FreeBSD has a politics problem

[Stephen Cook]

On 2018-03-05 12:51, Bryan Drewery wrote:
> On 3/4/2018 5:13 PM, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
>> deb at freebsdfoundation.org wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>>
>>> This is Deb Goodkin, Executive Director for the FreeBSD Foundation. The
>>> Foundation isn't responsible for the CoC, that would be the FreeBSD
>>> Project's core team. Please don't spread mis-information about the
>>> Foundation censoring discussions. Someone else on this thread can hopefully
>>> direct you to the correct mailing list for discussing your concerns
>>> regarding the Code of Conduct. 
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Deb Goodkin
>>> Executive Director
>>> The FreeBSD Foundation
>>
>> Hi Deb,
>> Did the foundation pay for it ? 
> 
> The discussion needs to not demonize people or entities involved on
> either side.  It seems to me that it would have been better had this CoC
> had more outside review and possibly a draft period where the project
> asked for community feedback.  IMHO it's not too late to go down those
> paths but we need to take a deep breath and consider that the intentions
> of the CoC are only good; that the project should be more welcoming for
> everyone.  There's nothing wrong with the Foundation sponsoring a CoC,
> even if it had flaws.  It likely would need to help sponsor independent
> reviews to weed out unneutral language.

The problem with the Foundation sponsoring a CoC is that a small group
of extremists forced their way in to generate and implement their own
set of rules, secretly. I have seen it happen to other open source
projects, and other places in the world and on the internet. They are
specialists at being offended, and experts at milking money from
foundations and organizations to make sure those organizations properly
babysit their members so that nobody publicly insults said experts /
extremists or their chosen protected classes. They bully and intimidate
with threats of "outing" people as racist sexist etc, regardless of
whether it is true or not (they only want to shut up opposition, even if
is opposition to their tactics and not their cause). You think it was an
accident this was done behind closed doors? They know they cannot
survive the sunlight.

It doesn't matter if they are vaguely moving in the general direction of
a better society... their tactics make them pure evil, and I do not
support it. Sorry if this counts as "demonizing" or "othering" but I do
not stand by anyone who tries to insert themselves as the new master of
how I think and speak.

I suspect from the lack of response to my earlier question that I
accidentally paid for this when I thought I was donating to help develop
an OS. Future FreeBSD donations will now go somewhere else.


-- Stephen