I would like to humbly submit a few founding principles, or “Auxioms”, for this community. The purpose of these principles is not to replace or compete with any Code of Conduct or other formal set of rules, but to enshrine core values that the Aux community agrees are vitally important to the project.
1. The fundamental dignity of the person.
Aux exists first and foremost to benefit people. All people posses an essential dignity which must be honored with basic respect. All forms of racism, sexism, fascism, or any other bigotry are inimical to the Aux community.
2. Software must serve the common good.
The highest end of our work is to promote the common good. Private interests must never interfere with this core mission of the Aux community.
3. Free and open-source collaboration.
On account of the prior two axioms, Aux commits not only to developing free and open-source software, but to collective action which is itself free and open. Aux must be a community project: not an industry consortium or “benevolent” dictatorship.
To expand a bit, I would ask that every member of the Aux community assent to these principles as the foundation for our social contract with one another. If someone cannot, for example, affirm the inalienable dignity of trans people then I do not want them to be a part of this project in any capacity.
Thank you for this write up and further clarification. I cannot agree more. We already have a number minorities working with us here, so I am sure when I say this, that I am not talking just for myself.
I think having a short list of principles like this can help signal both to outsiders and to remind each other of why we are here and what we believe in. If we adopt these principles, we can say in a discussion “Yeah we could do X, except it would violate Auxiom #2” or whatever and people would know that “oh yeah, that can’t be done.” Keeping them short and sweet like this, I hope, allows them to be memorable and evocative of why Aux is a great community to participate in.
oooh “Auxioms” fancy (wish I had a cookie monster emojoy)
I love the naming.
Yeah I was pondering something similar. I would have expressed it as:
we are humans first and foremost - and while we love logic and programming this treatment is only perfect for computers.
Acknowledging and upholding our humanness (the good and bad sides) within community and our interactions feels necessary for long-term community health.
Or in short: Treat computers like computers, Treat humans like humans
The Code of Conduct establishes the kinds of conduct that are not permissible. I think separately trying to share a culture of kindness and collaboration is also a benefit even if it is not mandated by the CoC.
The Code of Conduct is, well, a code. It is a concrete ruleset, an implementation of moderation standards. We could conceivably revise this Code in the future, adopt another one, etc. My proposal of the “Auxioms” answers a more fundamental question: why do we have this Code of Conduct? If we change the CoC in some way, by what standard do we judge whether or not it is wise to do so? The three fundamental principles seem to express that “why” implicit in why we are all here. I think by making that “why” explicit, we can clearly signal to others and remind each other of what brings us together.
Maybe as an addition to Auxiom #1 or #2: an explicit reminder that people come first. All software is created to serve users, in one way or another. Aux exists first and foremost to benefit people, not to become the most popular or profitable distribution.
The phrasing could use some work, but hopefully the idea comes across
Furthermore, I think its worth putting in that we should help keep our mental in check. I know from the nix project that many contributors were exhausted and burnt out, so we should push for better mental health.
100% agreed with the principles listed, thank you for making them explicit!
Re: how principles and CoCs differ, I personally love the construction of the CoC of the Glasgow Interface Explorer, which blends the two. It has a small part that defines a minimum bar of obvious intolerable behavior, but most of it transmits a set of values and ideals that their community shares, and lets the reader derive the compatible “low level” rules of conduct for themselves.
This avoids common failure modes like having to maintain long lists of detailed rules, or having to argue with people over the meanings of the words in rules. It also tells newcomers (like me, hi!) a lot more information to answer “do I want to be here?” and “does this community want me to be here?”
I personally like that structure a lot, and auxioms seem like a step in that direction to me
Aux exists first and foremost to benefit people. All people posses an essential dignity which must be honored with basic respect. All forms of racism, sexism, fascism, or any other bigotry are inimical to the Aux community.
H\e\l\l yes, let’s please put some explicit intention here! Could we formulate a nice auxiom around that?
That has been my understanding of a CoC so far.
The rules IMO make a lot of sense describing the intolerable behaviors
But the behaviors we are aspiring to are IMO much more actionable (since they dont need to follow “dont do X” formula) and (if well formulated) describe “conduct”
I tried to keep the Auxioms sufficiently general so they don’t end up being a lengthy list of every possible concern. Does adding a bit about well-being cover mental health in your view @dfh ?
2. Software must serve the common good.
The highest end of our work is to promote the common good. Private interests must never interfere with this core mission of the Aux community. The technology we build must never come at the expense of our personal or collective well-being.
I do love that the scope is actually wider than mental health. While that is a concern individually, doing “well by the whole” is IMO the extension of that principle into the macro.
I could not edit the first post, so here is the latest draft:
1. The fundamental dignity of the person.
Aux exists first and foremost to benefit people. All people posses an essential dignity which must be honored with basic respect. All forms of racism, sexism, fascism, or any other bigotry are inimical to the Aux community.
2. Software must serve the common good.
The highest end of our work is to promote the common good. Private interests must never interfere with this core mission of the Aux community. The technology we build must never come at the expense of our personal or collective well-being.
3. Free and open-source collaboration.
On account of the prior two axioms, Aux commits not only to developing free and open-source software, but to collective action which is itself free and open. Aux must be a community project: not an industry consortium or “benevolent” dictatorship.
Can we please try to avoid rushing into broad-strokes, widely impacting decisions with little more than a Discourse poll? This hasn’t worked very well for the license decision, and I do not want to repeat the same mistakes we made there.
What I’d like to see before we start making decisions like these is a proper framework for making decisions. Granted, there is a sort of chicken-and-egg problem here where we can’t really make decisions without having a framework for decision making implemented, but for this sort of foundational thing, I think it’s largely okay for the Steering Committee to have executive power over this one - we need to bootstrap things somehow. That’s not to say “ignore community input and do whatever”, community input can absolutely factor into building this framework. But as far as making it official, that needs to come from the Steering Committee. I don’t know where else it can come from.
