Update: We will not be continuing work on the open code of conduct. See our followup post for more information.
We believe open source communities should be a welcoming place for all participants. Through our experiences within the TODO Group, we strongly believe that a code of conduct helps set the ground rules for participation in communities and helps build a culture of respect. By adopting and honoring a code of conduct, communities can communicate their values, set expectations and outline a process for dealing with unwelcome behavior when it arises.
We are proud to share the Open Code of Conduct, an easy-to-reuse code of conduct template for open source communities. Some members of the TODO Group have already adopted this code of conduct for the projects they maintain and more plan to do so in the near future.
We hope sharing this with you will enable you to easily establish a code of conduct for your respective open source communities. If your project doesn’t already have a code of conduct, then we encourage you to check out the Open Code of Conduct as a starting point and adapt it to your community.
Update: July 23rd, 2015
Yesterday, we launched the Open Code of Conduct as a template to enable you to easily establish a code of conduct for your respective open source communities. The Open Code of Conduct was developed by looking both at what our member companies have developed as well as what other communities) have done. In particular, we were inspired by the recommended Django Code of Conduct as a basis for the Open Code of Conduct.
In using the term “open”, we meant to say that we are open to feedback on this work. What we’ve put together is designed as starting point, both for your own codes of conduct and as a discussion with the open source community at large. We see this as the beginning of a journey and fully intend for the Open Code of Conduct to be a living document that incorporates the best practices and learnings of others, and so we want to hear from you.
We’ve shared the Open Code of Conduct on GitHub so you can file issues, send pull requests, and provide any feedback you may have. We want to hear all of it, good and bad.
Please see the FAQ for more details.