[[!tag debian gnu rms software-freedom tolerance governance]]

I want to develop free software with people who lift up each other, and aren't arseholes.

A year ago I left Debian. The process is called retiring in Debian, and it's not final: if you do it in an orderly manner, you can come back again, and be re-instated as a Debian developer with a faster, more lightweight process than is used for entirely new developers. This was the third time I retired. The reasons were different than previously.

The first two times I retired because I was pursuing other passions, and did not feel I could give Debian even the minimal attention and effort required to keep a few minor, leaf packages maintained. This time, I retired because Debian was not fun; it was in fact becoming awful, and I didn't want to participate anymore.

Debian had stopped being fun for me in several ways. One was that the tools, file formats, and workflows Debian uses are getting a little archaic, and generally sub-optimal. Even mundane, everyday tasks involved much more friction than they should. Another is that making any large changes in Debian is too much of an effort, these days, partly because of inertia, partly because it involves so many people.

All of that could have been tolerable, if not for the people. Some of the nicest, most competent people I know work on Debian. It has been a privilege and a joy to work with them.

A few of the other people in Debian I don't want to be associated with in any way, any more.

Debian has some vocal people who treat other people in ways that I don't want to accept. I don't want to go into specifics, or names, because that's not going help me move forward.

This is of course not a new thing. Debian has had problems with people behaving badly for years. I may have contributed to that, passively if not actively. However, as I get older, the friction from dealing with abrasive people is sanding off what thick skin I may have had when younger.

As I get older, I am also learning that some of the things I thought were OK when I was younger, are in fact harmful to other people. I don't want to harm other people, and I don't want to participate in a project where some of the people insist on what I think is harmful behaviour, because they feel it's their right.

Long after I left Debian, RMS managed to collapse the reality distortion field that's been surrounding and protecting him for many years. The triggering event for this was comments he made in a context involving Jeffrey Epstein. The comments caused a public uproar, and as a result RMS resigned from role of president of the Free Software Foundation, which he founded. He is currently still the leader of the GNU project. A lot of people are religously defending RMS and attacking his detractors. I find this to be problematic.

LWN has an excellent article on the topic. RMS has been behaving in problematic ways for a long time. He's not been publicly confronted about it before, at the scale he has been now.

RMS has done some awesome things that he should be honoured for. He started the GNU project and gave it, and the world, a vision of being able to use computers whose entire software stack is free, and inventing copyleft, a legal tool to protect software freedom, as well as writing large amounts of the initial code in the GNU project. He has worked hard and long to help drive the vision of freedom into reality. For this, he shall always be remembered and revered.

That doesn't excuse bad behaviour, such as insisting on abortion jokes, making women feel unwelcome in the GNU project, or various other things. I'm not going to make a list of his shortcomings, because this isn't a critique of RMS specifically. The problem I want to discuss isn't RMS or his personal behaviour.

The problem I do want to discuss is that almost everywhere in the free and open source development communities there's a lot of harmful behavour, and tolerance of it.

Harmful behaviour comes in many forms. Some people, for example, say outright that they don't want women involved in free software development. Others attack gay, lesbian, trans, queer, black, old, young, Christian, Muslim, atheist, any other other group of people identified by whatever attribute the attacker happens to dislike. Yet others are more subtle, not attacking directly, but not giving people in the group they dislike the same chance to participate, learn, grow, and generally be the best person they can be in the context of free software development.

This doesn't just harm the groups of people being targeted. It harms others, who see it happen, and think they might be targeted too, later, maybe for some other reason. It harms reaching the vision of software freedom, because it shoves large parts of humanity outside the software freedom movement, robbing the movement from many voices and much effort. This makes it harder to achieve the vision.

Excluding people from the movement for irrelevant reasons also harms humanity in general. It propagates the hate, hurt, and harm that is emblematic of life and politics around the world. While the software freedom movement can't solve all of those problems, we can and should at least not make it worse.

What should we in the software freedom movement do about all this? I've come to a few conclusions so far, though my process to think about this is ongoing.

• Most importantly, we need to stop being tolerant of intolerance and bad behaviour. It's time for all project, groups, and organisations in the movement to have and enforce at least a minimal level of civil behaviour. We are a movement consisting of many communities, and each community may want or need their own norms, and that's OK. Some norms may even be in conflict. That's also OK, if unfortunate.

  Some people react to this kind of suggestion with hyperbolic claims and conspiracy theories. I don't want to debate them. It's possible to discuss community norms in a civil and constructive way. I know this, because I've seen it happen many times. However, it requires all participants to at least agree that there's behaviour that's unwelcome, and not reject the notion of community norms outright.

• I am by nature averse to conflicts. I will try to confront bad behaviour in the future, rather than slinking away and going elsewhere. I will at least speak out and say I think something is unacceptable, when I see it.

• I think the era for dictatorial models of governance for large free software projects is over. For small projects, it's unavoidable, because there's only one person doing any development, but when a project grows, it doesn't work to have one person, or a small anointed group, making all decisions. It's time to have more democratic governance.

  There are technical decisions that probably can't be done well by letting everyone vote on them. However, every substantial project will have other decisions that the whole community around the project should have a say in. Voting on how to fix a bug may not be workable, but voting on the minimum criteria for determining if a bug fix is acceptable is. Should the project require adding a regression test for any bug found in production? Should any such test and bug fix be subjected to code review? Should such bugs and their fixes be documented, even announced, publicly or kept secret? How should security problems be handled?

  In Debian, one of the guiding principles is that those who do, decide. It seems time to involve those who use in the decision making process as well.

I can't force all communities in the software freedom movement to agree with me. Obviously not. I won't even try. I will, however, in the future be wary of joining dictatorial projects where bad behaviour is tolerated. I'm hoping this will have at least some effect.

What about you?

(My blog does not have comments, but you can respond to this fediverse thread: https://toot.liw.fi/@liw/103080486083100970.)