Re: [gentoo-project] Fw: Your temporary 2 week suspension on interacting on the Gentoo Github page

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote:
> What stops me, is seeing someone who wants to help get shut down by others
> just because they don't like him and in my opinion, targets him whenever
> possible.

You're making assumptions about motives.  The fact is that you don't
have any knowledge about why some people aren't welcome in the
community.

I'm not aware of anybody who is unwelcome to contribute to Gentoo
merely because people don't like them.  I certainly don't have
knowledge of every particular case, so perhaps there have been cases
where this is the case.

However, part of the problem is that you're allowed to make
allegations like this on the lists, and anybody who has direct
knowledge to the contrary in any particular situation is not allowed
to say so.  So, when we allow these sorts of things to be discussed on
the lists anybody reading the archives will inevitably get the
impression that Gentoo boots people out for arbitrary reasons.

> Why not let those who want to help, help.

Here is a completely contrived example (to avoid talking about
specific individuals) of why this doesn't work:

Suppose for the sake of argument that somebody was using
dev.gentoo.org as a platform to hack into various servers on the
internet.  This is discovered, and their access is revoked and they're
no longer permitted to access any Gentoo-controlled systems.  No
public announcement is made of the incident or that the person is
banned or why.

Then that individual tries to post a pull request/etc and participate
in the community and complains that their accounts keep getting shut
down/etc.  They say that they're being unfairly persecuted because
somebody has a personal grudge against them.

Policy at Gentoo right now is to not deny their accusation at all.
So, now we have everybody up in arms about people being oppressed,
when the person they're defending is in fact a criminal and Gentoo
could be subject to legal liability if they were to knowingly give
this person access to our resources and they were used as a platform
to launch some future attack against somebody.

Sometimes people do things that are seriously wrong, and choosing to
allow them to participate could cause problems.  However, we also
can't talk about why they're gone because that creates debates about
the accuracy of allegations and possibly opens us up to lawsuits as
well if we get any of the facts wrong.  This is why every organization
I'm familiar with doesn't handle these sorts of issues publicly.

Again, nothing in this email should be construed to imply that any
particular individual has done anything particularly wrong.

> So, pointing out that people care is now considered a bad thing?

I didn't say that it was "bad."  I merely pointed out that people
constantly talking about how terrible Gentoo is probably will probably
be a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Bad PR, whether true or not, tends to
result in damaged reputation.

-- 
Rich