seL4 Code of Conduct

Brief summary: be nice, considerate, and constructive.

Conduct

Contact: moderation@sel4.systems

  • We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.
  • Please avoid using overtly sexual nicknames or other nicknames that might detract from a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all.
  • Please be kind and courteous. There’s no need to be mean or rude.
  • Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a right answer.
  • Please keep unstructured critique to a minimum. If you have solid ideas you want to experiment with, make a fork and see how it works.
  • We will exclude you from interaction if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behaviour. We interpret the term “harassment” as including the definition in the Citizen Code of Conduct; if you have any lack of clarity about what might be included in that concept, please read their definition. In particular, we don’t tolerate behavior that excludes people in socially marginalized groups.
  • Private harassment is also unacceptable. No matter who you are, if you feel you have been or are being harassed or made uncomfortable by a community member, please contact one of the channel ops or moderation@sel4.systems immediately. Whether you’re a regular contributor or a newcomer, we care about making this community a safe place for you and we’ve got your back.
  • Likewise any spamming, trolling, flaming, baiting or other attention-stealing behaviour is not welcome.

Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

  • Using welcoming and inclusive language
  • Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
  • Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
  • Focusing on what is best for the community
  • Showing empathy towards other community members

Moderation

These are the policies for upholding our community’s standards of conduct. If you feel that a conversation needs moderation, please contact moderation@sel4.systems.

  1. Remarks that violate the seL4 standards of conduct, including hateful, hurtful, oppressive, or exclusionary remarks, are not allowed. (No swearing is allowed in commit messages or post headings, but is tolerated elsewhere provided it should never target another user, and never in a hateful manner.)
  2. Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.
  3. Moderators will first respond to such remarks with a warning.
  4. If the warning is unheeded, we will take steps to temporarily restrict your interaction with the project, by e.g. kicking you from a forum or mailing list, or locking the relevant GitHub issue.
  5. If the user comes back and continues to make trouble, they will be banned, i.e., indefinitely excluded.
  6. Moderators may choose at their discretion to un-ban the user if it was a first offense and they offer the offended party a genuine apology.
  7. If a moderator bans someone and you think it was unjustified, please take it up with that moderator, or with a different moderator, in private. Public complaints about bans are not allowed via any of our communication channels.
  8. Moderators are held to a higher standard than other community members. If a moderator creates an inappropriate situation, they should expect less leeway than others.

In the seL4 community we strive to go the extra step to look out for each other. Don’t just aim to be technically unimpeachable, try to be your best self. In particular, avoid flirting with offensive or sensitive issues, particularly if they’re off-topic; this all too often leads to unnecessary fights, hurt feelings, and damaged trust; worse, it can drive people away from the community entirely.

And if someone takes issue with something you said or did, resist the urge to be defensive. Just stop doing what it was they complained about and apologize. Even if you feel you were misinterpreted or unfairly accused, chances are good there was something you could’ve communicated better — remember that it’s your responsibility to make your fellow contributors comfortable. Everyone wants to get along and we are all here first and foremost because we want to build trustworthy systems. You will find that people will be eager to assume good intent and forgive as long as you earn their trust.

The enforcement policies listed above apply to all official seL4 venues; including mattermost, discourse, JIRA, GitHub repositories under sel4 and sel4proj; and all mailing lists on https://lists.sel4.systems/postorius/lists/. For other projects adopting the seL4 Code of Conduct, please contact the maintainers of those projects for enforcement. If you wish to use this code of conduct for your own project, consider explicitly mentioning your moderation policy or making a copy with your own moderation policy so as to avoid confusion.

Adapted from the Node.js Policy on Trolling, Robigalia Code of Conduct, the Rust code of conduct as well as the Contributor Covenant v1.4.0.