Re: [gentoo-project] Should Council members be pillars of the community?

[Michał Górny]

Hello,

First of all, I'm really sorry to see that this mail doesn't seem to
achieve the desired affect of making the nominees think twice about what
they do.  On the other hand, it seems that you've chosen that this is
indeed the face you'd like us to see.  This is really sad.

If you read my mail, you'd notice that there are no names there.  Even
if you think it's obvious who I'm concerned about (it isn't to
bystanders), the major difference is that if someone tries to look you
up (say, a potential employer), he is unlikely to find my mail.
On the other hand, you've chosen to tarnish my reputation in a way
that's easily found.  It's sad.


On Fri, 2020-06-26 at 15:50 +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> someone is running his campaign again like previous years [1].

I have concerns about the people representing the distribution I've
dedicated a lot of effort to.  Is that forbidden?  Are Council members
beyond reproach?

>
> First he attacked project members working for Sony [2],

Firstly, why do you consider that an attack?  It is a legitimate concern
about conflicts of interest, and as you can easily see there are other
developers in Gentoo who share the concern to some degree.  You can
disagree with it but having a different opinion than somebody else's
does not seem to me to be 'attacking' that person.

Secondly, I don't see why you're singling out one particular company.
 My mail certainly doesn't do that, so it seems that you are putting
words in my mouth, and I don't even understand to what purpose.

>  then he started
> to attack Patrick and now, the person who shared his idea that Gentoo
> should be ruled by a triumvirate [3] which he later declared as an
> 'out-of-season' April fool after getting tremendous backlash

Firstly, it was intended as a joke.  You can believe it or not but
I think you know me enough to realize that I wouldn't seriously consider
this proposal possible within Gentoo.  Why would I push for something
that could risk putting Gentoo in hands of someone disagreeable?

Secondly, I would suggest you read again wrt 'tremendous backslash'.
 The proposal got much more support than I expected.  This pretty
clearly suggests that people see that the things as they are now are far
from perfect.

> is digging
> up old stuff about me in hope people have forgotten the details about.

...and I thought the second part was just last Saturday.  I must be
being delusional then.

> On 2020-06-26 12:47, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Today, I would like to ask: do you think that Council members should
> > lead the community by example?  Should their reputation be untainted,
> > should they be able to withhold their anger even when they believe they
> > have reasons enough to attack others?  Should they not participate
> > in flames, unless only to extinguish them?
>
> You are demanding that council members should participate in mailing
> list discussions in the past [1]. But when someone is doing that and
> don't agree with you, you are immediately attacking people (you were
> told more than once that it is very hard to discuss with you).

Don't you think that generalizations are harmful?  Especially when one
tries really hard to make the other party look bad and filters the data
into the cases that support his cause.

>  And if
> they reply to that attack in *any* way you blame them for participating
> in flame wars. So how should that work?

I don't really know what you're referring to.  I suspect you might think
of something else than I was referring to.  However, in general don't
you think that elected public representatives of Gentoo should show
higher standards than lowly developers who resigned from political
positions?

> > Is it considered acceptable that a nominee for election calls other
> > developers inhumane or delusional on the public mailing lists?  Is it
> > good that he throws false accusations without verifying them?
>
> The exact words I used [4] were
>
> > You are lacking humanity.
>
> I am curious why you bring this up again given that it was resolved and
> parts of Proctor did their job. Anyway, like you know, I am not a native
> English speaker. It's also not a secret that my English is not good at
> all. Once I was made aware that someone misunderstood what I wrote I
> clarified my words. But I still stick to my statement (meaning) today.
> And unfortunately the last year has confirmed all of this:
>
> May I remind you that everyone in this project should basically share
> same goals and agreed on same code of conduct? Tell me, you as someone
> who is really good in technical writing and almost perfect compared to
> myself in using English language, why you have to use terms like
> "exhibit" [5] which Cambridge dictionary explains as
>
> > a thing used as evidence (= proof that something is true) in a trial
>
> What is Gentoo for you? I hope most Gentoo developers agree with me that
> words like that aren't appropriate to describe *anything* in Gentoo.
> Heck, why are you even creating *cases* against people sharing same
> goals and agreed on same code of conduct?

Firstly, it was never my intention to offend anyone using that word,
and I still don't really understand why people nitpick at that.  As
you're perfectly aware, I'm not a native speaker either and it is common
for us, non-native speakers, not to be aware of specific associations of
some terms.  I have thought it sounds better than 'example'.  I never
expected to be bashed about that single word.

Secondly, I would like to remind you that discussing restricted bugs
on public mailing lists is not appropriate.

>  Tell us why you are the
> reporter of most ComRel bugs in last 3 years and are even subject of
> most bugs filed by others.

I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to answer to that.  This single
paragraph poses so many problems, I'm not even sure where to start.

I am aware that some people were unhappy with me but I had no reasons to
assume what you're saying.  Nor I really understand how you could be in
possession of such data, given that you're not a member of ComRel.

This either means you've obtained access to restricted data that
shouldn't be available to you, or you're guessing (?) from incomplete
data.  Both options are problematic: the former sounds like an abuse
of power, the latter sounds like a quick way towards slander.

Furthermore, whether this is true or not, I'm pretty sure we aren't
supposed to discuss restricted ComRel bugs on a public mailing list.
So why are you doing that?

Now, as one of the Bugzilla admins I could technically access ComRel
bugs and verify that.  However, I've never done that as I consider that
an abuse of power.

> Tell us why you are collecting stuff against other project members at
> all. This is crazy. We are on the same project. We should share same
> goals. We agreed on the same code of conduct. When you feel the need to
> do anything like that then anything else went already wrong. I mean
> *really* wrong.

Your claim sounds like I'm proactively collecting some 'stuff' against
others.  This is not true.  Even if I wanted to, don't you think I have
better things to do?  I can't manage my ever-growing backlog,
and the last thing I need is to monitor the activity of other
developers.

Now, if you're asking why I'm supporting my complaints against actions
of other developers, then isn't the answer obvious?  Last I checked, QA
is supposed to work based on evidence and not unproven judgment.  This
means that if some developer is repeatedly causing problems and QA needs
to act on it, it is necessary to collect some examples of these
problems.  However, believe me, I've never really 'digged' into stuff --
whenever I felt like QA really needs to act, I've been literally hit
with the problematic commits.  Because they actually broke stuff,
because they caused warnings, because they affected my packages...

> Please tell us why you are attacking new Gentoo user posting to our
> public mailing list [6] for the first time?

This was a misunderstanding, and it was resolved.  Unless I'm mistaken,
there are no hard feelings there.  Can you say the same of your attacks?

> > Is it fine that yet another nominee runs an election campaign focused
> > on attacking other developers, and apparently trying to get votes
> > by finding 'a common enemy'?
>
> ...said the one who has the longest track record of negative campaigning
> in Gentoo for how many years? Heck, why do have to do negative
> campaigning at all in a project like Gentoo? This is soooo wrong and
> makes me very sad to see.

We do what we believe the best for the project.  If I believe that
a particular person has proven that he isn't a suitable candidate for
a Council member yet he decides to stand for the election, how can
I share my opinion positively?  It's something that's negative by its
sole nature.

It's nothing personal.  It is just a concern for the fate
of the project.  It is a concern that what is a verbal attack
on a mailing list today will turn into bias during the Council meetings,
and eventually into abuse of power.

> > Should such people become the public faces of Gentoo?  Or should they
> > maybe be professional enough to withdraw their candidacy after
> > discrediting themselves in the middle of election?
>
> If you or anyone else don't like that I don't accept the behavior I
> listed above and that I won't keep my mouth shut whenever I am concerned
> how we as project interact with each other because I am somehow
> representing Gentoo, do NOT vote for me.
>
> The society itself is already brutalized. It is time to no longer
> tolerate such behavior.

Don't you think that it's better to improve the quality of
communications by providing a good example rather than multiplicating
the bad behavior?  Usually violence leads to more violence.  Well,
unless the goal is to hope that one person takes one step too much first
and the other gets the excuse to enforce disciplinary measures.

Don't you think we are very much alike?  I've been 'bullying
the bullies' too in the past.  I didn't ever consider it the right thing
to do, though.  It was an efficient way to reach the goal, yes, but not
the right one.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny