Having seen and survived more than a decade of political insanity in tech, my recommendations for healthy open-source projects are simple:
- No politics in open-source (left or right)
- No COC, language policing, political banners, or any other divisive and inherently political symbols and tools of power
- No consideration for conduct in other communities; whatever they said on X or BlueSky is irrelevant
- Speech and conduct within the project should be professional and focused on the goals of the project
- The only valid reason to ban someone is because they are making MORE work for core contributors than their contributions justify (if Stalin wants to submit a good PR, merge it without fuss)
- The only valid reason to moderate is because someone can't respect the above, and in such a case, the moderator, moderation decision, and moderated content should be transparent to guard against abuse
In a nutshell:
Code first. Be professional. Leave politics at the door.