Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/mkoeppe/sage-coup-2024-10

Documentation of abuses by the Sage Code of Conduct Committee (2024) and Sage Abuse Committee (2023-24)
https://github.com/mkoeppe/sage-coup-2024-10

Last synced: 23 days ago
JSON representation

Documentation of abuses by the Sage Code of Conduct Committee (2024) and Sage Abuse Committee (2023-24)

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# Statement by Matthias Köppe on the illegitimate actions of the Sage Code of Conduct Committee

# (draft, TBD)



I am the principal de-facto maintainer of the SageMath project. I have been leading the project

since 2020: **technologically** (as the overall top code contributor, the principal maintainer of the Sage distribution, and as the designer and implementor of the modularization project, a renewal of Sage as a first-class member of the Python ecosystem); **organizationally** (e.g., as prinicipal maintainer of the continuous integration systems); and **morally** (e.g. with my 2024 essay series "(Re-)building an inclusive SageMath community", https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/bO6ZeK6MNSo/m/Pj0Hoaz2AwAJ).



On 2024-10-04, without any consultation with the community and in violation of our project's procedures, **the Sage Code of Conduct Committee (CoCC) abruptly suspended me from the Sage project**, for the duration of "at least one year": https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/wkYfMA9ivYA 



I am no longer able to post in any of the project's mailing lists, participate in the project's GitHub; and my contributions to the project have been erased from public view: https://github.com/sagemath/sage/graphs/contributors



The suspension was implemented and announced within hours of my calling out the CoCC for its severe misconduct and my call for accountability of the committee (https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/F9imWbwjPhE); the CoCC has not responded to my message, nor has it given any public justification for its actions.



This is the culmination of a severe crisis of the Sage community, in which the CoCC -- appointed by election only in early spring 2024 -- 

and its predecessor, the Sage Abuse Committee, have systematically refused to protect me from the persistent abuse by other developers, and instead took to a campaign of defamation against me. At the core of this defamation campaign is a false neutrality that equates abuse with calling out abuse, refuses to distinguish between real harm and narcissistic injury, and demands that victims of abuse are nice to their abusers. Not only has the CoCC systematically protected the abusers in the community: the methods of the committee have become indistinguishable from those of the abusers, e.g., gaslighting and playing the victim. The climate created by the committees by their actions -- and weaponized inaction -- has already encouraged other community members to openly display hostility and disrespect.



To what extent this crisis is based on general phenomena in toxic open source communities such as entitlement, jealousy, and narcissism, 

and to what extent it is based on the toxic subculture of prestige in pure mathematics is another question, but not a very important one.

Fundamentally, the crisis of the community is one driven by disrespect. 



**I am calling on the Sage community to:**

- remove the current Sage CoCC from office and reprimand its members for their severe misconduct;

- reinstate me as a member and as an owner of the SageMath project;

- engage in steps that affirm the principles of a healthy open source community and of good governance;

- appoint a new CoCC that operates on these well understood principles.



Meanwhile, my work on Sage continues: I have created a fork https://github.com/passagemath/passagemath, which is dedicated to developing pip-installable packages, a pyodide port for serverless deployment with Javascript, and a native Windows port.



## Sage Abuse Committee's weaponized inaction



TBD



## Sage Abuse Committee's abuse of administrative power



and refusal to justify the basis of GitHub privilege changes



TBD



## Sage Abuse Committee manipulated the 2024 Sage CoCC elections



The Sage Abuse Committee inappropriately removed me from consideration for election for the CoCC, thus eliminating abuse victims' representation from the committee.



TBD



## Sage Code of Conduct Committee's weaponized inaction and uneven enforcement



TBD



## Sage Code of Conduct Committee's defamation of abuse victims



The Sage CoCC plainly denies community members' fundamental right to call out abuse and other misconduct,

on the basis of the CoC guideline "Be friendly."



## Sage Code of Conduct Committee's denunciation of maintainer actions and of leadership as "misconduct"



TBD



## Files included in the repository

- Documentation of the email exchanges with the Sage Code of Conduct Committee (2024)

- Documentation of the email exchanges with the Sage Abuse Committee (2023-24)  (TBD)