Why did you make this? In recent times I've noticed an increase of the cancel-culture in the FOSS community. I do not like this kind of fundamentalism and, usually, gratuitous aggressiveness towards others. Even if I don't agree with you, I'm usually not fond of the idea of bullying you until you get fired or commit suicide.
Why didn't anyone do this before? Some people did. The GNU Project has the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines which aims to guide the communications(don't you say) within a project in a friendly manner, without opening space for bully.
I think The GNU Kind Communicatios Guidelines is very good at what it does but it's also incomplete. It only addresses how people talk to each other and mostly within the project, not how the project deals with "public relations".
Why do you think this is going to succed? I've noticed that a lot of project maintainers are interested in creating healthy and friendly communities. This interest is of increased importance in the weird polarizing times we live in.
Unfortunately most Code of Conducts popular today come with a very toxic community. They give the impression that the problem was solved but in actuality we are all living in fear of being cancelled for having healthy, respectful debates or because someone didn't like something we said 10 years ago.
When writting this manifest the goal I had in mind was to enable truly friendly communities. Communities where people don't get cancelled for having the wrong thoughts. Communities where people don't get ostracized for expressing unpopular opinions outside the project's boundaries.
Why does it have "Individualist" in the name? At it's core, the cancel-culture mobs are collectivist. That means they put the collective good before the rights of individuals. You don't have the ritght to an opinion if your opinion disagrees with the values of their group.
By putting emphasis on respect of individualist values (i.e. freedom of speech, identity, physical safety and etc.) I hope to disable the mechanism that online mobs use to cancel people.
I'm a colletivist myself. The manifest does nothing for me? This manifest still brings value to your project or to a project you are a part of. There can always be collectivists with different beliefs trying to bully you.
At the moment, most cancel-culture mobs in the western world are left-wing leaning, but I made no assumptions about this when writting. If the political scenario changes to a right-wing collectivism, this manifest should still be able to nurish a truly friendly and healthy community.
By virtue of being individualist and estabilishing boundaries for what is a project matter and what is not, individualist values will not "force themselves" into other matters of your life.
How do I use it? There are two steps:
First you need to copy or link the text of the manifest in your projects page. The links are at the top of this page.
Second you need to enforce(and preferably share) the the values that are expressed in the manifest. When someone deviates from those values, if the it's a light "offense", the first resource is always dialogue. Be kind to the person, try to understand their position and explain why you think their behaviour is not appropriate. Only if that fails you should make use of bans and suspensions. If the "offense" was serious, then you might consider bans and suspensions as a first resource.
If a discussion is a bit inflamated, don't post your replies right away. Wait 15 minutes while doing something else, then re-read what you wrote and remove the harsh bits. Read the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines now and every now and then from now on. Those guidelines are very good at what they do.
Can I modify the manifest? Of course, it's licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 4.0) License. I recommend that if you change something you also make a small modification to the name and add a note to at the top explaining what was changed. This will avoid confusion.
Can I help with something? Yes! At the moment I need help with a few things: