Not clear if CoC applies only to official Ubuntu Members or also to community in general

[Amedee Van Gasse]

There was a recent discussion on the ubuntu-users mailing list about the Code of Conduct.

To summarize, there are two points of view:
1) The CoC only applies to official Ubuntu Members who have gone trough a membership procedure and have signed the CoC.
2) The CoC is inferred from the Mailing List Etiquette guidelines and applies to anyone on the mailing lists as soon as they have made any contribution, even if it was only one answer to a question of a new user.

Proponents of the first point of view claim that the current CoC, when read literally, only applies to developers or other people who contribute to the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

A suggestion was made on the mailing list to create a bug report.

Relevant pages:
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists/etiquette
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2009-December/204052.html

[Scott Lewin (sclewin)]

It would be considerably unfair to contributors if they were expected to meet the guidelines while others did not. Contributors could receive bashing, insults, and other abuse from the community, but would be expected to be kind in response. Something that would be impossible to endure and I would think the contributors would deserve more rights, not less.

Also, in case of number 1 what about people, like me, who have signed the CoC and who are not members? Would I expected to go by the guideline as I am not an official member?

[Amedee Van Gasse (amedee)]

Scott,
You are a member of Ubuntu Canada Team.

But I understand your argument: you are not a contributor to the Ubuntu Linux distribution, the actual software that ships on cd's or can be downloaded.

I also agree that on mailing lists and forums, all users should be treated equal.

[Greyed (grey)]

In a private message to another member I explained how I read the two in conjunction with one another. In short...

* The CoC applies to Members regardless of the venue. IE, if an Ubuntu Member were rude and abusive on, say, the Debian-user's mailing list not only would the CoC of that mailing list apply but the Ubuntu CoC does, as well.

* The CoC applies to users of the mailing list(s) provided by Ubuntu but only on those lists. So if common joe-schmoe were rude and abusive on Ubuntu-users the CoC would apply there as the mailing list specifically states the list etiquette is modeled after the CoC. However if common joe-schmoe were to move to Debian-user the Ubuntu CoC would not apply to him there since he is not an Ubuntu Member, just a user of Ubuntu.

That is, at least, what I got out of how the two documents interact with one another. Or, rather, the interpretation put forth by one mailing list member along with the etiquette guidelines of the mailing list.

[Karl Larsen (klarsen1)]

    The problem with a plan to give "contributers" defined by some method, a special club is formed that involves zero money so what is the reasons for joining?

    We are users of free software a Company has decided to provide. I am happy to use this software because it works better than Windows and MAC.

   So forming a Club within the free users to control the list is really kind of stupid. They do not even control who can use the list!

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

To me it's very clear and always has been that everybody who participates in the Ubuntu community to some degree or interfaces with it should do their best to follow the CoC. Our message as a community is and always has been: this is how it works over here.

I don't see any controversy at all. There's no granted exceptions.

[Amedee Van Gasse (amedee)]

Daniel,

For me it is very clear. I don't need the bug report.
But other members of the community (members by virtue of their frequent participation to ubuntu mailing lists) and who (probably) don't have a Launchpad account have found it unclear. My PoV is that they are nitpicking on the semantics of the word "user" and "contributor".

I don't want to repeat the whole discussion from the mailinglist on Launchpad.
Alan Pope wrote that the best course of action was to file a bug report, so I did on behalf of of the users who don't know how (or don't want) to create a Launchpad account.

I have a constructive suggestion. Why not add two things to the Etiquette or the CoC:

1) as soon as someone participates in one of the official Ubuntu communication platforms (mailing lists, forum, irc,...), he or she is automatically a member of the Ubuntu community. Participation can be described as sending a message to any such official communication platforms.

2) the Etiquette explicitly applies to all users: regular users as well as developers, translators, or other contributors. Every user will be treated equal; being an official Ubuntu Member does not give anyone more or less rights to participate in the community.

This is just a proposal, I suggest that someone who is better with words rephrases this.

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

Someone can use Ubuntu without agreeing to the CoC. If that person is going to use Ubuntu resources (mailing lists, forums, irc, etc..) and interact with other members they should act in a reasonable fashion in the "guidelines" thatt the CoC expands on.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

The code of conduct should explicitly distinguish between an "Ubuntero" and "Member" and a "member of the Ubuntu Community" (and possibly other categories or different names to distinguish between "Members" and "members"). The complete code of conduct can be read to apply only to an Ubuntero, a subset of whom have been elevated to "Members." The summaries of the code of conduct (linked above) have broadened it to include casual members of the Ubuntu community. It might be helpful to codify the terms used to describe different sub-classifications of Ubuntu community members.

(P.S.: Some might find some of the definitions insulting, but I was amused by the urbandictionary.com entry for "Ubuntero.")

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Launchpad Bug Tracker wrote:
> 2) The CoC is inferred from the Mailing List Etiquette guidelines and applies to anyone on the mailing lists as soon as they have made any contribution, even if it was only one answer to a question of a new user.
>

The Code of Conduct is the standard we hold all participants and
proponents and advocates of Ubuntu to. We'd prefer that if you want to
wear an Ubuntu t-shirt, you hold yourself to that standard for discourse
and collaboration. So it certainly applies to all correspondence on
Ubuntu mailing lists, not just to those who have signed it and those who
are Ubuntu members.

Mark