Stephen Milne, consent & Debian Code of Conduct invalid
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
After acquiring the Debian trademark in Switzerland (I subsequently canceled it), I declared the Debian Code of Conduct to be invalid. Even without the trademark, I remain of the opinion that the Code of Conduct is invalid.
I previously wrote in some detail about the dangers of modern slavery that intersect with Code of Conduct brainwashing in voluntary groups.
Yet understanding what is wrong in the specific case of Debian's Code of Conduct is even easier than that.
When Debian conducted a vote to make people submit themselves to a Code of Conduct in 2014, they presented the results as a majority in favor. According to the page, 1,002 people were registered to vote. Only 288 valid votes were counted. We need to take the numbers and look at them like this:
| Option | Votes | Consent | Percent | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accept CoC, DPL can update it | 132 | Yes | 13% | 25% Yes |
| Accept CoC, Updates via General Resolution vote | 124 | Yes | 12% | |
| Further Discussion | 40 | NO | 4% | 75% NO |
| Did not vote | 714 | NO | 71% |
It is interesting to compare this to the prosecution of footballer Stephen Milne. A crime was reported in 2004 but it took ten years for the police and prosecutors to work out how to proceed. In short, two footballers and two women went back to the home of the other footballer, Leigh Montagna. Both women said yes. At some point, there was a swap and one woman said yes to the other man while the victim has only said yes to the same man again. The swap went ahead anyway. The legal system has decided that under the weight of peer pressure, it is not rape, it is the lesser crime of sexual assault. The victim and many other women fail to understand the logic of this outcome.
It clearly isn't acceptable for women to be used in a swap where 100% of women did not consent. Therefore, how can we have this amateur-hour Code of Conduct if 100% of participants did not consent to the code?
OSI President Molly de Blanc presented that infamous drawing at FrOSCon where three people are pushing one developer. We could think of the three pushers and one victim a lot like the situation in Leigh Montagna's home. █
