As of lately there has been a lot of clamor about codes of conduct for open source projects. While I understand the desire to be welcoming to contributors no matter who they are, the currently most popular codes of conduct are not really welcoming at all. They tend to be preachy, prudish and policing. Furthermore they are impractical since FLOSS projects are often run by volunteers who just want to advance the project and don' t have too much time to play police officer.
Said more shortly. In an attempt to accommodate people less inclined to contribute to FLOSS, these codes of conduct tend to cause negative effects for those who are already inclined to do so.
In stead of this, I want to develop a text, named WELCOME, to welcome newcomers to the project, and invite them to contribute, with a few explanations about how contributing works, and a few positive exhortations on how to behave in virtual of real life spaces related to the project.
Simply take the WELCOME text and modify it where needed. There is no one fits all for this kind of thing.
When writing the Welcome text, I kept in mind following considerations:
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Open source projects like any programming projects tend to have certain implicit and explicit goals set by the project leaders and maintainers. Any contribution to the project, should be accepted if it is compatible with those goals, and rejected if it is not so. Other factors should not matter. Of course, humans are often all too human, and that doesn't always happen. But I'd like to express in the Welcome that a best effort will be done to be open to contributions that match the project goals.
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There is a lot of hullabaloo about "meritocracy". But there is nothing wrong with the concept of "merit". Rather "Meritocracy" is only a problem when it is not genuine. Admitted, as research shows, there are many organizations that claim to be "meritocratic", but fail to be so in reality. But that does not mean "meritocracy" is a bad thing. Just think about the fact that the Democratic Republic of Congo is at the time of this writing unfortunately not very democratic in reality. That doesn't mean that democracy is a bad thing in itself either. Nevertheless, for this Welcome text, I'd like avoid any mention of abstract concepts such as merit since they are hard to express.
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For most FLOSS projects, the goals of the project are not set in a meritocratic or democratic way. Open source projects are normally run either by a group of maintainers or by a "benevolent dictator for life". It's exceedingly rare that any bypassing bug reporter gets a say in the goals of the project. It's like to make this clear in the Welcome text.
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The reason why FLOSS projects are normally run by a select group or individual, and why this is fair, is because the project leaders put in the most t ime and effort in the project. As a result, they should have the most say about what the goals of project should be. Most FLOSS projects are run by the most involved workers, and hence have a sort of "mutualist" leadership.
And since the project is FLOSS, if there are fundamental disagreements between the contributors, then the project can be forked and developed in diverging ways. The makers of the fork can assume control of their work and move on like this. -
Contributions may be intensely scrutinized. This might make some people feel uncomfortable, but the general goal is to see if the contribution is in line with the goals of the project, and if it is, to correct any technical or practical problems with that contribution. If the contribution is in flagrant conflict with the project's goals, or has severe technical problems, the project leaders may reject it or even get upset at it. They are also only human and may get exasperated from receiving one too many low quality contributions. Any angry words said at such an occasion should not be taken personally, but rather seen as a Zen-slap which should encourage you to correct the contribution.
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When contributing, either virtually or in real life, contributors should do a best effort to be cooperative, and to help the project move towards it's goals. A the same time, many FLOSS projects are run on an amateur basis. Pure professionalism can't be expected for such projects. And people are people, and developers may have bad days or rather special personalities.
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Most virtual problems are related to going off topic. Politics, personal attacks, spam, trolling, they are all, in effect examples of off topic material that shouldn't be part of the project or it's virtual spaces. This is an idea I'd like to express in he welcome text.
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Most real life problems are due to actually breaking the law. If the law was actually broken, then the police should be called. FLOSS software maintainers are programmers, not law enforcers. In larger events, security can be hired or stewards can be put in place to see to it that people don't forget about the law. But this is actually out of scope for a WELCOME text. Rather, separate real life meeting rules should be set up as required.
The text of WELCOME is licensed under CC0. See the LICENSE file for details.