This week we looked at codes of conduct in open source projects, and honestly I never thought much about them before. But it makes sense — when anyone in the world can contribute to your project, you need some shared understanding of how people should treat each other. There’s no office, no manager, just a bunch of strangers collaborating over the internet.

Codes of Conduct

Go’s Code of Conduct was interesting to read because it feels less like a rulebook and more like a set of values. They have this whole “Gopher Values” section about being patient, assuming good faith, and being mindful that not everyone speaks English natively. The Contributor Covenant is more of a standard template — it gets the job done but reads more formal. Two big differences: Go has that values section which the Contributor Covenant doesn’t, and Go explicitly calls out cultural and language awareness. I think that’s because Go has such a huge global community that miscommunication over text is a real risk.

Sugar Labs bases theirs on the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, which has a similar vibe to Go’s — more about positive values than just listing what not to do.

I also checked out vLLM’s Code of Conduct since I use it a lot. It’s basically the Contributor Covenant v2.1 with reports going to a Slack channel. It works, but it’s pretty much the default template. As the project grows I think they’d benefit from adding something more personal, like Go did.

Video Reflection

The video on driving consensus had a lot of good points, but the one that really stuck with me was the idea of a “North Star” — getting everyone to agree on what you’re building before arguing about how. I’ve been in group projects where nobody was clear on who was doing what, and we ended up with duplicated work and stuff falling through the cracks. Having that shared direction and clear responsibilities would have saved a lot of headaches.