[gentoo-dev] Re: more help needed with gcc-4.8 stabilization, chromium starts heavily using C++11

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Wed, 26 Nov 2014 16:52:07 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@g.o> wrote:
>> On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 00:34:33 +0000 (UTC)
>> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
>>
>>> While it pains me to say this, unfortunately it looks like we have
>>> another "toxic person" situation to deal with, with all the
>>> implications that come with it. Maybe it's time to deal with it.
>>
>> Toxic wars have casualties; in one of the sides, or in both of them.
>>
>> IOTW; you're already dealing with it, you can only change the outcome.
>>
>>
> Can you be clear as to what you're recommending?

I'm not sure if that question was of me or of Tom or of all readers...

My operating assumption is that what I see is the tip of the iceberg.  
I'm not on core or on IRC, and while I sometimes read the council IRC 
logs, I've only caught the summaries a couple of times in the last year 
or so, so there's /certainly/ more going on than I see.

So I'm not in a position to have a recommendation, only to worry, because 
it's my distro in the balance! =8^0

Tho I /can/ say I /seriously/ appreciate your effort in particular.  You 
seem to be on the more active and visible side in the council, and more 
than anyone else, I see you constantly trying to play mediator and 
peacemaker.  Surely it can't be easy, and at times I'm sure it looks and 
indeed might be hopeless, but /somebody/ has got to do it because even 
where it doesn't work it's a cryin' shame not to try, and for whatever my 
perspective is worth, I've never seen your effort be without merit or 
your opinion not worth giving considerable thought, because often your 
posts consider points I hadn't thought of, or did in passing but 
incorrectly passed over without appropriate consideration of the merits.

> Are you suggesting that instead of trying to mediate between people who
> don't get a long, it would be better to just pick one or the other as
> the winner and boot the other out?

There comes a point at which failure to take positive action of some 
sort, including kicking people out if it comes to that, ends up being 
action of its own.  If it's one "him or me", my experience is it's the 
person making the demand that should, and usually does, go.  If however 
it's the same "him" on the other end of multiple such instances, at some 
point the question must be asked where the problem ultimately resides.

I won't pretend to have an answer and I'm glad I'm not the one in the 
position to make those decisions, but, well, there's some history of 
exceptionalism here, bending the rules and finding technical solutions 
where people with lessor stature with more minor violations have been out 
on their ear, because yes, there /is/ quite some valuable contribution at 
stake here, and the person in question is not only extremely technically 
talented, but also, apparently extremely adept at finding and walking the 
edge when it suits him.

We've had that situation before, and ultimately I think it ended up best 
for all parties when that personality was told their contribution could 
continue if they wanted, but it could no longer be as a gentoo dev.  I 
guess it's not a secret who I'm talking about, ciaranm.  And yes, I think 
it /has/ been better for both him and /gentoo/ the way it turned out, as 
it freed both sides from a relationship that simply was no longer 
workable, and allowed creating one where both sides could and did still 
benefit from the contributions of the other, while now separated by 
enough distance and with each side having the ability to walk now 
whenever they wanted, that it actually worked. =:^)

The ideal here would be to find a similar both-sides-workable 
relationship, but the man that can describe both what that might be and 
how best to get from here to there... if he exists... surely can be used 
in more worldwide consequence negotiations such as the Iranian nuclear 
talks or the Ukrainian situation, or even the Debian systemd thing that 
unfortunately seems to be tearing them apart ATM, and probably doesn't 
have the time for Gentoo! =:^\

> One of the challenges here is that if we were talking about just one
> productive person who tended to drive everybody away that would be one
> thing.  The problem is that we have a lot of productive people who have
> different sorts of personality quirks.

Indeed.  Quite the illustrative list you had, too.  Like I said I'm glad 
you and the rest of council are dealing with it, not me, and my thoughts 
are with you, hoping for wisdom.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman