Code of Conduct (based on Contributor Covenant 3.0) for copyleft-next goes into effect within a week; final comments *now* please

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 10:53 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton at funnelfiasco.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2026 at 4:08 PM Vasileios Valatsos <me at aethrvmn.gr> wrote:
> >
> > Excuse me for the bluntness, but why? As in, who is this for? Also, in
> > all honesty, who cares?
> >
> > It would seem to me that there is no point to pass a CoC since there is
> > no conduct to regulate? It would make much more sense if there was any
> > conduct apart from the list admins informing us of the need to regulate
> > conduct.
>
> I'm generally in favor of "wait to add policy/process until you need
> it", but codes of conduct are an exception. It's easier to have a code
> of conduct in place before you need it because CoC issues are often
> high-emotion and inventing the process as you go leads to
> community-harming missteps.
>
> You're right that if the project activity doesn't pick up, then this
> is for naught. Oh well.

bkuhn and I both thought that it was important to have a CoC in place
before a lot of substantive work got (re)started. Unlike the situation
in <checks historical record> 2012, when the original copyleft-next
was launched, CoCs are now widely considered table stakes when
starting a free software project that at least aspires to having
significant collaborativeness.

I appreciate the view that CoCs are often 'performative', but one
reason for that is that there is often little or no attempt to make
sure the CoC meaningfully binds the maintainers of the project or
whoever is in control of governance generally. So in this case it was
important to try to figure out a way for a CoC to enforceably apply to
me and bkuhn at the outset and to not place enforcement of the CoC in
our hands.

Richard