In any Free Software project with more than one participant inevitably there may be people with whom you may disagree, or find it difficult to cooperate. Accept that, but even so, remain respectful. Disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour or personal attacks, and a community in which people feel threatened is not a healthy community.
Freedombone Contributors have many ways of reaching our common goal of providing freedom respecting internet or mesh systems which may differ from your ways. Assume that other people are working towards this goal.
## Be collaborative
Freedombone is a moderately complex project, though nothing big and professional like GNU. It's good to ask for help when you need it. Similarly, offers for help should be seen in the context of our shared goal of improving the system.
When you make something for the benefit of the project, be willing to explain to others how it works, so that they can build on your work to make it even better.
## Try to be concise
If you're submitting documentation then keep in mind that what you write once could be read by many other people. To avoid TL;DR keep it as short and concise as possible. This will also reduce the amount of translations effort needed.
If you're discussing an issue or bug, try to stay on topic, especially in discussions that are already fairly large.
## Be open
Most ways of communication used within Freedombone (eg Matrix/XMPP) allow for public and private communication. Prefer public methods of communication for Freedombone-related messages, unless posting something sensitive.
This applies to messages for help, too; not only is a public support request much more likely to result in an answer to your question, it also makes sure that any inadvertent mistakes made by people answering your question will be more easily detected and corrected.
## In case of problems
While this code of conduct should be adhered to by participants, we recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of some of the guidelines in this code of conduct. When that happens, you may reply to them and point out this code of conduct. Such messages may be in public or in private, whatever is most appropriate. However, regardless of whether the message is public or not, it should still adhere to the relevant parts of this code of conduct; in particular, it should not be abusive or disrespectful. Assume good faith; it is more likely that participants are unaware of their bad behaviour than that they intentionally try to degrade the quality of the discussion.
Serious or persistent offenders will be kicked from chat rooms and any of their subsequent patches will be unlikely to be upstreamed.
Complaints should be made (in private) to the maintainer or chat room admin. The typical email address can be found in the source code headers. Preferably use GPG/OpenPGP if you can, or XMPP with OTR/OMEMO to bob@freedombone.net.
