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On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote: |
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> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote: |
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>>> |
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>>> It is about openness vs. isolation. |
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>> |
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>> I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome |
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>> contributions. |
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> |
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> Closing of the mailing list does not sound like that. |
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> |
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Sure, but it is actually part of the motivation. |
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|
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Consider this scenario. |
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|
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Fred is a community member. Fred consistently harasses and trolls new |
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contributors in private. New contributors end up leaving because of |
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Fred. |
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|
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Fred gets booted out as a result. No mention is made of why Fred as |
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booted out, because everything happened in private. |
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|
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Now a bunch of community members get upset about Fred being booted out |
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without reason. Fred claims it is because he disagrees with the |
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leadership on something. People start arguing endlessly about |
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openness. |
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|
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Ultimately the leaders just want Fred gone so that new contributors |
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aren't getting driven away. They can't explain that because then they |
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create potential civil liability for the project. The problem is that |
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the debate goes on for over a year despite intervening elections and |
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now this becomes the issue that is driving new contributors away. |
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|
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What solution would you propose for this problem? It isn't |
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hypothetical at all - I can think of one case in Gentoo's past where |
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this happened that I'm aware of, and I'd be shocked if it were the |
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only one. |
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|
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> And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again, |
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> no matter how closed the list will be. |
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Sure, but we can at least force the negative advertising of Gentoo to |
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go elsewhere, rather than basically paying to run a negative PR |
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campaign against ourselves. |
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>> A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these |
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>> debates probably are well-intended. |
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> |
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> Taking away freedom is never justified by good intention. |
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|
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You might want to choose a BSD-based distro then. :) |
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|
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And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and |
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others? Is this truly a freedom we want to stand for? How about the |
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freedom to harass members of legally-protected classes (something that |
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also has happened historically in the community)? |
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|
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Surely Gentoo's mission isn't to run completely unrestricated forums |
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for discussion of anything and everything. Our main purpose here is |
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to maintain a Linux distro, not provide a platform for anybody who has |
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an opinion on anything. Free expression has to be balanced against |
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the interests of people who want to actually contribute to the distro |
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without being endlessly trolled and harassed. |
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|
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-- |
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Rich |