Code of Conduct

Ze is a technical project with a small community, and the rules for taking part are short.

Speak respectfully. Disagree politely. Do not make it personal. Treat people the way you want to be treated.

Be kind, and assume good faith. English is not everyone's first language, and words are just words: rough, blunt, or simple phrasing is fine as long as it is not aimed at someone. Take what people write in the best light it can carry, and do not read malice into a clumsy phrase. Malice shows as a pattern over time, not in one sentence, and it is worth treating as one only after it has been raised and has carried on anyway.

People come from different places, and different cultures draw the line of acceptable behaviour in different spots. This project takes no side on whose version is correct. It uses an older and simpler line instead: your freedom stops where another person's begins. Stay on your side of that, and most of the rest takes care of itself.

It is no one's place to tell other people how they should be. This is a space for technical work, and opinions on non-technical matters, whatever they are, are best kept for outside the project.

That covers almost everything. Argue about the code, the design, and the trade-offs as hard as you like, and leave the person out of it. Strong technical disagreement is welcome, and it is how the project gets better. Personal attacks, insults, and harassment have no place here, whether open or implied, and they will be removed.

Contributions are judged on their merit. Who you are does not earn you a pass and does not count against you: the work is what matters.

Ze is built with AI assistance, and code written with AI help is as welcome here as any other. That is part of how the project works. The bar does not move for it: the code still has to be good, and it still has to pass the project's technical gates. How a contribution was written counts for far less than whether it holds up.

This is not a corporate project. There is no HR department and no appeals process, and people here are expected to behave like adults. I am the maintainer, and my decision is final: on what belongs in the project, on how things are done, and on who is welcome to keep taking part. I will act on behaviour that breaks these rules, across the repositories, the issue tracker, and the project's Discord. If you run into a problem, or you are on the receiving end of one, contact me on Discord.

This project will not try to be all things to all people. If the way things are done here does not suit you, that is fair enough and no hard feelings. There are many other projects, and you are free to find or start one that fits you better.

None of this is hard. Everyone is more than welcome here, as long as they can follow the rules of decency.