Re: [gentoo-project] Evidence of idella4's damage to Gentoo, please

[Daniel Campbell]

On 11/30/2016 08:10 AM, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
>> I'm not going to mince words here: why did we kick out a contributor who
>> was helping the Gentoo cause? I've looked over logs that were shared
>> with me and the worst thing I could find was an off-color joke. Worse
>> things occur on these mailing lists that never see Comrel's inbox, so
>> why this?
>
> This does not sound like you have the full picture of the years over
> which Ian attempted to contribute to Gentoo. I was involved for a long
> time, basically from the start of Ian's tenure as a developer, and I
> fully support his being kicked out.

I fully concede I don't have the full picture, and a lot of the
reasoning for that is it's kept so hush-hush. Naturally, my first
reaction to secrecy is to find out why it's treated so specially when a
lot of our affairs are left to public discourse. I'm open to new
evidence and facts; any probing I've done into this subject has been met
with hand-waving, which imo doesn't engender trust among us. So rather
than beat around the bush, I chose to speak directly and candidly.

>> What I'm looking for is undeniable proof that Ian was irrevocably
>> damaging and threatening to Gentoo, to justify his dismissal and
>> accompanying ban. If such information will not or cannot be provided,
>> then it indicates to me that there *is* no proof, and without it I will
>> call for his reinstatement for the next council meeting.
>
> As I'm not a member of ComRel or Council or whatever and I haven't
> kept any logs, I think you're being to binary about this. Even if
> there is no single thing that shows Ian "irrevocably damaging and
> threatening" Gentoo, there can still be a reason to prevent him from
> participating in some of our venues. I think the problem with Ian is
> that, as hard as he may try to contribute, I found his contributions
> to be net negative to the distribution. As such, I do think his
> presence is damaging to Gentoo. (And please note that I initially
> encouraged him to join us, and, as lead of the Python team at the
> time, spent significant time ironing out issues that arose from his
> attempts at contribution.)

I can understand a stance like that; are there bugs or a history of
reversions that I can reference to corroborate this? At the core of it,
there should be clear evidence that his contributions hurt or otherwise
make maintaining the distribution difficult. I hope that if I were in
that sort of situation, that efforts would be made to illustrate why my
contributions were subpar and steps I could take to improve them in the
long run. So if Ian's contributions really weren't helping us, there
should be a history that indicates such.

>> I am not alone in requesting accountability from the top of Gentoo. I
>> will take the results of this conversation into consideration when it's
>> time to vote next year, as Gentoo is suffering from staffing issues and
>> practices like this actively damage Gentoo's ability to attract and
>> retain contributors. I have personally met people who have suffered as a
>> result of this debacle; people willing and eager to help us out that are
>> still struggling to join our ranks. So what gives?
>>
>> This distribution should not turn away anyone willing (and able) to
>> help. This is a critical flaw that could accelerate our decline.
>
> I respectfully but strongly disagree. Some people that are willing and
> able to help can in the end turn out to be negative contributors. It
> is imperative for our community that we can identify those people and
> minimize their impact on the distribution both socially and
> technically.

I think I understand where you're coming from -- sometimes people can be
toxic in their attitudes and make contributing a pain for other
developers. I've not really seen any evidence of Ian being that type of
person, however. Some off-color jokes that may have been in poor taste,
maybe a misunderstanding or two, but that doesn't strike me as a big
problem. We're a worldwide community, and naturally there may be
language or cultural barriers or norms that clash. I think that's
completely normal and expected. It's how we deal with those differences
that gauges our social merit.

If we're wanting to keep someone out -- be it Ian or someone else --
*some* sort of evidence or reasoning is necessary. Evidence that shows a
given person doesn't have the distribution's best interests in mind or
evidence that someone can't work well with (many) others. Note the
plural; sometimes two particular people just don't get along. Rather
than expelling one of the two, I think it's fair to expect developers to
acknowledge each others' differences but respect each other as people.
If they can't respect each other, then they should be able to work on
their own projects without harassing each other.

Other cases like William's departure, Diego's, Ciaran's, etc are also of
interest to me (I will save those for some other time), because our
ability to handle conflict will reflect on us as a distribution and
knowing the history of the organization one is part of is important.
It's hard to know where to go next if you don't know where you've been.
I hope that viewpoint makes sense to someone besides me.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dirkjan
>

(apologies if I misunderstood something; still haven't had my coffee yet)
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
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