
When should behaviour outside a community have consequences inside it? - robin_reala
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50099.html
======
heisenbit
Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society. The advances in
technology and more so the pervasiveness and persistence of communication is
eroding the previous boundaries between groups, places and time.

Past transgressions now have an impact today often way beyond the statues of
limitation. In most of these discussions the reason these statues exist are
ignored. Discussions in one place affect another place. Behavior that is
questionable in a classroom becomes national news. Postings in a closed online
forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community
working on software.

When boundaries are torn down cultures clash. Some of it may be healthy. But
without boundaries would there be culture?

~~~
candiodari
> Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society.

Looking at history I would even say that boundaries, as in the "need" to give
a superior moral position to a favored class, whether an economic class,
intellectuals, a military class, or priesthood, was always where these
boundaries were. The thing you can't see is that your/our "boundaries" are no
different.

And every single time, those boundaries turned out to be, not "for trade"
(e.g. the Roman Empire), "for the military" (e.g. the second Islamic dynasty),
intellectuals (e.g. the French revolution - the first part, or Communism in
Eastern Europe) or "for morality" (e.g. the West in the middle ages). I mean,
I'm sure there was a period of, say, a decade, where they actually did what it
said on the label. It never lasted.

Every single time, those "boundaries" served to guarantee the comfort of a
favored class. Firstly, to safeguard their positions of power and comfort,
their fortunes, but later even their ideas and egos.

The real boundary we are wanting to impose is that "we are right".

And it's real, real simple. There is a tiny little issue:

We

Are

Wrong

Boundaries do impose structure. The structure does not change, and the world
does. That's fundamentally why the boundaries are wrong and the structure will
not hold.

I do not know how or where exactly we are wrong, but we are wrong (although I
have some ideas: any 5 year old, old enough to talk intelligently, but not old
enough to be assimilated yet, will tell you when you walk with them through
any city what we are terribly wrong about. There's plenty, I might add).

And that sucks. If it turns out that we are most catastrophically wrong about
a moral issue, it will suck REAL bad. And that's happened before. Plenty of
times.

It is funny how you see the bay area aging. When we started out, most were in
our late teens, early twenties at best. And of course we all felt the same:
society is VERY wrong. In all sorts of ways. For instance, women are not
different, and certainly not inferior. We KNEW that 20 years ago. But now
we're 40, and we feel that, dammit, we're right. And these kids, who seem to
prefer economic gains over social issues. Lazy bastards !

And, like the rich 30 years ago, we've decided (whilst having pretty much
every creature comfort we like) that moral issues (that just happen to keep
our place in society safe and secure) are _real_ important. And these upstart
youngsters (who do not in fact enjoy many of our creature comforts), they're
bad, mmmkay ! Dammit ! They MUST be stopped.

They will, of course, defeat us. Nothing can stop them.

And they will clobber more than some of our ideas.

And, they will abandon some of our morals.

The thing is, this is a good and healthy thing to happen.

~~~
mooseburger
The young aren't always right. Respect for due process, and freedom of speech,
are absolutely not values that should be abandoned, even if it seems many of
the young are in favor of that. I say this as one of the young.

What are the ideas and morals that you think will be abandoned?

~~~
candiodari
> What are the ideas and morals that you think will be abandoned?

Well, for example, certainly authoritarianism has been on the rise. When it
comes to democratic ideals like separation of legislative, executive and
judicial powers there seems to be zero interest from younger people (see the
Poland, Hungary, Austria and Czech situations). Also, when talking to Chinese,
I notice that there is very little interest in making China democratic.

Freedom of speech has a very bad rap outside of America, mostly undeserved.
Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion
people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing
is, those 7.1 billion mostly don't want it.

Even in America people don't uphold it very well imho. Obviously in the Bay
Area high profile events have shown that private and, to some extent,
government actions against free speech are tolerated.

So I think that freedom of speech and generally freedom will be abandoned to
an extent. Why ? Simply because that has advantages.

~~~
Thiez
> Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion
> people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing
> is, those 7.1 billion mostly don't want it.

Yes, as one of those poor 7.1 billion, I can barely contain my envy. Now let's
have a look at the ranking of the US in, say, the World Press Freedom Index of
2017 ([https://rsf.org/en/ranking](https://rsf.org/en/ranking)). Could you
please explain why the US, being (supposedly) the only country in the world
that has freedom of speech, hasn't even made it in the top 40 of that ranking?

I don't see this obsession with America-style "freedom of speech". Sure, you
can't go out in the streets and yell that you think that '<minority> are
subhuman scum that deserve to be rounded up and transported to extermination
camps' in most places (although I imagine that won't make you very popular in
the US either, even if would technically be legal), but if you live in the
nicer parts of, say, Europe, you won't go bankrupt when you need a hospital,
you won't be living in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates
in the world, you don't have a two-party system, your vote isn't worth more or
less depending on where you live, etc. Also what's this "free speech zone"
thing?

Freedom of speech isn't black and white, there are many shades of gray. If
everybody feels they can speak their mind except for some people advocating
genocide... well suffice to say I won't be joining Evelyn Hall in her fight to
the death.

------
eponeponepon
This is a question worth discussing. But I'm not sure I like the implicit
assumption that a "community" is a discrete entity entirely divorced from all
other such entities. If you're contemplating a person's activities outside a
particular social group, you aren't asking "does this affect my social
group?", but rather "what impact does this have on society at large?" I can't
see that it's controversial to suggest that someone may act in one context in
a way that should have consequences for their activities in another context -
we quite happily accept, for instance, that a violent drunk ought not to be
permitted to teach children, even if they have never been drunkenly violent
towards children. I don't see that a software development project should be
any different from any other subset of human society in this respect.

~~~
mjg59
Software development projects are somewhat different in that they frequently
include a large number of people from very disparate cultural backgrounds and
little in-person social contact. The lack of the sort of social cohesion that
we see in more traditional social groups is part of the reason that open
source projects are increasingly adopting explicit behavioural guidelines, but
the risk there becomes that those guidelines are considered the totality of
what should be taken into account when determining whether someone does more
harm than good within a community. Coming up with a more formalised set of
considerations for external behaviour would help there.

~~~
eponeponepon
I don't think this is peculiar to software development though. The same is
true of discussion fora, gaming organisations, multinational businesses - the
extent to which it's an issue in the modern connected world is greater, sure,
but it's not a direct result of wider communication. I'm willing to bet it was
an issue thousands of years ago in busy trading centres too.

edit: this is an interesting aside: "Coming up with a more formalised set of
considerations for external behaviour would help there." Isn't this to some
extent what religions have been trying to do for millennia?

~~~
mjg59
The same is true of those other groups, but the goals and incentive structures
are somewhat different there. The prevalence of codes of conduct in open
source projects and relative rarity of them in other online groups suggests
that there's some sort of difference in how people view them.

------
rubyfan
I think having online anonymity and a reasonable ability to create pseudonyms
to keep your communities separate is important and often overlooked. I think
it’s not OK for one community to be the moral authority over aspects of ones
life, most especially a community in which you are volunteering and
contributing in good standing.

~~~
croon
As with a lot of things, I believe in a balance. I agree that anonymity in a
lot of areas are crucial; oppressive regimes, whistle-blowing, private/sexual
preferences, whatever have you.

But as we've seen in the last year, complete anonymity and untraceability
everywhere can have bad consequences; astro-turfing, smurfing, attention-
ddos:ing, FUD, anti-net neutrality-comment identity theft.

In some of these cases a central e-ID (which a lot of nations have) could have
mitigated those issues, in others, not so.

Ideas should live on their own merit, in which case the identity of the source
is irrelevant, but (pardon my French) idiots make the case that logic and
merit of ideas don't take center stage. In those cases I believe it's kind of
relevant to know if you're buying into group think that is 80% bots, 5%
trolls, 5% adversarial agents, etc.

Anonymity is one solution to the problem of being able to keep dissenting
opinions, but a solution with severe side effects. Transparency with a strong
protection of freedom of ideas is another route.

I guess to put it succinctly: I don't need to know the names or faces of the
people I carry conversations with, only that they're real, unique people. It
shouldn't matter, but recent history shows otherwise.

~~~
rubyfan
Great perspective. Without question there are definitely risks that anonymity
introduces. But there is an effective tyranny of free expression when parties
are forced to use their names.

The protections of liberty afforded on paper don’t always play out in real
life. In theory we have protections of free association, freedom of religion,
free speech and we’re all entitled to equal protection under the law - this
doesn’t always play out.

Too often mob rule has resulted in oppression of dissenting views and
oppression of classes of people. Privacy, private communication, anonymous
communication and pseudonymous communications are all essential for healthy
society and discourse and cannot be written off because some would use them
for nefarious purposes.

------
Dowwie
A growing challenge that communities face is where an activist minority act
against a member based on an agenda that is not representative of the larger
community yet influences as if it were.

~~~
lkerrekfjk
Opal gate is the canonical example of this:

[https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)

It's interesting the "complainer" ended up being hired by github then fired
from the same github.

------
arkades
Problem with these sorts of discussions is that they torture the meaning of
the word “community.” Most of these aren’t.

Rephrase as: when should your public reputation among one set of people affect
your public reputation among another set of people? When should that latter
effect result in consequences?

And then the answer is obvious: whenever the latter set of people find your
public behavior to be unwelcome, regardless of which context you chose to
unveil it in.

~~~
vlehto
I see your point but you didn't really tackle the problem at hand.

To detach the situation from current feelings, let's take a time trip back to
hypothetical year ~1975.

Let's say it's illegal to register a NGO, company or anything that has a rule
of "no sexual group X allowed". Now let's say that there is some guy who is
absolutely brilliant at playing the violin, but has at some point allegedly
done some homosexual approach to straight guy. Which any gay would have just
brushed away, but now it was taken as harassment.

We have obviously created a situation where it's impossible for that violinist
to take part in any orchestra. No "only gays & women orchesta" is allowed by
law. Society completely wastes that human resource. Some male musicians
somewhere possibly have slightly better work security. But the cost is that
millions of people never hear the recordings of that great violinist.

You have to pick:

A. Allow organizations to be completely self selecting. This would have a set
of short term problems and it's currently not kosher at all.

B. Allow alleged transgressors to somehow wipe their record clear. Seems
practically impossible during internet age and click headlines.

C. Force people to be cool about people who have allegedly transgressed in
some way in some other social setting. But now you lose productivity of whole
teams, not just some individuals here and there.

D. Lose a lot of human resources. And probably for petty reasons. If
allegation is enough, you can destroy too competitors easily. As shown by the
red scare, Stalins purges, etc.

This was originally a case about a programmer allegedly groping some women.
Seems like if you could start a company of "former sexual harassers inc", you
could soon hire lots of splendid talent dirt cheap. Then you just need to
somehow hide the origin of the products being made to the consumers. But soon
even that won't matter much if there is anything to be learned from the music
industry.

------
matt4077
“The private is political” comes to mind...

It used to be that you interacted almost exclusively face-to-face, within a
small community. One of the better consequences was a sort of instant feedback
loop, where your actions that hurt others were quickly reflected back onto
you: abandoned your ailing grandmother? The local grocer will stop giving you
credit.

These were social feedback mechanisms. They have the benefit of being much
more subtle than the criminal justice system, and kicking in much earlier.

It’s ridiculous how some in the tech community pretend these mechanisms don’t
exist, or that they should not exist: every time you have decided who to
invite to your birthday party, or who to sit with at lunch, you have taken
such considerations into account.

People are social animals. They use social cues to reward beneficial actions,
and punish even slight misdeeds. This is necessary to establish standards of
behavior, or basic human decency.

There should be limits to this process, the most important of which is _time_.
No one should be forced to reveal to his neighbors that he is a “sex
offender”, ten years after drunkenly taking a piss in a public park. Nor
should your teenage shenanigans be the top hit in google for eternity.

But standing a front of a synagogue on a Saturday, with a torch, a gun, a
swastika flag? Yeah, you better believe your friends and coworkers will look
funny at you come Monday.

~~~
rthille
But what if my teenage shenanigans were really really good? Can I keep the top
spot for eternity then?

------
saalweachter
SATSQ.

Behavior outside a community should have consequences inside it when it has
consequences inside it.

If your behavior outside of a community causes an uproar and crisis inside the
community when it becomes known, _it has already had a consequence inside the
community_. It will already have future ramifications. All you can do at that
point is decide whether you want the future ramifications to include a
commendation, condemnation or silence from the community.

Communities are not hermetically sealed environments. In my opinion it is
silly and childish to pretend they are.

~~~
explainplease
> when it becomes known

When "it becomes known" is a matter of one person going on a moral crusade to
destroy the other person's reputation and position because of something about
them, wholly unrelated to the project, which they personally dislike--is it
still valid for there to be "consequences" within the community?

If so, it seems like only a matter of time for all of us, because surely all
of us do things or hold opinions that someone else in a community we
participate in would find unacceptable. Therefore, all that is required for
anyone to destroy anyone else is to "cause an uproar and crisis" about them.

What will you say when someone causes an uproar and crisis about you?

~~~
saalweachter
I'm not going to say it doesn't suck.

Unrequited love sucks. Losing an election sucks. Being kicked out of a
community sucks. Losing your job sucks.

Doesn't matter if you "deserve" it or not. Still sucks.

Maybe it sucks more when there's malice in the revelation, than if someone
just sent an email to the wrong mailing list or if two people unexpectedly ran
into each other somewhere neither expected the other to be.

But the bell has been rung. What do you want people to do, to treat their
feelings like jurors, "that evidence has been obtained improperly, you are
instructed to disregard it."?

~~~
explainplease
> What do you want people to do, to treat their feelings like jurors, "that
> evidence has been obtained improperly, you are instructed to disregard it."?

You seem to be saying that the feelings of anyone in a community should serve
as a veto on anyone else's membership in the community. Am I understanding you
correctly?

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm going to upvote this, even though it's another in a long line of "I don't
understand classical liberalism or the roots of our modern secular society"
posts by various authors, both famous and not.

At the heart of a lot of this is the simple question: is our larger world
supposed to be one big social group? Some folks think yes. For those folks, if
you have a small community, it's a legitimate question as to how much
"control" you should have on members when they are outside that community.

To me this is an answered question and the answer is no, small groups and
large groups of people are completely different things. Trying to shoe-horn
experiences and ideas about one group into the other group leads to nothing
but heartache and disappointment.

But since so many folks are struggling so much, it's a conversation that needs
to continue for a while. Hopefully it will lead somewhere positive.

ADD: I will, however, admit to having much frustration watching my tech
friends struggle so much with concepts that should have been part of their
early education. Speaking humorously, I reserve the right to buy an inflatable
copy of "On Liberty" and start beating a few of them about the head with it if
things don't change.

------
wisty
The risky assumption seems to be "we're the ones with all the power, and we'll
only use that power to punish people who deserve it".

Also, just for fun, google "Ted Ts'o".

~~~
joncrane
AFAICT, the guy went a little too far out of his way to say that lots of rape
accusations are fake? But the guy still has job and status, right? Just some
social ostracism?

------
syshum
Behavior outside a community should very little consequences inside of it. Of
course there are some extreme cases where this might be a problem however
those cases are extremely rare and should not generally be used for the basis
of creating a Code of conduct or rule set

The wider political climate in world today is making have to be that simple.

While the article talks about more extreme cases like actual physical sexual
assault, today far far far too many communities are using simple political
disagreement and criticism and framing that as "harassment" using that
"harassment" as method to remove any political dissenters from their ranks

I have seen it attempted (some times with great success) in several open
source projects.

Personally I dislike the very concept of Codes of Conduct and I generally
oppose most of the terms in many of the more modern Code of Conduct being
pushed forward, likely as a result of my very libertarian political views.
That said Codes of Conducts (should a community or project adopt them) should
only be enforced based on actions WITH IN that community and/or toward people
that are IN THAT community.

Not generalized actions of people taken in other communities with a different
set of conventions and rules.

Code of Conduct should be seen as a contract of Behavior that all people agree
to when voluntary associating with the community to treat all other MEMBERS of
that community based on that code of conduct, it should not apply to conduct
when interacting with people not a part of that community and thus never
agreed to the code of conduct.

~~~
naturalgradient
I completely agree, the code of conduct has been used multiple times as a
trojan horse in the sense that it only contains things nobody could reasonably
disagree with (because who would not want a welcoming environment), only to
then be used to shun /outcast people based on views particularly on gender and
diversity. This is one of the issues Sam Altman referred to in his blog that
simply cannot be talked about in Silicon Valley currently.

------
alexandercrohde
I think this article doesn't take a broad enough view of the question. As
stated, it's a very large (and non-trivial) question.

For example, as stated, the question includes questions like: - Should America
care if somebody is convicted of a crime by a foreign nation?

\- Should a school care if a candidate to be a teacher was discovered viewing
child pornography?

\- Should a job care if/why you got fired from your last job?

\- Should you care why your ex's last relationship failed?

The answer to all of these is obviously "depends on the specifics." It's
tempting to draw hard boundaries so as to prevent people from weaponizing
politics. Unfortunately, I just don't think hard-boundaries are coherent here.

------
geebee
There's a difference between behavior and speech, though it can become a fuzzy
line (is a large donation behavior or speech?).

One thing some of the comments have touched on is the notion of "beyond the
pale" \- a term that somewhat ironically (for this discussion) refers to
occurrences outside the bounds of British law. There are opinions that fall
outside the standards of decency, and this can, legitimately, make
organizations reluctant to work with some people.

Many issue positions, over time, can go from widely accepted, to
controversial, to widely discredited, to beyond the pale, essentially and
uncontroversially indecent. If this is the case, it's almost certain that
we're going through this process right now. Unfortunately, there is also a
strong political tendency to scold and smear and be as uncharitable as
possible to the other side. In aggregate, people get accused of being on the
"wrong side of history" at least twice as often as they actually are, since
these accusations go in both directions on virtually every controversial
topic.

------
quotemstr
The answer is clearly "never" \--- the attitude expressed in the article leads
toward totalitarian control over people's personal lives. Toleration, as
Europe took hundreds of years to painfully discover, is the way you build a
cohesive society around people who disagree. When you ban cooperation among
people with divergent political opinions, you not only lose out on any
positive-sum productivity gains from the interaction, but also intensify these
political differences and turn them into real rifts in society.

I am disappointed in the contemporary trend to invest imaginary "harms" and
propose remedies that, in the end, boil down to persecuting people for their
beliefs. Altman is definitely right about the social atmosphere in tech.
Imagining that we should, say, ban contributions to an open source project
from someone who also participates in 4chan is part of the problem.

------
CM30
I still think the answer here is 'never', communities should be as self
contained as possible and not try and take over personal lives. To do
otherwise reminds of those schools that try and punish students (and sometimes
teachers) for actions done in their free time; an absolutely ridiculous
overreach that makes things worse rather than better.

And I stick by that for communities I run. On every site I'm an admin/founder,
the rule is that (legal issues excepting), we won't punish you for things done
outside of the community. It's not our place to do so, and we have no interest
in witch hunting or trying to find reasons to deplatform people for things
they do in their free time elsewhere.

------
danschumann
Well, when the inner community relies heavily on trust, such as a company
where you handle peoples' money, or even teach them about money, I think
integrity is such a highly valued quality, that you would be extremely
sensitive to any sign that an individual lacks it ( ie acting differently in
different situations, or cheating on their spouse, for example ). "If a spouse
can't trust a person, why should I trust them as their boss?" -Dave Ramsey

------
smoyer
This is an interesting post - not because of the content provided by the
author but because of this discussion thread!

------
cs1717p
This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for
'intelligent' people to overestimate their general expertise, and then apply
their value judgements to individuals in their social circle, regardless of
its utility or relevance.

Examples of this:

Alan Turing -- father of Computer Science shunned, at the time, because
everyone had value judgements regarding his homosexuality (completely
irrelevant to Computer Science).

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage.
(Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting
(today) Conservatives, and formerly Communists.

The solution is simple:

Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their
contributions and value within that community.

If I am deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not
affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.

If I strongly believe in UFO visitations, and disbelieve climate change, but
am a great graphic designer, that should not affect my reputation as an
artist.

Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with
everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.

This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared
focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in
the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.

There are enough problems and difficulties getting skilled people together to
work on something great -- there is no use at all in reducing that crowd of
people further by limiting it to those who share ones views in any number of
hot button issues.

Leave politics to your political circles, make your own impressions of people
before making personal judgements from reputation, find every reason to work
together, not any excuse not to.

~~~
pjc50
> deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not
> affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused

Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-
contributors in this case?

Being inclusive is great, but you have to recognise that including certain
people drives others away from the project.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-
> contributors in this case?

I would expect so, yes.

Firearms are a huge part of my life, as is political advocacy for self-defense
rights. I've worked with many people who disagreed with me on that issue to
the degree that I expect that many people disagree with gay marriage. For the
vast majority of them, it wasn't an issue.

~~~
dustyleary
It feels qualitatively different to argue that “he and I disagree on firearms
but we continue to work together” is the same basic concept.

Imagine you’re a gay man, happily married. You work at Mozilla.

Don’t you think it would be difficult to go into work, and report to your CEO,
knowing that he had _donated_ against gay marriage? That he feels your way of
life has no place in America?

Mozilla is an outspoken champion of net neutrality, anonymity, free speech,
open standards, and several other ideologies that emphasize freedom. How can
you clap at an all-hands meeting when your CEO stands in front of the company
and talks about the importance of these freedoms, while knowing that he also
feels so strongly that your private relationship with your husband is so
abhorrent that he thought it was a good use of $1000 to try to ban it?

If the liberals “win”, and guns are banned tomorrow, like they are in
Australia, are you so committed to your firearm rights that you’ll consider
moving to another country, or suicide because life just isn’t worth living? Do
you think it’s ludicrous that gay people might consider those options?

Firearms are a choice. Being gay is not. Judgement against gay marriage is
judgement against who you are. Judgement against firearms is judgement against
a hobby.

Take the argument back 50 years. Do you think a white boss who donated money
against equal rights could/would treat black employees fairly?

Imagine that you’re a gay employee at Mozilla. You’ve been gunning for a
promotion into upper management, and someone else wins the position. Are you
never going to wonder, “Does his skin crawl when we shake hands? Would I have
won the position if my Facebook didn’t have pictures of me and my husband on
it?”

Have you ever wondered if your love of firearms has impacted your professional
career?

~~~
LyndsySimon
> It feels qualitatively different to argue that “he and I disagree on
> firearms but we continue to work together” is the same basic concept.

I get that it feels different to you - but I'm telling you in good faith that
it doesn't to me.

> Don’t you think it would be difficult to go into work, and report to your
> CEO, knowing that he had donated against gay marriage?

Certainly. I've quit jobs because of similar issues. If someone feels about
gay marriage the way I do about guns and the right to self-defense, it sounds
entirely reasonable to me for them not to financial support people who
actively work against their political interests.

> If the liberals “win”, and guns are banned tomorrow, like they are in
> Australia, are you so committed to your firearm rights that you’ll consider
> moving to another country, or suicide because life just isn’t worth living?

Yes. Five years ago when I was choosing a place to move from rural Arkansas to
further my career as a developer, California, Illinois, New York, and several
other states were out of the question because of their gun laws. Now that I'm
more established, I'm moving back to Arkansas and a large part of that is the
political climate here in Virginia.

Given the choice between disarmament and emigration, I'd emigrate. Given the
choice between disarmament and death, I would fight. It's that serious of an
issue to me and to _far_ more people than you'd believe unless you've lived
somewhere surrounded by people who share this view.

> Firearms are a choice. Being gay is not. Judgement against gay marriage is
> judgement against who you are. Judgement against firearms is judgement
> against a hobby.

Respectfully, you're completely wrong here. Firearms are not a hobby for me,
they're symbolic of my entire cultural perspective. It is no more a choice
than religious affiliation.

> Have you ever wondered if your love of firearms has impacted your
> professional career?

Of course it has. I'd be making significantly more money right now if I'd
moved to San Jose, New York City, or even Portland.

\---

I'm re-reading my comments above, and hesitating to submit them because I'm
concerned that they might easily be seen as justification to lump me in with
the GOP. Let me be clear about that - I don't consider myself a Republican,
and I don't consider myself a conservative. I'm an extreme libertarian. I have
no animosity towards homosexuals, and it doesn't matter to me how someone
presents themselves or structure their personal relationships. "It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

The main point I'm trying to make is that online communities in particular are
made up of people with drastically different perspectives on life. Some of
those differences are obvious, but some are not. Some of them are expected to
be respected while it's socially acceptable to disregard others out of hand.
That's not right.

~~~
joshuamorton
> I get that it feels different to you - but I'm telling you in good faith
> that it doesn't to me.

I think there's a very obvious difference:

(hopefully) Your views on guns and personal liberty are based on ethics and
under the system you believe is ethical, personal liberty and firearms are
important. You do not hold a code of ethics because it allows you to use
firearms, but you believe you are allowed to use firearms due to the ethical
system. (I may be mistaken here, but allow me to overstep and state that I'd
find anyone who developed an ethical system to support their use of firearms
downright scary).

For someone who is gay, there's nothing like that. They find different people
attractive. No ethical systems to it.

In other words, "I love people of my same sex" is an axiom, "people should be
allowed to use firearms" is a conclusion.

~~~
sheepmullet
> For someone who is gay, there's nothing like that. They find different
> people attractive. No ethical systems to it.

And why is that difference relevant?

~~~
joshuamorton
>In other words, "I love people of my same sex" is an axiom, "people should be
allowed to use firearms" is a conclusion.

I feel that I addressed that.

~~~
sheepmullet
I can't see how you did?

Why is a firmly held conviction less important than a physical attribute you
are born with?

~~~
joshuamorton
I never said anything about importance. I said they were different, and I
believe that they should be treated differently because they are different,
not because one is more important than the other.

------
junkscience2017
its quite simple really, if you are a conservative at a Silicon Valley
company, just lie to anyone who tries to reveal your belief system.

 _real shame we don 't have a President Sanders...yes, really, oh yes I
agree..._

------
Sir_Cmpwn
The answer is simple: never.

~~~
pjc50
It's very easy to not read the article, isn't it? Then drop in a sweeping
generalisation that says it's completely fine to have a murderer write your
filesystems.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I read the article, thank you. It is completely fine to have a murderer write
your filesystems. Accepting patches from someone who writes good code and
treats everyone involved with respect is the right approach.

~~~
watwut
What about accepting non trivial patch from someone who smuggled backdoor for
lulz to another project 3 years ago?

~~~
Sephr
Fraud is very different from murder, and I understand why someone would be
worried about accepting contributions from a known fraudster.

I would not give their contributions extra attention (you should be suspect of
_all_ changes, regardless of the author) and I would not ban them from
contributing unless they became disruptive or subversive to the project.

They served their time; you don't need to punish them further. They are
probably even less likely to commit fraud when their employer is aware of a
previous fraud conviction.

The worst fraudsters don't come with a "convicted of fraud" warning—they have
evaded being caught and will seem just like any other contributor.

~~~
mannykannot
> They served their time; you don't need to punish them further.

It is not about punishing them, it is about reducing the risk of others.
Having served time is, at best, no indication of whether a person will revert
to their former behavior.

> The worst fraudsters don't come with a "convicted of fraud" warning—they
> have evaded being caught and will seem just like any other contributor.

This is no reason for not using what information you do have.

Note: I see that you have edited your original post to address these points,
but I think they still stand, as expanded on in the continuing discussion
below. Your statement "they are probably even less likely to commit fraud when
their employer is aware of a previous fraud" seems to be in agreement with
what I have been saying.

~~~
Sephr
It's a reason to be equally suspicious of all code changes regardless of the
publicly known reputation of a contributor, as it always comes down to the
code itself.

~~~
mannykannot
You are still arguing against using the available evidence. You never have the
time and resources to fully validate anything of use, so you have to use your
judgement as to how best to go about it. If you learn that a person
responsible for some aspect of security has been found guilty of defrauding
his church's charity drive, it would be prudent to take a second look at his
code.

