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

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 9:30 PM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
> 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.

I respect that, and it's why I responded. I do think it would have
been better to handle this with ComRel through private channels, since
the larger issue appears to me that you don't trust ComRel's
judgement, and/or you dislike the secrecy around ComRel.

On the latter issue, I can understand the desire for privacy, but it
may also be the case that it's hard for ComRel to gain trust from the
broader community if they can't give a little more rationale behind
their decisions/reasoning. While I think we probably don't want this
stuff to be fully public, I think it would make sense for ComRel to
grant access to their documentation in specific cases where a
respected community member has reason to doubt a ComRel decision.

> 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.

There is; but I'm sorry, I have limited free time and don't really
want to spend it digging through emails and bugs from years ago. All I
wanted to state in my message that, as a somewhat impartial observer,
I agreed with the ComRel decision in this case. I think there are
other developers who would say the same, I'd be happy to name them
privately if you want to inquire more after this.

>> 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.

I'll just say I felt the same way about Ian in the beginning, but over
time had to admit I was wrong.

> 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.

This just goes back to trust in ComRel, which I would argue is maybe a
wider/separate discussion (which could also encompass the other cases
you mention).

Cheers,

Dirkjan