To Understand Who's Truly Controlling You Follow the Trail of Censorship (or Self-Censorship)
5+ years ago: The Linux Foundation's Linux Kernel Code of Conduct (CoC) Committee is Now Officially Corporate
THIS past week we published a number of articles about the Linux Foundation, which keeps trolling the community while deleting or misusing the word "community". Over 5 years ago we compared the old Linux Foundation site to the current (back then) site. All mentions of community got removed. That word used to be everywhere in the site; they systematically replaced community with Microsoft et al. and Torvalds has been rendered a Wintel mascot [1, 2], forced to embrace things he disagrees with and dislikes (Rust is one of those things).
Censorship is a powerful thing, and not merely a concept. I worked in a company called "Open Source" long enough to realise dissent is not really allowed, except as a "token" or mere "discussion" gesture.
When people say they oppose a Code of Conduct (CoC) the immediate, reflexive assumption is that they're bigots or something. Surely, they just want to cause trouble, right? They worry a CoC would "get them".
I learned the hard way that disciplinary processes such as Code of Conduct enforcements aren't about manners. I saw this in EPO, I see this in Python, and we'll probably see this in WINE some time soon (it adopted a CoC when Mono was dumped into it to distract from what Microsoft had done to GNU/Linux users).
If you believe that CoCs are about combating right-wing bigotry, then congrats! You have been conned.
Opposing CoCs is mostly about freedom of expression and the right of dissent. Democracies are in some sense not compatible with (in practice) CoCs. Do not let media steal and steer the narrative; CoCs are not about "social justice", they're about corporate domination. Those two things are almost always opposites. █