[arch-dev-public] Formal Objection to Adopting the Code of Conduct

[Allan McRae]

We appear to be reaching the point where a formal code of conduct will
be officially adopted.

What is that I hear you say?  We have had a Code of Conduct for a long
time?  And you are incorrect.

The history of the Code of Conduct is poorly documented.  But it started
out as a forum guidelines written by one of the forum admins. As far as
I can ascertain, this document had no input from the project leadership.
At some stage this was moved to the wiki and became titled as a Code of
Conduct as more general points were added to cover aspects of Arch
beyond the forums.

At no point has this code of conduct ever been formally adopted by the
distribution.  In fact, our distribution has no constitution detailing
what the purpose of this distribution is and how it will be governed.
So there is no formal process for officially adopting a Code of Conduct.

Why does this matter now?  The Code of Conduct is moving from being a
random wiki page, to a "binding" document that users must agree to in
order to access our services. Before this can happen, Arch Linux needs
to adopt a formal governance structure in order to approve such a
binding change.

Take a look at other distributions governance structures and constitutions:
https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/

I formally object to adopting a formal Code of Conduct until we have a
clear governance structure who can develop the policies and procedures
that are formally needed to enforce a Code of Conduct.  Currently the
Code of Conduct states the Project Leader is responsible for
enforcement, although that is not listed as one of their duties as
approved when developing the Project Leader election procedure:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DeveloperWiki:Project_Leader
This once again demonstrate the lack of formal governance within the
distribution. We can not proceed with a Code of Conduct (or the Terms of
Service and Privacy Policy), until a formal governance structure and
procedures are developed to approve such documents.

Again, until such a governance structure has been developed, I formally
object to the official adoption of the Code of Conduct.

Kind regards,
Allan