The SQLite Code of Ethics

Before I got to talk with Richard, I found many things online about his Christian values and public domain license and how odd it was.<p>And I thought this was THE fascinating thing about Richard that led to the database and other things.<p>But then I talked to him. He&#x27;s a great engineer but a regular guy running a business around a thing he built.<p>He gets to be a bit whimsical because he can. He can use his own source control and license, and he can certainly make up a code of ethics, to check a check box on some form somewhere.<p>The cool thing about SQLite is that he built this thing and gets to do things his way.<p>This is just a specific instance of that.<p>Shameless plug: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corecursive.com&#x2F;066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corecursive.com&#x2F;066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp&#x2F;</a>

seeing as some people have already added some comments criticizing the code of conduct, I thought I&#x27;d add what I think is the most important parts of that code of Ethics :<p>&gt; No one is required to follow The Rule [...] or even think that [it] is a good idea. [...] anyone is free to dispute or ignore that idea [...]<p>&gt; This is a one-way promise [...]. the developers are saying &quot;we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us&quot;<p>No one is forcing their beliefs onto anyone. keep the pitchforks in the shed.

I&#x27;m not religious but I&#x27;ve always liked this; it&#x27;s fun to think of the SQLite developers as a small monastery. If monasteries can produce beer for the world (see: the Trappists), why not software?

At a time of decaying social bonds, cultural fragmentation, and no consensus reality, i would much rather work somewhere with an explicit code like this than the countless &quot;we are good people&quot; places that will never define what &quot;being good people&quot; is until they are on the opposite side of a courtroom. Having shared values is very important for a team.

I am not a prolific contributor in the open source scene, but I participate with some frequency. I&#x27;ve always thought Codes of conduct are simply platitudes to keep over-eager human resources personnel, twitter activists, and their ilk at bay. Never once have I ever felt the need to look over the codes on any service. Such pages are simply background noise that contribute nothing but the occupation of space to a project. This has been my impression thus far.<p>I do not subscribe to all the beliefs the author espouses, but I am sympathetic with them. Admittedly, I feel myself cheering him on for standing his ground against this vacuous criticism.

&gt; Be in dread of hell.<p>This one’s in the Oracle Master Agreement too.

Super weird to make a COC about your Christian values but I respect the check-the-form hustle.

previously:<p>&quot;SQLite: Code of Ethics&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26547201" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26547201</a> (March 22, 2021 — 37 points, 23 comments)<p>&quot;SQLite updated Code of Conduct&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18313131" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18313131</a> (October 26, 2018 — 41 points, 89 comments)<p>&quot;SQLite: Code of Ethics&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18297514" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18297514</a> (October 24, 2018 — 34 points, 19 comments)<p>&quot;SQLite: Code of Conduct&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18273530" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18273530</a> (October 22, 2018 — 338 points, 288 comments [flagged])<p>&quot;SQLite: Code of Conduct&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18273390" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18273390</a> (October 22, 2018 — 157 points, 60 comments)

&gt; 54. Speak no useless words or words that move to laughter. &gt; 55. Do not love much or boisterous laughter.<p>I’m out.<p><pre><code> ROLLBACK TRANSACTION;</code></pre>

Ahhhh this explains the reason SQLite is so.. disciplined. It&#x27;s created by a group of monks!

As good as the intentions behind them are, they work much better by leaving negations out.<p>Do not murder -&gt; Leave other people alive<p>Do not commit adultery -&gt; Be truthful to your partner<p>Do not steal, Do not covet -&gt; Be content with what you have<p>Do not bear false witness -&gt; Speak the truth<p>Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself -&gt; Treat others like you want to be treated<p>Do not become attached to pleasures -&gt; Practice moderation<p>Do not give way to anger -&gt; Stay calm<p>Do not nurse a grudge, Do not return evil for evil, Do not curse those who curse you, but rather bless them, Do no wrong to anyone, and bear patiently wrongs done to yourself -&gt; Practice forgiveness<p>Be not proud -&gt; Be humble<p>Be not addicted to wine -&gt; Drink in moderation<p>Be not a great eater -&gt; Eat in moderation<p>Be not lazy -&gt; Be diligent<p>(edit): formatting

Why is it a list and not a table?<p>Seems like a pretty simple case of CREATE TABLE ethics ( id INT PRIMARY KEY, rule TEXT );

Lots of Christian theology can get bogged down in the Trinity, what the Holy Ghost part means, etc.<p>There are also much more basic sects where the theology of the Gospel is considerably easier to preach, and where in particular the idea of God simply being <i>other people, and our love for each other</i> is prevalent. It is surprising to see this kind of Christianity here, in a piece of software. Surprising and uplifting.<p>It is all quite an Anglican perspective. I feel sorry for people who don’t have better access to Anglican Communion &#x2F; Episcopalianism. The more deeply theological sects don’t hold a candle to it.

39. Be not a grumbler.<p>I have failed, but sqlite yields no grumbling

Robustness principle: &quot;be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others&quot;[1] is a good ethical rule.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Robustness_principle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Robustness_principle</a>

No less ridiculous than other similar documents out there

This sort of thing used to annoy me in my youth. But there is a lot of good stuff in there. These are directions on how YOU should live your life, so strike out as appropriate. SQLite is great and if pondering these rules helped, only a fool would avoid pondering them out of spite.

&quot;I don&#x27;t want to be beholden to Gmail [...] controlling a record of all of my conversations&quot;. Replacing Gmail: now THAT sounds interesting

In this world of bits and bytes, a lot of early principles set by the founders get compromised as time goes on. We, as developers, tend to take these as &quot;that&#x27;s just the way it is&quot;, and move on.<p>Sure, some of us, try. Root our phones, host our own emails. But really, isn&#x27;t being a good human underlying all that goes above it?<p>I&#x27;m not a Christian. I&#x27;m not even religious. IMHO though, if any software that I&#x27;ve ever written or would write in future, would help others realize that in the big picture, a belief and faith in humanity is the most important thing above all else, I would consider myself privileged.

People should be concerned that Facebook is giving 24 hours bans for simply posting a link to the SQLite Code of Ethics page - asserting that it violates FB community standards about sexuality ...

So I am intrigued by the idea of the Axial Age transition - roughly 500BC and worlds big population centres (India China Persia) hit some kind of population tipping point, developed massive abusive slavery and wars and then developed much more restrictive religions as a means to control the larger populations.<p>The argument is tenuous but it reminds me a lot of the Shakespeare &#x2F; Lope de Vega transition- sometimes population is dense enough to chnage something.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Axial_Age" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Axial_Age</a>

I love this, doubling down on personal beliefs in face of opposition

Honestly, 72 rules, most of which overlap to some extend, do not seem like they would be easy to follow.<p>I do think it’s nice that “respect your parents” has been modified to “respect everyone”.

I don&#x27;t know why a technology company needs a &quot;code of conduct&quot; or &quot;ethics&quot;. The management embodies the ethics they desire to display and enforce. Has the institutional hierarchy lost the ability to govern and persuade their employees? Posting it for PR reasons is too close to virtue signalling.<p>Having a code of conduct and explicitly informing the world that you are Catholic and run the place in a Catholic manner, can be divisive. Not because Catholicism is a Big Bad™ or whatever current scandal, blah blah.<p>Because Catholics have a very distinct management style that excludes free flowing ideas and a two-way relationship with management, and focuses on nailing down perfect form. Sometimes it produces great results, other times not so much.<p>When it doesn&#x27;t, it can be even more difficult to offer an alternative method, because of a strict CoC. For employees, the rules are sometimes used by management as an unintentional denial of different solutions.<p>People who know how this management style impacts their work life, may avoid the company. The internal environment becomes over-specialized towards one particular way of thinking and enacting technological change. Which is probably fine for SQLite to forever be the same as it was, which is all most people want out of the project anyway.<p>As a general trend though, it&#x27;s concerning that otherwise solid companies are closing the front door to new ideas and opening the window so the non-CoC thinking can fly away.<p>The relationship everyone wants in the corporate world, is with the most skilled people at the best price. It doesn&#x27;t necessarily correlate with perfect form or political CoCs.

This is way more fucked up than any &quot;code of conduct&quot; but treated much less controversially on HN

That much concerning on the person of religion creates nothing except war. It is like when you are claiming in license that your sw can&#x27;t be used for evil and get surprised that your sw is not compatible with free licenses.

When viewing this through the lens of &quot;God is a proxy symbol for the first order derivative of your society&quot; these rules make a lot of sense.<p>If you re-read this with that interpretation, it&#x27;s pretty amazing stuff.

I myself am not a believer; but with the way things have been going in this world, I&#x27;m tempted to ask him to add a &quot;Fork me on GitHub&quot; to the end of the list.

I failed at step 1<p>&gt; No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea.<p>Oh thank god for that...

We need one of those for the Church of Emacs. I bless your computer, my child!

Another one?<p>Looks like we get this every quarter..<p>Anyway, if you dont like it, fork it... or use another Db.

Anything couched in religious language immediately turns people off even if what is being said perfectly aligns with the reader’s beliefs.<p>Philosophize this has some good discussions about religious vocabulary when discussing Kierkegaard.

These rules sound terrible. What is it with people to put everything they do in God? Just do it because you&#x27;re a good guy and you want to do it. Not because some galactic justice tolds you to do it. Really a shame.

Shouldn&#x27;t we put &quot;(2018)&quot; label on that?

How do they interpret the self-flagellation rule?

It&#x27;s breeze of fresh air compared to most code of conducts which sound like communist propaganda. This and the Linux code of conflict.

There are some questionable ones in between there.<p>&gt; Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord&#x27;s precept, &quot;Do what they say, but not what they do.&quot;<p>This would have you willingly submit to sexual assault by a priest. And really should be revised considering the slew of cases against the church, or at least be revised with some sort of exception not just to “not do as they do, do as they say”, but to not obey them when they commit such acts.<p>And yes, I understand that this is in no way forced upon anyone and is just a “I believe” statement, but still I would argue that the suggestion that those who live by these rules live happier lives is countered by every choirboy who submitted and obeyed a person god had place in authority over them, and got assaulted as a result. Plenty of those rules I would agree, though it seems every mention of the institution which is “god” is irrelevant, redundant, harmful or downright sinister. I think it right to cut down the list a slight bit.

I don&#x27;t hate it.

i&#x27;m getting Terry Davis vibes

SQLite is anti-fragile.

Madness

What if a dev wanted to work on the project and was a devout devil worshiper or an atheist wine bibber…

There’s that libertarian streak of “his project, his rules” in this thread. He can include or exclude anyone he wants because it’s his project.<p>Well, I read the very first line and see that he doesn’t want me, or people like me to be a contributor to this project. And <i>that’s fine</i>. His project, so I hear. But personally, I’ve felt welcome to contribute to every other open source project out there. I’ve felt welcome to apply to any job out there. It feels jarring to be excluded like this. I feel hurt. I shouldn’t be made to feel like this, just because of my religious views.<p>And no, please don’t split any hairs like “no, he’s not excluding, he’s actually describing…”. You wouldn’t be supporting him if the first line changed to be based on race instead of religion. Then why are you supporting him now?

Hmm, is this some sort of Meta I’m missing? It feels strange to mix so many cultural ‘suggestions’ with a database product.<p>&gt; Listen willingly to holy reading.<p>&gt; Devote yourself frequently to prayer.<p>&gt; Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future.<p>Anyway, sqlite is a good product and I don’t even mind all that much to have a code of Ethics associated to it, just not a thing you see often.

People here try to subvert expectations with their takes so much that it&#x27;s no surprise that there are so many posts saying there is nothing wrong with this and to not use it if you don&#x27;t agree. If the post wasn&#x27;t specifically drawing attention to the unusual code of ethics, people would be dragging it through the mud for the potential to generate bad PR or some other example illustrating why &#x27;successful companies keep their codes plain and boring for a reason&#x27;.

So... what is SQLite&#x27;s stance on abortion?<p>[Edit] Found it: it&#x27;s supported: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;3912417&#x2F;is-there-a-way-to-abort-an-sqlite-call" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;3912417&#x2F;is-there-a-way-t...</a>

The fact that repositories even have &quot;codes of conduct&quot; is Orwellian on one hand and a sign of idiocracy on the other.

Seems pretty self-important&#x2F;pretentious. It&#x27;s just a database, guys.

This scares me slightly. When I see a code of ethics bound to faith, I have to wonder what happens if the faith disappears. Experience says lots of people get hurt. I don&#x27;t wish that on anyone.<p>Ethical stance must stand alone unconditionally.<p>As for the actual rules, picking one in particular, respecting someone purely for being senior is stupid. Respect is simply earned. I respect more people younger and in more junior positions than myself.

I&#x27;ve used SQLite in the long past (early 2000s) and had fun with it, but I had never seen this. Imposing your religious beliefs through a ..code of &quot;ethics&quot; no less, in exchange for some (arguably small) thing you&#x27;ve done that is completely irrelevant to these beliefs is ludicrous. While I secretly hope that the author is light-spirited in writing this, I will err on the safe side and never use, and actively steer folks away from using, SQLite in the future.<p>Incidentally, the page has some internal consistency issues:<p>``` Honor all people. ```<p>has historically not played well with:<p>``` First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength. Deny oneself in order to follow Christ. Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ. Put your hope in God. Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself. Fear the Day of Judgment. Be in dread of hell. Desire eternal life with all the passion of the spirit. Keep death daily before your eyes. Know for certain that God sees you everywhere. When wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ immediately. Listen willingly to holy reading. Devote yourself frequently to prayer. Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord&#x27;s precept, &quot;Do what they say, but not what they do.&quot; Do not wish to be called holy before one is holy; but first to be holy, that you may be truly so called. Fulfill God&#x27;s commandments daily in your deeds. Pray for your enemies in the love of Christ. Never despair of God&#x27;s mercy. ```

It takes a special kind of arrogance to believe that you can rewrite the 10 commandments.<p>But to rewrite them, see them there on the screen and not realise you have done it, in a much more inefficient way, and also much, much worse. Thats just a breakdown.