incidents in the community.

 

Also – note that this CoC is simply on a single repo, the Visual FSharp language repo. It doesn’t apply elsewhere. So if you’re not planning on working on the compiler any time soon, there’s probably no need to worry about this. There’s another one on the F# Foundation I believe, so if you were to join the foundation you would need to agree to that CoC (perhaps someone from the foundation can elaborate on this point).

 

Cheers

 

I

--

[Bryan Edds]

Yes, you would not believe what a minefield of sexual and racial discrimination that repository was before the CoC came and saved us all from evil white males and their unchecked privilege.

/sarcasm

At any rate, I think the next course of action should be to put together a well-worded petition to attempt to persuade the Microsoft to remove the code of conduct, or at least demonstrably abusive 'Contributor Covenant' - http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/25/github-hires-notorious-social-justice-warrior-to-work-on-anti-harassment/

You have to remember that the people behind this are literally the same as those who have installed themselves in academia to set up kangaroo courts against their students to strip them of their due process - all as a means to enforce their bankrupt ideology. The lives of several innocent male students have be unapologetically ruined due to this entryism and follow-up abuse by the quasi-legal system installed by the SJWs - http://www.newsweek.com/2015/12/18/other-side-sexual-assault-crisis-403285.html

Social justice is that inclusive movement whose first order of business is to expel and damage anyone who disagrees with them. Here are some links on why it's time to neutralize their abusive artifacts in the F# community -

This is how they installed themselves and drained the resources of the GNOME Foundation - http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/09/more-social-justice-convergence-in.html

This is how they attempt to use the Contributor Covenant to expel open source contributes - https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941. Note that this vile person now works at Github on an SJW enforcement panel! - http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/25/github-hires-notorious-social-justice-warrior-to-work-on-anti-harassment/

This is a survival guide for when SJW's use this CoC to attack you professionally - http://www.voxday.net/mart/SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide.pdf

Here is Eric S. Raymond's take, noting how these same SJW's follow Linux Tarvolds around at meetups and attempt to frame his for sexual assault to remove him from the Linux community - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918

Here is an interview with Eric in the tech press - http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/01/07/social-justice-warriors-wreaking-havoc-in-open-source-software/

If you don't think this crap impacts you, here's a thread on how the exact same thing has affected others - https://www.reddit.com/r/TiADiscussion/comments/3oda11/has_sjw_ruined_something_for_you/

This is the THE book that uncovers the intent and abuse behind this CoC - http://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

This is my commentary on the book, having been abused by SJW's IN THIS VERY COMMUNITY - https://medium.com/@bryanedds/a-review-of-sjws-always-lie-18218f02abfe

The code of conduct is racist, misandrist, anti-privacy, anti-collaboration, and most damaging of all for this community, anti-merit. Several people have already stated their refusal to participate due to this racist, misandrist power-grabbing. I could go on and on and on... but people with open minds should pretty well understand my point by now.

The point is this - SJW's aren't out to stop abuse, they're out to legislate, for themselves, a monopoly on it.

Obtaining that monopoly is _precisely_ the purpose that significant portions of this code of conduct is intended to serve.

Let us work together to remove it before it starts removing us. It's more than just 'feeling passionate about a subject' - it's about protecting our own communities and our own livelihoods.

- Bryan

[rj]

Get rid of the SJW CoC

[Tomas Petricek (Info)]

Hello everyone,

I think the possible views on the topic have been already well presented in this discussion and thanks to everyone for expressing their views.

 

The original announcement from Bryan includes links for people who are not willing to work in an environment with a Code of Conduct and I think that it also provides the best place for follow-up conversation. The site has a thread on this (https://voat.co/v/fsharp/comments/739380) and I think that’s a perfect place for anyone with more concerns and things to share, but I would prefer to keep this mailing list for more technical discussions.

 

Thanks,

Tomas