FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

FOSS4G 2013 Code of Conduct

Last saved by Franz-Josef Behr on March 23, 2013

UK Law
The conference is taking place in the United Kingdom and so all the laws of the UK will apply. These may be different to those of your home country and it is your responsibility to be aware of this.

Venue Terms and Conditions
The conference venue is private property and has its own terms and conditions. These are available from [url]. In summary...

Conference Code

Comments

Barry Rowlingson on March 21, 2013:

This has been mentioned before, but I think happenings at PyCon this year might make it important that we get a code of conduct out.

I'll be checking out previous foss4g c-o-cs, as well as from other organisations, and also checking the venue terms and conditions.

any comments on scope, content, inspiration etc please add below.

Steven Feldman on March 22, 2013:

Jo and I were chatting about this recently. She was going to reach out to Kate Chapman to get some input.

My preference would be to keep this low key and not get bogged down with being politically correct. The few people who might behave in an unacceptable manner are unlikely to be deterred by a c-o-c (must remember to include hyphens in this abbreviation), we need the right to sanction them potentially with exclusion.

Jo Cook on March 22, 2013:

I've been quite quiet about this whole debate (in the widest sense- it's impossible to spend any time on the internet at the moment without being bombarded by concerns about sexism and other forms of discrimination)- because I feel incredibly lucky to never have experienced anything remotely akin to this. Consequently my feminist credentials are probably blown to shreds, but I read this today (following up on the PyCon car crash): 

"All of these people felt that I could make a contribution to the community, too.  It wasn’t because I was a woman, it was just because I was a person, and at the end of the day, that’s all I want — to be respected as a person."

Rather than a code of conduct that says what types of behaviour we exclude, I'd like to see one that says what we allow or encourage- which is basically that all attendees are treated with respect.

If we must include some explicit sanctions or ways in which people should report problems, then there are elements of the geek feminism anti-harassement policy (which the newly updated PyCon c-o-c is based on) that could probably be used: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy

But personally I'd like as light a touch as possible- and treat people like responsible adults. I am happy to reach out to Kate Chapman though, for a more global perspective.