Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
<i>A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them.  It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn&#x27;t try to teach people to do better than what the rules require.  To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that.</i><p>That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other.<p>Edit: I also love how each paragraph in the guidelines starts with &quot;please&quot;. It&#x27;s such a different approach than the one taken in CoC: &quot;please do this or that for everyone&#x27;s benefit&quot; rather than &quot;do this and that or you&#x27;ll be judged by the appropriate judging organ&quot;.<p>We lack this kind of gentleness in the world of raging wars between pro-CoC people and anti-CoC people.