FreedomBox Code of Conduct

Version 1.0 ratified on August 10th, 2019

The FreedomBox community has adopted this code of conduct for its community members and participants to the various modes of communication within the FreedomBox project.

1. Be Respectful

In a project the size of FreedomBox, inevitably there will be people with whom you may disagree, or find it difficult to cooperate. Accept that, but even so, remain respectful. Disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior or personal attacks, and a community in which people feel threatened is not a healthy community.

Members of our community must treat others with equal concern and respect, regardless of background, family status, marital status, gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, language, age, ability, race, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic status, religion, or geographic location.

Community members may indicate their preferred gender pronouns on an opt-in basis in any way they wish, including email signatures, at the end of forum posts, in their forum profile, or alongside their name in parenthesis in any document in which names appear (e.g. the shared notes for progress calls). Community members are expected to respect the preferred gender pronouns of other members.

2. Assume Good Faith

FreedomBox contributors have many ways of pursuing our common goal of creating a free server operating system which may differ from your ways. Assume that other people are working towards this goal.

Note that many of our Contributors are not native English speakers or may have different cultural backgrounds. Assume good faith when misunderstandings arise.

3. Be Collaborative

FreedomBox is a large and complex project; there is always more to learn within FreedomBox. It’s good to ask for help when you need it. Similarly, offers for help should be seen in the context of our shared goal of improving FreedomBox.

When you make something for the benefit of the project, be willing to explain to others how it works, so that they can build on your work to make it even better.

The FreedomBox community values non-code contributions, including design contributions.

The FreedomBox community also values newcomers and provides tasks for first-time contributors using the “beginner” label in our issue tracking system.

4. Try To Be Concise

Keep in mind that what you write may be read by hundreds of people. Writing a short email or forum post means people can follow the conversation as efficiently as possible. When a long explanation is necessary, consider adding a summary.

Try to bring new arguments to a conversation so that each contribution adds something unique to the thread, keeping in mind that the rest of the thread still contains the other messages with arguments that have already been made.

Try to stay on topic, especially in discussions that are already fairly large.

5. Be Open

Most means of communication used by the FreedomBox community allow for public and private methods of communication. When it would contribute to the community’s knowledge base, you should preferably use public methods of communication for FreedomBox-related discussions. This applies to messages for help or FreedomBox-related support, too; not only is a public support request much more likely to result in an answer to your question, it also makes sure that any inadvertent mistakes made by people answering your question will be more easily detected and corrected.

Our community strives to avoid jargon and other non-inclusive language that can alienate or make people feel excluded. Our community also strives to encourage and recognize quiet voices. Though our community mostly communicates in English, we recognize that English may not be the first language of all contributors. Where possible, we provide notes of meetings and conference calls. We encourage and support localization of our documentation using a community edited Wiki. We encourage and support the localization of our software user interface using both web-based and traditional translation tools.

6. In Case of Problems

While this code of conduct should be adhered to by participants, we recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of some of the guidelines in this code of conduct. When violations happen, you have three avenues for enforcement. (1) You may reach out to the person who violated the code of conduct and point it out to them. Such messages may be in public or in private, whatever you decide is most appropriate. However, regardless of whether the message is public or not, it should still adhere to the relevant parts of this code of conduct; in particular, it should not be abusive or disrespectful. (2) You may report the violation to a community member who is listed in the “Contacts” section below and, if desired, ask for assistance mediating a resolution. (3) You may report the violation to a staff member at the FreedomBox Foundation and, if desired, ask for assistance mediating a resolution. Ultimately, all reports will be responded to in a matter appropriate to the specific circumstances of the violation, and the reporter, reported, and all others impacted will be updated.

If you choose to report a violation to either a community member or a FreedomBox Foundation staff member, reports should be made in private. To find contact information for these parties, please see “Contacts” section below.

Contacts

The following individuals, listed in alphabetical order, have volunteered to be contacted in case of problems. Please feel free to reach out to any or all of them:

Notes:

  1. This code of conduct was adapted from Debian’s Code of Conduct.
  2. This code of conduct benefits from the guidance provided by Mozilla’s “Open Source Inclusion Basic Checklist for Projects”.