Intel joins open source code of conduct Contributor Covenant

All Intel open source projects will now comply with the Contributor Covenant. This is a code of conduct from 2014, which encourages participants to use a common language and to promote the participation of people around the world. That’s what ZDNet reports.

Coraline Ada Ehmke wrote the Contributor Covenant in 2014, with the aim of tackling the distortion of white male employees in open source projects. The code of conduct also calls into question the trust of open source communities in meritocracy, which allowed technically competent leaders to get away with public bad behavior.

“At Intel, we are committed to building a welcoming, inclusive community,” said Imad Sousou, vice president and GM at Intel’s Open Source Technology Center (OTC). “The OTC adopts the Contributor Covenant as a code of conduct for projects we host and maintain, and for our developers.” The code of conduct will apply to all Intel open source projects and for its developers who contribute to other projects in the tech industry.

Sousou goes on to say that Intel chose to use the Contributor Covenant because it “is well written and well represented within open source communities”. It also clearly reflects the expectations of participants and represents the best practices within open source. The company intends to advise the communities it works with to start using the code of conduct as well.

Broad adoption

The code of conduct has been widely adopted in the tech industry. More than 100,000 open source projects adopted the code of conduct, including projects by Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and Google. “This Code of Conduct applies to all repos and communities of Microsoft-managed open source projects, regardless of whether the repos specifically requests use or not,” says Microsoft. “The Code of Conduct also applies in a public space when an individual represents a project or his community.”