 These kinds of videos are always tricky to make because they're they could lead you down a dangerous political rabbit hole and I'm going to try to avoid going there today. But people have asked me about my thoughts on the situation where the lead dev of Hyperland was banned by the free desktop organization. And I'm really not going to comment too much on that particular issue because plenty of people have talked about it. That story has been around for a couple of weeks now and I didn't want to make a video about it. And I'm not going to talk about their political differences as far as the two people that are really arguing over this, the free desktop person and then Hyperlands lead dev, you know, they obviously are in very different sides of the political spectrum and they just don't really like each other and I get that. And they also just as somebody that doesn't know either one of these people just briefly, you know, taking a look at some of what they have done online. I can tell that both of these people are very political in their mindset. They have certain political opinions. And you know, when you get these people like that together, especially from opposing political opinions, right, you typically end up with a situation where feelings get heard and you know, whatever, you know, for reasonable people. And that's what I'm going to talk about today is for those of us that are reasonable and actually want to get along and actually make the free software community a better place, I have some solutions. Now, these solutions that I have for improving the political division within the free and open source software communities, I've actually written these down and I've went ahead and created a document that I've uploaded to my GitLab. So my GitLab, I have several repositories on my GitLab. My GitLab is GitLab.com slash DWT1. That's my GitLab and look for the repository, the FOSS code of conduct. Now, I wrote this FOSS code of conduct four years ago. I made a video about that and you should check that video out because it would be a great companion video to today's video. So I'm going to link to that video in the show description. But I created this FOSS code of conduct about four years ago because I thought all of the codes of conduct out there for free and open source software projects were all pretty bad. Many of them were very vague. That's basically not having a code of conduct. And those that did have a code of conduct that wasn't vague, you know, there was much more specific. Many of them really got trapped in this, you know, political mindset and, you know, and trying to basically change the world. And there were very activist in tone. So I tried to create a very reasonable FOSS code of conduct that I thought everyone could get behind. And today what I did is, you know, I went ahead and pushed this document. Solutions for the political division in FOSS. And instead of actually reading it from this document, I know the font is kind of small here in the browser. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to pull up the actual document itself, which is a org document I'm going to zoom in. So hopefully you guys can follow along with the text as well. So this document has four main points. But at the top, I wrote that this document is written in an attempt to help free and open source software project leaders and community managers in curbing the increasing political division within our communities, as well as avoiding some potential pitfalls. So let's start with point number one, be respectful to all. So be respectful to everyone or at least make an attempt to be respectful. This includes calling people by their preferred names, titles and pronouns. If someone wants to be called a Martian, then call them a Martian. If someone wants to be called Dragon Slayer, then call them Dragon Slayer. If you begin an interaction by purposely mispronouncing their name or misrepresenting their gender identity, then you're stating up front that you have no respect for this person whatsoever and you have destroyed any chance of having a good working relationship going forward. Just be respectful to everyone. And that starts with as soon as you meet them, whatever it is that they want to be called, whatever pronouns they want to use, whatever titles, whatever name they happen to have, you know, make sure that you make a good faith effort of calling them what they want to be called. And as an aside, I will also say that this is not just for singular persons. I also see way too many people in the false community that don't do a good job at least trying to pronounce project names. I know we've got a lot of funny project names and pieces of software that have funny names. But some people I know purposely go out of their way to mispronounce certain software projects, certain false projects. And when you do that on purpose, again, you're basically saying you have no respect for that piece of software and the organization and the community around that project as well. So just don't do that. It's not hard. Just be respectful to all. Point number two, be aware of chat and messaging platforms. So in my opinion, false projects should not have communities on chat and messaging platforms such as Discord, Matrix, IRC, Reddit, et cetera, Facebook groups, whatever you want to throw in there, right? You shouldn't have a presence on any of those platforms, unless there is an actual need for your project to have that presence on that platform and only if the project is able to moderate the activity on those platforms appropriately. Remember, official chat rooms and forms are perceived as an extension of your project, so any bad actors on these platforms will reflect poorly on the project for all, but the largest projects having a presence on these platforms is not worth the hassle. And number three, don't be more active than you need to be. So do not actively participate in false projects and communities unless there is a good reason for you to be there. Do not join every project that you can find. Why would you want to be involved in so many communities? Anyway, you cannot possibly contribute in a meaningful way to all of them. Are you there simply to stroke your ego? Are you there to stir up drama? If you're not contributing code, artwork, translations, documentations, et cetera, you know, something meaningful. If you're not contributing something meaningful to that project, then you're probably there searching for excitement, right? If so, look elsewhere. Number four, broad messages have greater appeal. So broad messages appeal to the most people. False projects should never make their messaging so narrow that it severely limits the number of people that can actively participate in that project. For example, if I say candy is good, well, that's a message that most people can get behind. But if I say chocolate-covered insects are good, well, that's not nearly as appealing to most people. And a more apt example of this would be if your project's goal is mainly to spread awareness of free and open source software. If that's your goal that you've stated up front for your project, then it would be highly detrimental to start adding extra goals. For example, if you suddenly attach your project to a variety of socio-political issues, right? Because then you muddy the waters. What is exactly your primary goal of this project, right? Is it to spread awareness of false or is it something else? And again, the more of these goals that you attach to yourself and your project, you know, the narrower you have made your messaging, right? Broad messages have greater appeal. If you want the most people, right? The most amount of people on board helping you with your project and with that primary goal that you set up to create, right? Don't start attaching, you know, a tangential other goals to something. All you're going to do is limit the success of that project. So that's just some of my thoughts on many of these art things that I haven't said before on camera. I have long, you know, told people to be respectful to everyone. The idea that, you know, for whatever reason, whatever prejudice you have against certain groups of people, why are you just not able to actually just call them by their names, called them by their titles, called them by whatever pronoun. Like I have never understood the people that can't for whatever reason do that. You can't in any way claim that you have a good reason for not calling people and organizations their proper names. And for those of you that are leaders of projects and communities, you know, stay off of those chat and messaging and various social media platforms. Your project does not need to be on every single social media app and chat and messaging out there because you cannot possibly moderate that thing properly, not if you're actually working on your software. You can't you can't be a discord moderator and actually work on software as well. Why even have that discord unless discord is your official support channel, which I'm not sure that discord is the greatest official support channel. But hey, that's that's another discussion. But unless you have a reason to be on discord and matrix and IRC and all of these other platforms get off of those platforms, they're only going to cause you a lot of unnecessary heartache and pain. Number three, don't be more active than you need to be. And this is really one that I know people are going to say. Well, you're telling people not to be active in the free and open source communities. But isn't that the whole point? I'm saying don't be more active than you need to be. Many of these people and I know you guys see this, you go to various free and open source software communities, various projects on the Internet and you see a lot of the same names pop up and some of these communities, especially the bigger communities. That's like, hey, I recognize that guy's name. And then you go to this different other very large open source project and you see that same guy's name there. And then, hey, this project over here and this organization over here. I see that guy's name again. Why is he there? Why is he a part of all of these various organizations? Well, most of the time, these kinds of people, they're not actually contributing code to all these organizations. Many times they're there for political reasons. They're there to stir up drama. Many of these people that have their fingers in a lot of pies, right? They're not there actively contributing in a major way. Code and artwork, translation, documentation. No, no, no, no, that's not why they're there. And if you guys have been around the false community for a while, you know when you see these kinds of people, that's not why they're there. And finally, broad messages have greater appeal. I mean, that just kind of makes sense. If your goal, if your number one goal is to create this piece of software and make this piece of software fantastic, never stray away from that messaging, never muddy the waters, you know, by doing something that has absolutely nothing with software development, if that's your goal. Now, if your goal is something else, then make this other thing your goal. But then tell people up front, you're not really worried about developing this piece of software. That's not your primary role in this thing. But most people are very dishonest and disingenuous that do this. Many people, you know, they start out with one direction and then they drastically change directions. And then they don't really tell anybody about it, right? It just it just kind of happens and that's dangerous. And that is how we slip into this weird political division that has happened within the false community. In the end, I think if people would just do point number one, though, I think if you just go into any interaction with any other human being, whether it be in real life or online with the number one goal of I'm going to be respectful to this other person, we wouldn't have any of this nonsense. Anyway, just some food for thought. Check out my false code of conduct repo on my get lab and check out my solutions for political divisions within false. Peace, guys.