It's Time for a FOSS Community Code of Conduct

October 28, 2008
By Bruce Byfield

Personal abuse, quotes taken out of context, misrepresentations, outright lies -- if you have any visibility in the free and open source software (FOSS) community, the chances are that you regularly face all these kinds of attacks. You can try to answer them, but the people responsible seem to have endless energy for debate.

In the end, you have to fall silent for lack of time, leaving the attackers crowing over your defeat, and yourself wondering where the attack came from and what you do about it.

You can see this growing viciousness in the hostile reaction to KDE last spring, or in sites like the just-defunct Linux Hater's Blog, as well as the articles of professional and semi-professional journalists who demonize anyone who fails to agree with them completely. More often, though, you see it on mailing lists or in the comments on news sites.

Aaron Seigo of KDE described the problem the other month in his blog:

Every so often someone with a real crank on will start following me around the intrawebs posting their hallowed viewpoint on me. It seems to happen to everyone with an even moderately public profile. Usually they get stuck on one message and then post it consistently everywhere they can as some sort of therapeutic outpouring of their inner angst. Most people don't last more than a couple weeks at this, though I've had a couple of people with real commitment dog me for a year or more.

Seigo admits that, being visible, vocal, and outspoken, he makes an easy target. It's not that he objects to views he doesn't agree with, he says, but that "I don't have time for pointlessness."

Full story

Look, it boils down to bad behavior. What you do in life, your comportment, dictates how you will be perceived, received and treated. Act nicely, and try always to not respond in kind when someone has acted inappropriately toward you. Basic good manners are lacking in most if not all of these on-line exchanges that might not otherwise occur in close quarter face-to-face encounters.

If it helps, make pretend you are talking to your Mother or get a hold of a book on good manners and read it. There. Be nice now, OK?

--Dietrich