Once upon a time, in the golden age of the internet, communities ran on a simple principle: Don’t be an a-hole. If someone was a jerk, you ignored them. If they were really obnoxious, the mods showed them the digital door. It was simple, effective, and — most importantly — fair.
But then, something changed. A new kind of rulebook appeared — the Code of Conduct (CoC) — designed to keep things ‘safe’ and ‘inclusive’. And by ‘safe’, we mean 'under ideological occupation.’ And by ‘inclusive,’ we mean ‘agree with us or get canceled.’
And just like that, Open Source stopped being about open collaboration and became a purity test run by people who couldn’t code a ‘Hello World’ script if their lives depended on it.
📜 How It Started vs. How It's Going
1990s Internet Etiquette:
💡 “Be excellent to each other!”
💡 “Don't feed the trolls!”
💡 “Write good code, not manifestos!”
2020s Open Source Culture:
🚨 “OMG, did you see that guy liked a spicy tweet in 2014? PURGE HIM.”
🚨 “Banning people is inclusion, actually.”
🚨 “We don’t care if your code is good; your thoughts are problematic.”
🤡 Welcome to the modern FOSS clown world. 🤡
🔍 The Evolution of the "Code of Conduct"
🚀 Version 0.0.1: Netiquette: “Let’s keep things civil.” (Seems reasonable!)
💀 Version 1.0.0: “Certain speech is harmful.” (Okay, but who decides?)
🔥 Version 2.0.0: “Disagreeing with us = harassment.” (Wait, what?)
☠️ Version 3.0.0: “Dissent = fascism. Purge everyone who even thinks differently!”
📢 Congratulations! Your open source project is now a closed ideology.
🎭 How to Get Banned From a Modern FOSS Project
❌ Write great code (but have the wrong opinions)
❌ Ask why bug fixes take a backseat to “political activism”
❌ Make a joke that was fine 10 years ago
❌ Be friends with someone already on the blacklist
❌ Defend meritocracy (oops, that’s a ‘white supremacist’ term now!)
✔ 100% Safe Strategy? Say nothing, do nothing, and pretend the project is thriving while it dies.
💀 The Death of Meritocracy
👴 Old FOSS:
🔹 “Your code speaks for itself.”
🔹 “Merit over politics!”
🔹 “We welcome anyone who contributes!”
👶 New FOSS:
🔻 “Your identity is more important than your code.”
🔻 “Merit is a supremacist dogwhistle — meritocracy is literal fascism in disguise.”
🔻 “Only oppressed people are welcome.”
🔥 When even Microsoft looks at your culture and says, “Damn, that’s authoritarian”, you know you’ve gone too far.
💀 Then again, they’re not far behind. Give it a year, and they'll be mandating gender pronouns in your Git commit messages while HR asks if your toddler wants puberty blockers.
🛠️ How to Spot a FOSS Project That’s Been Hijacked
🚩 More political statements than feature updates
🚩 PRs closed for “not aligning with our values”
🚩 “Community Standards” get updated more than the codebase
🚩 The lead dev gets ousted because someone found an “offensive” tweet from 2012
🚩 Random GitHub users with anime avatars are demanding purges
🤡 If your bug tracker has more drama than a reality TV show, it's time to fork and run. 🤡
💣 The Ironic Endgame
1️⃣ Step 1: Introduce a vague CoC.
2️⃣ Step 2: Start using it selectively.
3️⃣ Step 3: Get rid of “problematic” devs who wrote half the project.
4️⃣ Step 4: Realize that the new “inclusive” team can’t maintain the code.
5️⃣ Step 5: Oops, the project collapses. But hey, at least it was morally pure!
🚀 Final Result: The best coders leave, fork the project, and build something better — without the nonsense.
🔥 The REAL Code of Conduct (The One That Actually Works)
✔ “Be excellent to each other.”
✔ “Don't feed the trolls.”
✔ “Shut up and code.”
🤷 If that’s too much to ask, then maybe open source isn’t for you.
💀 Call to Action: Where Do We Go From Here?
If you’re tired of FOSS projects turning into Discord echo chambers:
🔹 Fork early, fork often, fork everything
🔹 Build without the nonsense.
🔹 Encourage meritocracy over ideology.
🔹 And never let power-hungry weirdos control the project.
🎤 Because Open Source should be about open collaboration — not ideological gatekeeping.
🚀 Fork the world. 🚀