~mako/ubuntu-codeofconduct/proposed-revision

The Code of Conduct (CoC) was written in a day by a single person and

revised by only a handful of others before it was posted on the Ubuntu

website.  At the time, there was no Ubuntu community.

With time, the CoC has taken up a more important role than any of its

authors imagined. It is now explicitly agreed to by thousands of

Launchpad account holders and by hundreds of Ubuntu Members as a condition

of their franchise. It has become the central written pillar of the Ubuntu

community and has provided the basis for dozens of similar CoCs in other

communities. As a result, it is not lightly that we approach the task of

creating the first revision of the CoC since its creation.

But over the last 5 years, the Ubuntu community has grown in ways and to

degrees that were unanticipated. The Code of conduct plays a very

different -- and more important -- role that it did at first. In order

to reflect these changes and to create a stronger and more appropriate

Code of Conduct for the Ubuntu Community of today, we offer this

proposed revision.  We have tried to keep changes as small as possible

and to ensure that all proposed changes are fully in the spirit, if not

the language, of the original CoC.

== Goals with revision 1.1 ==

Our primary goal in this version of the Code of Conduct was to remove

what we saw as an overly technical focus. When the first Code of Conduct

was written, Ubuntu was an entirely technical project. There were no

users, no support systems, and very little in the way of non-technical

contributions from anyone. That has changed. In fact, the vast majority

of the Ubuntu community contributes to the Ubuntu project in ways other

than through writing code and making packages. We want our CoC to

reflect this and to speak to the reality of the Ubuntu community today.

Additionally, several of our proposed changes are designed to reflect

the growth of the Ubuntu governance system.  We changed several

references to the CC and its power to make it clear that the CC's

important role has now been delegated to a series of new governance

boards (e.g., the Forums Council and the IRC Council).

The original version of the Code of Conduct used the term "you" to refer

to a description of how people should act. Since the code of conduct is

(as we like to say) not a stick to be wielded, but rather a description

of how we feel our community should act, we changed the language so

that, where it is not too awkward, we use "we" instead of "you."

== List of specific Changes ==

Throughout the text, we:

 - changed references from "you" to "we" and changed the text in other

   minor ways to make this set of changes read more cleanly

In the opening paragraph, we:

 - changed the reference to the Community Council to refer to other

   governance bodies as well the CC

In the section on ''Be considerate'', we:

 - changed the example used to be less focused on code changes around

   release and tried to generalize the example to a variety of other

   areas in Ubuntu

In the section on ''Be collaborative'', we:

 - rewrote the section to remove a strong technical focus and an

   emphasis on inter-project and Ubuntu-upstream relationships, and

   removed the examples around patch workflow

 - tried to most clearly emphasize the way that collaboration plays

   important roles within teams, between teams, and between Ubuntu and

   the larger free software community

 - generalised the types of work that Ubuntu community members do

 - changed the reference from members to community members (membership

   didn't exist when the CoC was written)

In the section on ''When we disagree'', we:

 - mentioned governance bodies other than the CC

 - we emphasized that working separately should only happen when

   differences are dramatic

In the section on ''When you are unsure'', we :

 - have changed the reference to technical mailing lists to one that

   incorporates of community venues within Ubuntu.

 - removed the joking reference to SABDFL (there's nothing funny about

   the SABDFL)

In the section on ''Step down considerately.'', we:

 - changed the reference from "Developers" to "Members"