The grand total of all injustices done in all software projects to all people across the world across all time doesn’t amount to a drop of spit compared to what happens every day in, e.g., Gaza or Ukraine.
But I use my voice where it can be heard. On Facebook I rage against the larger injustices of the world. Here I stick to injustices in my immediate community. I’m not the first and - in the absence of real change - won’t be the last.
Ironically enough, I had stopped posting in the PSF category entirely 2 weeks before the ban, and represented to the CoC WG (when I filed my own CoC complaint) that I intended never to post there again.
There was no “posting behavior” left to “correct”, except that they wouldn’t take not posting at all for an answer. Going on to post baseless specific charges was on them. The SC’s reply (in part):
It’s not that your behaviour hasn’t been just fine when you were completely silent, it’s more that it takes the wheels of bureaucracy a little time to process these things.
Posting false charges is unjust, immoral, and unethical. Not compared to, e.g., genocide, but in the context of what the relatively insignificant PSF does, it certainly applies. But:
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” - Thomas Sowell
It doesn’t matter one whit who claimed offense when the thing being claimed isn’t real. “Privacy” has nothing to do with it then. For example, I never even mentioned “reverse sexism”, let alone defended the doctrine (which I certainly would not have done, had I mentioned it - I reject that doctrine).
If there is such a post, link to it - nothing needs to be revealed about who took offense - it’s enough if a “reasonable person” could have taken sane offense at it. If not, retract the baseless charge. Etc. Do t really want to be associated with an organization that doesn’t extend basic human decency toward its disfavored members?
It’s a complex decision, because the PSF (including the groups in question) does a lot of good in the world too. If it were just about me, I would have vanished forever last August 7. To the extent it was partly my child, it’s hard for me to give up on the PSF as a lost cause. I still mostly wish it well, and absolutely still love the actual community.
Before @gussis’s recent message, this topic went about 7 weeks without a peep. Stonewalling hasn’t worked, and won’t. It went too far this time. “Just stop talking about it” here leaves a community seething with suppressed anger and fear. If that’s what’s wanted, close the topic. It’s not what I want.
For a start, for claims supposedly based on public posts, supply links to the posts in question. They presumably read them, right? While I may be the oldest person in the PSF now, even I mastered copy/paste for URLs
As is, at least 3 bloggers dissected those claims one by one. Some were so vague no two of us agreed on what they might be talking about. As a Reddit commenter said:
It’s like you take everything we know to work about a working justice system and do the complete opposite. There’s really just no way this system could ever produce good results, no matter who is in charge.
There is a vast gap between perfection and what’s actually done. I’m a “perfect is the enemy of the good” guy, but I see so far no will to make any improvements to the processes.
But there’s a different topic for that, also going nowhere: