gian

I don’t trust them considering their enthusiasm over it and the comments about Finnish history.

If, as it seems to emerge, they are “forced” to do it under legal advise, it is completely irrelevant that you (or anybody else for that matter) trust them or not.

About their “enthusiasm”, all I can see is that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia is not sees as that friendly and trustworthy anymore: they had a signed treaty with Ukraine to preserve Ukranian integrity in exchange of the nuclear weapons (from URSS), we see how much Russia valued their own word. I cannot blame someone from a country which share a border with Russia for not having simpaty for Russia.
True, someone innocent will pay, but it is not that different from having Russian scientist turned away from CERN or any other situation where there was a collaboration. It is sad but on the other hand it is a consequence.

Go read “Finnisu Civil War: History, Memory, Legacy” by Tepora and try to laugh at the comments about history. Impossible.

As you cannot laugh to any other memory of any other war.

True, but sometimes you have not any other choice.

It’s literally just speculation.

I agree.

Even if it were true, what the fuck does that have to do with the nationality of a few Linux contributors?

Probably nothing, I agree. But since there are sanctions against Russia I suppose they have not really any other choice.

Is that sad ? Yes, but it is life.

I suppose any law in any jurisdiction you want to use it, don’t you think ?

Guys, are you all really that young to not remember alla the fuss with crypto software ? Same thing here: you want to distrubute something in a country, you need to follow the country’s law, even if they are stupid.

“Compliance requirements”? The kernel’s american now?! WTF?

Nope, but it is not above the law.

Even Wikipedia, which is a shockingly bloodthirsty pro-NATO outlet, admits there is zero proof that a “Russian state actor” did this, there are just “western security experts” claiming it (as usual), and opinion is divided.

Well, I don’t think that a “[insert your preferred state] state actor” would ever coming out saying “yes, we tried to to it”.

Not to say that what Wikipedia say is false but on the other hand I am not sure how to check if it is true, in these cases.

Only real option is to crypt them before putting them on the VPS, but at this point a VPS is pretty useless.

I am using both of them without any problem.

The main advantage of Flatpaks (and things like AppImage) is that you have a single “executable” with everything you need and sometime that is useful even if the software is Opensource but the building dependencies are a nightmare. Subsurface (a dive log software) is an example.

If the AUR package is a simple build (or a binary which is a converted package) then go for it. If you need to start building a lot of additional package from AUR to meet the dependencie then I would suggest, in order, to look for the Flatpak (or AppImage) package or to install an helper to build the packages

Vanilla gnome is perfectly fine by itself if you understand the workflow.

Well, maybe it is the DE that should be able to adapt to my workflow and not the other way around

There are two tensions here:

Community building Code production

Community building can be done without any coding, coding can be done without any community. However, to build a large project you need them both.

We agree on that.

In a large volunteer project like this, not everything can be worked on. You become selective. We are going to major on this thing, or specifically talk about that project to get community engagement and get the thing done. This drives the project, she helps it to stop chasing hairs. Someone has to decide what feature is going in this release to make it ready to be a release candidate.

That group of people, ultimately making and influencing those decisions, is the CoC.

Nope.
CoC mean “Code of Conduct”. It dictates how the interperpersonal relations should be in the community, not the direction the project need to follow. Which means that if you make a request I should not answer with “fuck your request” but with some more appropriate “we have not the manpower/motivation/infrastructure/whatever reason to do it, but feel free to do it yourself and submit it for review” answer (that’s of course is a simple example, bear with me in this case) if I am not interested in your request or there are some real limitations.

Let’s take a for-instance: Sign up boxes.

For years, Linux sign up allows you to record random data into your profile, office, phone number, etc. These are text, and can be anything. Now, what if there’s a rising need to add a minicom number(minix, used to be used by the deaf to send messages to an organisation, before email). As a hearing person, this is going to be a low priority for me, so I work on something else. I’ve got spare capacity, so if the project leaders are calling for help on this thing, I can go and help.

True, but if you think that it is the CoC that produce this result, you are way wrong.
What produce this result is that people are willing to work on a feature even if they don’t need it and if there is enough request for that feature. If you are the only one person who ask for a feature you will get low priority even if you are deaf (just to keep up with your example).
What do you think you can do if I don’t want to work on your feature ? Use the CoC to compel me to do the work ? Do you think you can threaten me with a ban from the project ? Try it and you lose one developer (and probably others).

This, ultimately, builds a better over-all product, but it’s not something I’d have noticed by myself, because I’m not part of the deaf community.

True, but it is simply the fact that the developers lowered the barrier to make a request on one side and on the other side someone made a good and motivated request.
The point is that this has nothing to do with the fact that a deaf person is in a leadership position.

In this case, the merit, the qualification, for being on the CoC is being a member of a section of the community. It brings valuable a viewpoint, and adds a voice at the table that can make a real difference. Most coders know that having a wish list of features at the start can make it infinitely easier to add them, than having to go back an rewrite to make them happen. Having a voice that might need that feature makes a difference

Again, what you are asking for is to have a way to communicate with the developers and possibly a clear way that indicate how a request is handled.

But having a way for the community to communicate with the developers and the leadership of the project is not the same as having a CoC that mandate that the leadership must include members from minorities.

But in the end we are debating about nothing, the project was forked so I suppose that we just need to wait to see how it will end.

I guess it can be simple like that when you are the maintainer. It is definetly not as simple when there are many of them. Of course you can run it like that and many do, but the whole mentality is pretty limited.

Why limited ?. In the end I am pursuing my vision for the project.

Not really about what is the absolute correct answer. Our values are clearly different. More like what I believe works best in the long term.

I just acknowledge that at some point the vision of the author(s) and the vision of the community (or part of it) can differ and that at this point it is better for everyone to follow their vision.

where the committee perform worse because the “forced” member

Ah, the common strawman. A committee where everyone thinks pretty much the same is somehow better than one where a few have a different opinion?

Sometime yes, sometime not.

It all depend on the context. The direction of a project ? Then maybe the fact that the committee has at least roughly the same vision is a good thing, it keep the project focused and progressing, as long as there is a way to offer suggestions.

A political group ? Then it is better to have more points of view, as long as you can decide something in the end.

There is not a single best solution.

Such discussions took place decades ago when pretty much every manager was only male. And they often honestly thought they did the right thing. When there were more women forced to be managers the group as a whole got better insights into different opinions. Which helped to see that certain things could be done a different way.

That to me is history, plus rather logical.

On the other hand I can point to examples where when a woman, to stay within your example, were put in charge the result were disastrous, so what ?
Maybe if we start to think that being in some groups does not inherently make you a better candidate to something than we will start to solve the problem.

Having a few people with different opinions is further usually good for a committee.

As long as they know what they are talking about yes, else it is just stupid.
The point of all this discussion is that Jon Ringer objected to have an hard requirement for one person in the committee need to be from a minority, which honestly is not that stupid thing to say.

It’s not about “satisfying the minorities”. It’s about ensuring a basic base level of respect and behaviour for people from all backgrounds.

All true, but here is the point: what you are asking for is to have decent people and not assholes. And to be a decent person has nothing to do with the group you are part of. So as long as you have not the guarantee that someone from a minority cannot be an asshole (which you cannot) you still have the same problem, only with a different target.

So maybe we should start to look at the single person rather then from which group it come from.

It’s really not that hard! If you don’t feel minoritised in your daily life and therefore don’t see the importance, fine, but all of us are only one incident or cultural shift to end up being the target so if you aren’t motivated by the plight of people you are happy to “other” than do so because one day you might be the other.

Honestly, and without any second meaning, I think that there are way more complex reasons than the “we are a minority” on why some minorities are is the position you describe.

You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman.

Why ? Because I basically say “keep these personal informations for yourself since they are not needed while developing” ?

No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status.

But they are saying that a board member should be elected based on the fact that he came from a minority, which is as wrong as asking that a code contribution should be accepted based on the minority status.

They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community.

Agree on this. My point though is that the people in these positions need to be there for the merit and not for a status.

You can’t get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it.

Nope. You can enforce a CoC if the ones delegated to enforce it are acknowledged as authoritative people and there is a clear path to do it. If you put a person in charge to enforce the code “just becasue [insert your favorite minority reason]” you end in the same place: the CoC will be selectively enforced only on a certain group of people.

Your enforced anonymity doesn’t work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk).

Assuming you track them outside the project, yes you are right.

Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don’t get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination.

That is what you are saying now, not me.
I said that I don’t care about what your identity is but only about the quality of your work, why did you assume that i mean that only the minorities should not disclose these informations ?

Else explain to me why it is relevant that the pull request just created is done by someone from a minority group.

You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it.

Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. I lose something if a board member of the project I contribute is elected only because he is from a minority group because he replace a more knowledgeable member and the average quality of the work decline.

If you aren’t in a minority and don’t care about those that are then just say so!

It is not that I don’t care, it is that in certain situation it not pertinent if you are from a minority or not. Software development, particularly OSS where the entry point is really low, is one of this situation: why I should care about the group you are part of when you submit a contribute ? How it is pertinent. Do you want to have a voice in the project ? Earn it by contributing and being better of the ones you think are bad and or toxic. But wanting to have a say in the project “just because” is toxic too.

I think the easy answer to that is “because it is not as trivial as forking a small app that could run off of a git repo”, it’s a whole operating system involving a lot of infrastructure and a huge community around it.

This It’s just an excuse. If the authors of the open letter are active developers and reflect what the majority of the community thinks then they already have the infrastructure (or big part of it, else how the fuck they work ?) and the community behing them. Man, it would not be the first time a distro to be forked.

I think people like you really don’t understand what OSS software is.

What you don’t understand is that OSS let you do what you want with the software I (an possibly others) created but not let you to dictate to me how I must run the project or what direction the project need to go.
We can discuss of course, and maybe sometimes I agree with you and sometimes not (and the contrary) but in the end I am the maintainer so I have the last word.

So no, if I create an OSS project and have a vision for it, if you don’t agree I am fully entaitled to say “ok, just make your own, fork mine if you like” to you.

What makes you think (“identity”) politics are unrelated to software development?

The fact that the code quality is independent from your “identity” ?

Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn’t make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination.

So remove discrimination. Put in the CoC that any information about gender, race, religion and so on must not be disclosed since it is not relevant to the quality of the code/work you submit. Then you have merit only.

I really find stupid that someone really think that his contribution must be accepted just because he is from a minority, irregardless the quality.

He is not wrong though.
Number aside, if you have a hard requirement that in a committee board there should be someone from a minority then you will end in a situation where the committee perform worse because the “forced” member has no merit to be in, or at least it is an very high probability.

Monitors are wider than they are taller.

Personally, exactly for this reason.