# Code of Conduct

This code of conduct outlines our rules and expectations for everybody participating in the coreboot community.

## coreboot community etiquette

We have a friendly and productive atmosphere on our mailing lists, development / code review tools, IRC chat rooms and when we meet in person. Our principles evolve around the following:

- It’s not the user’s fault if something goes wrong.

- Attempt collaboration before conflict.

- People who intentionally insult others (users, developers, corporations, other projects, or the coreboot project itself) will be dealt with. See policy below.

- We are dealing with hardware with lots of undocumented pitfalls. It is quite possible that you did everything right, but coreboot or its tools still won’t work for you.

Refrain from insulting anyone or the group they belong to. Remember that people might be sensitive to other things than you are.

Most of our community members are not native English speakers, thus misunderstandings can (and do) happen. Assume that others are friendly and may have picked less-than-stellar wording by accident as long as you possibly can.

## Reporting Issues

If you have a grievance due to conduct in this community, we’re sorry that you have had a bad experience, and we want to hear about it so we can resolve the situation.

Please contact members of our arbitration team (listed below) promptly and directly, in person (if available) or by email: They will listen to you and react in a timely fashion.

If you feel uncomfortable, please don’t wait it out, ask for help, so we can work on setting things right.

For transparency there is no alias or private mailing list address for you to reach out to, since we want to make sure that you know who will and who won’t read your message.

However since people might be on travel or otherwise be unavailable at times, please reach out to multiple persons at once, especially when using email.

The team will treat your messages confidential as far as the law permits. For the purpose of knowing what law applies, the list provides the usual country of residence of each team member.

## Unacceptable Behavior

Unacceptable behaviors include: intimidating, harassing, abusive, discriminatory, derogatory or demeaning speech or actions by any participant in our community online, at all related events and in one-on-one communications carried out in the context of community business. Community event venues may be shared with members of the public; please be respectful to all patrons of these locations.

Examples of behaviors we do not accept in our community:

- harmful or prejudicial verbal or written comments related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability;

- inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual advances;

- deliberate intimidation, stalking or following;

- harassing photography or recording;

- sustained disruption of talks or other events.

Using this code of conduct aggressively against other people in the community might also be harassment. Be considerate when enforcing the code of conduct and always try to listen to both sides before passing judgment.

## Consequences of Unacceptable Behavior

Unacceptable behavior from any community member, including sponsors and those with decision-making authority, will not be tolerated.

Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately.

If a community member engages in unacceptable behavior, the community organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a temporary ban or permanent expulsion from the community without warning (and without refund in the case of a paid event).

As a part of running the project, coreboot leadership has the right to revoke privileges as they see fit. This is not done lightly. Over the history of the coreboot project, there have been only a handful of times where an action needed to be taken.

Community organizers can be members of the arbitration team, the leadership board, or organizers of events and online communities.

## Addressing Grievances

If you feel you have been falsely or unfairly accused of violating this Code of Conduct, you should notify the arbitration team with a concise description of your grievance.

Discussions about these actions are not done publicly, for obvious reasons. If someone believes that the circumstances that led to an action have changed, please send an email to all the members of the arbitration team and/or leadership board for discussion.

## Legal action

Threatening or starting legal action against the project, sibling projects hosted on coreboot.org infrastructure, project or infrastructure maintainers leads to an immediate ban from coreboot.org and related systems.

The ban can be reconsidered, but it’s the default action because the people who pour lots of time and money into the projects aren’t interested in seeing their resources used against them.

## Scope

We expect all community participants (contributors, paid or otherwise; sponsors; and other guests) to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues, online and in-person, as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to community business.

## Contact info

Our arbitration team currently consists of the following people

- Daniel Pono Takamori pono@sfconservancy.org (USA)

- Ronald Minnich rminnich@coreboot.org (USA)

- Martin Roth martin@coreboot.org (USA)

If you have an issue with someone on the arbitration team, please reach out to the coreboot leadership board directly.

The leadership board’s information can be found on the coreboot Leadership and Admin Boards page on the website.

## License and attribution

This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. It is based on the Citizen Code of Conduct