The Contributor Covenant is a

code of conduct A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the social norm, norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization. Companies' codes of conduct A company code of conduct is a set of rules which is comm ...

for contributors to free/open source software projects, created by Coraline Ada Ehmke. Its stated purpose is to reduce

harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and ...

of minority,

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

and otherwise underrepresented open source software developers. The Contributor Covenant is used in prominent projects including

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pa ...

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

, Go, and JRuby. Relevant signers include

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

and

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

. Since its initial release as an open source document in 2014, its creator has claimed it has been adopted by over 100,000 open source projects. In 2016

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

added a feature to streamline the addition of the Contributor Covenant to an open source project and the Ruby library manager Bundler also has an option to add the Contributor Covenant to software programs that its users create. In 2016, Ehmke received a Ruby Hero award in recognition of her work on the Contributor Covenant. Following the adoption of the Contributor Covenant v1.4 by Linux in 2018 the Linux community reacted, with some applauding the change and some speaking against it. In 2021 the Contributor Covenant has been folded into the Organization for Ethical Source which promotes the idea that "software freedom must be always in service of human freedom".

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Contributor Covenant main page
Open-source movement Codes of conduct

See also

References

External links