LCA 2011 drafts detailed anti-harassment policy

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 11:38

Opinion and Analysis

In the wake of the recent focus on incidents of sexual harassment in the free and open source software community, the organisers of the next Australian national Linux conference have drafted a detailed anti-harassment policy for LCA 2011.

Essentially, the policy restates what was outlined for the first time at the 2010 conference - that anyone who behaves in a manner deemed to constitute harassment to anybody else, can be thrown out of the conference at the discretion of the organisers as a last resort.

What the LCA 2011 organisers have done is to get more specific and detailed; for example, the policy states, "Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics; sexual images in public spaces; deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording; and inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention.

The policy further states: "If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers (sic) may try various remedies such as warnings or requests to desist if appropriate; with the final recourse being expulsion from the conference with no refund."

The LCA 2011 anti-harassment policy is based on the generic code of conduct for FOSS conferences drafted by developer and Linux consultant Valerie Aurora and publicised by her recently on the Linux Weekly News website.