/wtfcoc

A reasonable Code of Conduct for reasonable people.

WTFCoC

This is a response to the recent surge of Codes of Conduct to police community behavior. We think such restrictions are unnecessary and rude. Given that an open-source contributor does not constantly bring their oppressed demographic into discussion as a means to gain favor, it is unnecessary to actually set rules about discriminating minorities. We're all equal on the Internet.

It is often the case that code projects are open to contributions but simply have no interested parties to contribute code, which means the last thing the owners will look at in a contribution is the author's gender, age, or any other detail unrelated to their actual changes to the codebase. As well as that, the contributor is always free to omit any of the preceding details from their online profile. We all start out equal on the internet.

We do also find it awful that when contributions lacking sufficient merits to make it into the codebase are rejected, a hypothetical backlash will arise, claiming oppression on all newfound fronts (read: whichever oppressed group the contributor belongs to today) that had previously been untouched. We honestly don't give a fuck. If your code sucks, it's not getting in. All we really care about is the quality of your contribution. You were the one who brought (gender, race, insert oppressed attribute) into discussion.

Given a dispute, it is much more often resolved by simply Not Being A Dick. That applies to either side of the dispute.

As the free software community has somehow managed to live without Codes of Conduct for over 30 years, we find it silly that Codes of Conduct are required in a "True Modern Software Project". Here's the compromise: a quick and straight-to-the-point document explaining how sane programmers contribute to open source.

To everyone who feels offended, discriminated, or harassed by this document: fuck off.

Inspired by WTFPL and Linus Torvalds.

I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended.
-- Linus Torvalds