FESCo Meeting Summary - 2009-03-06

[Seth Vidal]

> I've only been using Fedora for about a week now, previously I used
> Debian for the past 10 years.
> Debian has various processes for dealing with difficult people. If
> anyone (including developers) continually is difficult on a mailing
> list then they are banned from the list. If a developer behaves badly
> enough, a motion can be presented for a call to vote for expulsion.
> I recall this happening a couple of times over the years.
>
> I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, but I do think that they are on to
> something with a code of conduct that can help to keep things civil.
>
> Just my 2p
>

Maybe I'm being ridiculous but:

  if  a person is banned from the community for a social-rule violation 
that they do not accept or acknowledge then:

1. you better hope we can live w/o their particular contribution. B/c if 
we can't we've just screwed ourselves.

2. we better hope we can actually enforce your ban, b/c if we can't 
then they can make the entire mailing list/infrastructure we're trying to 
protect useless out of sheer spite. If you've never seen a mailing list 
TRULY spam-bombed by someone willing to subscribe manually and obliterate 
a list, it is not something you want to see twice. Spam filters won't help 
if the message would otherwise be HAM but is sent, say, 2000 times a day 
to 10000+ users on the list.

3. we better hope that we lockdown bugzilla accounts or woe be unto us.

Code of conduct violation enforcement is nearly impossible on the 
internet. If a person want to cause excruciating pain to everyone and, ultimately, halt all 
progress on fedora, they can. It's not even that hard.

I'm sorry, but attemtping to enforce a code of conduct is just silly.

I work for red hat now, they can discharge me if I'm out of line. That's 
true. Before I worked for red hat, what exactly could be done? 
Considering some of the, umm, disagreements I have had with people on
this and other lists and the invective hurled back and forth, I'm
reasonably confident that no one in fedora could have stopped me with a
code of conduct.


-sv