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Michael Larabel over at Phoronix brings us news of a stealth Social Justice coup over at FreeDesktop.org:
X.Org, GStreamer, Wayland, LibreOffice, Mesa, VA-API, Harfbuzz, and SPICE are among the many projects hosted by FreeDesktop.org that now appear to be on a contributor covenant / code of conduct.
The Contributor Covenant for those unfamiliar with it is trying to promote a code of conduct for open-source projects that is trying to promote diversity and equality of contributors to libre software projects. From the covenant's website, "Part of this problem [of "free, libre, and open source projects suffer from a startling lack of diversity, with dramatically low representation by women, people of color, and other marginalized populations"] lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names."
The covenant states in part that those contributing should use welcoming and inclusive language, be respectful to others, showing empathy towards others, avoid insulting comments, and avoid inappropriate conduct. For the most part, it's basically common sense.
Now it seems this Contributor Covenant is being forced onto all FreeDesktop.org-hosted projects.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Correlation is not causation; I think you're overlooking a likely common cause: climate.
You live in a place with winter so harsh that you've gotta work all summer to prepare for it, that "builds character" (as they say) -- during the winter, you're in the shed making tools to make the coming summer a little easier and more successful. The result is a culture of hard work and innovation.
You live in a bloody year-round paradise where food practically grows itself, you have time to loaf around daydreaming about gods, and the resulting culture will prioritize leisure and religion.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @10:06PM
The problem I see with this is the popularity of the Spanish language (and to a lesser extent, Portuguese): those two kingdoms used to be some of the most powerful places on Earth, which is why they were so successful in establishing colonies in the New World. On top of that, before them, the Roman Empire was very successful, and southern Italy is a really nice, warm place too. Before them, several other civilizations flourished in the Middle East or nearby: the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Persians, the Greeks, etc. It really wasn't until much more recent times when the cold places became the sources of successful civilization. Over in the East, India had a very prosperous society 2000+ years ago, but then things kinda fell apart.
Finally, you don't need a "year-round paradise" to give you time to "loaf about daydreaming about gods"; this is disproven by the Norse. They had a successful society for a time, but they had a very strong mythology which persists to this day with the names of our days (Tuesday through Friday). They absolutely had to prepare for harsh winters.