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Pythonhead
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Joined: 16 Dec 2002
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Location: Redondo Beach, Republic of Calif.
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 Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:56 am Post subject: |
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| dirtyepic wrote: | | avenj wrote: | | We've been dealing with the Ciaran problem for over a year now, you very obviously are outside of the situation and have no clue what's going on... |
and whose fault is that? this isn't directed at you Jon; i really don't think you're one of the Bad Guys(tm) in all of this. but Gentoo's transparency policies have got to change. we're an open-source community goddamn it, but all we as users get to see is the fallout after the fact. how many times now have we gotten some vague hint of something big that happened behind closed doors? this is our project just as much as it is any developer's, and we have just as much right to know exactly what's going on behind the curtain.
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If you had access to the private list you would have known about as much as me, which is to say nothing, about Ciaran being suspended because there was nothing on the list about it until he sent some wacky email to the list cussing out a developer.
There is usually very little traffic on the list. If you can get permission I'll gladly forward you all my -core mail till this nonsense is over and you can sumarize it for me  Since he was suspended its already wasted a couple of hours I could have been doing something useful.
Devrel rarely have to discipline anyone so maybe we shouldn't be too suprised that they don't have elaborate measures in place to handle people who behave like Ciaran.
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now that we've read his account of the events, i for one believe they're completely justified. but this is, of course, only one side of the story, and i know i'm not the only one who would like to hear the other. but until devrel provides an explanation addressing the accusations Ciaran has voiced against them i'm 100% behind the man. |
The accusations Ciaran voiced against them is an entirely separate issue and the relatively small number of developers who care about it are having a discussion about it. I think most of us don't care much because we will never put ourselves in the position Ciaran put himself in. We can argue about what parts of the procedure devrel screwed up forever but the reason he was warned can be summed up nicely with how you feel:
| Quote: | | his tactless shit-disturber look-at-me antics really grate on me sometimes |
Ciaran doesn't appear to understand that, so I can see why devrel didn't want to continue discussing it with him.
If Ciaran is being genuine in his article about his concerns for Gentoo's publicity, he'd have been a little more tactful when dealing with users. Maybe he is oblivious to how his manners grate on people, but I think he understood all he had to do was mellow out and he'd still be around.
He is rightfully concerned about developers who break the tree being bad for publicity but for every story he tells about someone leaving Gentoo because a developer accidentally broke the tree, theres another story about users leaving because of the way he treats people. |
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Sven Vermeulen
Retired Dev
Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Posts: 1345
Location: Mechelen, Belgium
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:33 am Post subject: |
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| Syntaxis wrote: |
What mechanism currently exists to make this possible? There doesn't seem to be any documented equivalent to e.g. Debian's General Resolution procedure (which is laid out in section 4 of their Constitution)...
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Policy-wise: a request to the Gentoo Management. But of course, if you feel that the management isn't a valid group (it constitutes of all the project leads of the top-level projects) you'll have to wait until a better metastructure is in place (there are quite a few proposals made that should be voted upon in the next few days/weeks).
| Syntaxis wrote: |
As an aside, I'm curious as to how the Gentoo Foundation can claim: | http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/bylaws.xml wrote: | | Note, however, that no committee of the Gentoo Foundation may govern the development of Gentoo (the operating system). |
and yet at the same time charge itself with the role of:
| http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/ wrote: | | Gentoo caretaking: protecting the community by requiring total adherence to the Gentoo Social Contract |
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The Foundation has the copyrights on lots of Gentoo's code, the Gentoo trademark, logo, and some hardware. The primary intention of the Gentoo Foundation is to be caretakers for Gentoo. Under this idea, we see that the Gentoo Foundation should not meddle with development as the trustees are 13 people while development is done by 350+ developers. Try finding 13 developers that provide you with an equal share in the development (fex package maintenance, portage development, documentation development, infrastructure, security, ...). This is exactly why people are nudging against the current managers: even though they (should) represent all Gentoo projects, a very big project (such as package maintenance) and a very small project (like metastructure) are both represented by a single person.
Because Gentoo already has a metastructure to govern the development (note that the current situation decentralises development to the involved projects) the initial trustees decided that the Foundation should only help development by taking care of most of the bureaucracy involved with such a large project (including funding, but also IP, hardware assets, legal stuff).
Bureaucracy doesn't change. Metastructure does. Keeping bureaucracy in an entity such as the Foundation makes it possible for the metastructure to change without having consequences on the funding/assets/legal stuff.
Now, to the Social Contract thingie: the Gentoo project could very well decide that they want to have the Gentoo distribution depend on non-free software (an example of altering the Social Contract). After all, this depends on the metastructure that the Gentoo project uses and the weight that the common development base has in policy-wide decisions.
The idea about caretaking (wrt the Gentoo Foundation) wants to make sure that Gentoo stays what it is now to the Gentoo community, in other words that it adheres to the Social Contract in its current form or intentions. When the Foundation finds that the Gentoo project is deviating from the initial idea behind Gentoo in a negative or more restricting way, it can and will try to have the Gentoo project come back to its decisions. Of course, this will probably never happen as I don't see why 175+ developers would choose to alter the Gentoo Social Contract in a more restricting way but since we are talking about bureaucracy it is safe to have this mentioned anyway 
Now, you might think that, if the Gentoo project and the Gentoo Foundation grow away from each other, what influence would the Gentoo Foundation have on the Gentoo project? Since the Gentoo Foundation has the ownership of the Gentoo trademark, logo, some IP, hardware assets, etc. it can very well meddle with the operational activities of the Gentoo project.
(This is not an official answer) |
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pitcrawler
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 155
Location: Oklahoma, USA
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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I read this and the proper "rant" part I saw was the example IRC convo at the bottom. Most of the rest were just his observations on things that have actually happened. I just hope that these, sometimes major, problems get resolved and maybe that there can be a little more transparency with what is going on behind the scenes. Gentoo is open source so that should mean that management actions and decisions should be given more transparency than that of a commercial company with stuff to hide. If people know what goes on behind the scenes then maybe it will provide more of an incentive to get things right first time.
(Note: I don't know cairanm and any other bad stuff that he has done, but I'm just commenting on his observations and not really his personal opinions) |
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loki99
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Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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| dirtyepic wrote: | | but Gentoo's transparency policies have got to change. we're an open-source community goddamn it, but all we as users get to see is the fallout after the fact. how many times now have we gotten some vague hint of something big that happened behind closed doors? this is our project just as much as it is any developer's, and we have just as much right to know exactly what's going on behind the curtain. |
second that!
no matter what anyone thinks of Ciaran personally, he seems to have some valid points in his statement and i really do hope to get a detailed respone by "devrel" and other developers. because, if they will not react, all i can rely on is the info Ciaran provided. 
i'm asking for a more open information policy! i want to know what is going on behind the doors! 
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loki99
edit: typo |
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: | | dirtyepic wrote: | | but Gentoo's transparency policies have got to change. we're an open-source community goddamn it, but all we as users get to see is the fallout after the fact. how many times now have we gotten some vague hint of something big that happened behind closed doors? this is our project just as much as it is any developer's, and we have just as much right to know exactly what's going on behind the curtain. |
second that!
no matter what anyone thinks of Ciaran personally, he seems to have some valid points in his statement and i really do hope to get a detailed respone by "devrel" and other developers. because, if they will not react, all i can rely on is the info Ciaran provided.
i'm asking for a more open information policy! i want to know what is going on behind the doors!
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loki99
edit: typo |
Oops I never read dirtyepics post about transparency. That makes most of my post a dup. It's good to see more people thinking what I'm thinking though. |
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blue.sca
l33t
Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 680
Location: Mainz, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: | | dirtyepic wrote: | | but Gentoo's transparency policies have got to change. we're an open-source community goddamn it, but all we as users get to see is the fallout after the fact. how many times now have we gotten some vague hint of something big that happened behind closed doors? this is our project just as much as it is any developer's, and we have just as much right to know exactly what's going on behind the curtain. |
second that!
no matter what anyone thinks of Ciaran personally, he seems to have some valid points in his statement and i really do hope to get a detailed respone by "devrel" and other developers. because, if they will not react, all i can rely on is the info Ciaran provided. :?
i'm asking for a more open information policy! i want to know what is going on behind the doors! :evil:
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loki99
edit: typo |
second that too! as long as noone of the 'accused' part give an inside into this problem, i take ciaranm's points for valid. his article was not only rant. he described a problem and that should be solved.
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cokey
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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i think its fairly easy to say that if transparency occurs then this should be the last time you hear of this. That is IF gentoo starts listening to some of its users
Its just seems (this is from an outside point of view) that decisions are being made without informing people who want to know, developers are getting annoyed because they aren't being asked and then we are always the last people to be told. Would suggestions on the internal running of Gentoo, by the people that have a real interest in it, be unappreciated? You can see from the (mixed) reactions of this thread that some of us who are unable to become developers would really like to be able to not only know whats going on but also give a suggestion to help the distro that we all use and love.
Ciaran, for all his inability to judge how he was getting on the wrong side of people, was excellent at his job. He also imparted information to those users and devs who didn't have his knowlege which made him a valuable asset. Now, after making an example of him dont you think that thee can be LOTS to learn from this?
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cokey
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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also, mentioning that a non-Gentoo kernel is crap will get you suspended 11 months later.
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loki99
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Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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| avenj wrote: |
More information will be available to devs and the general public in the near future; right now devrel is working on collecting permission from complaining parties to make their complaints public and bring some transparency. |
could we have an update please? |
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pkdawson
Retired Dev
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 146
Location: Long Island or Buffalo, NY
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:06 pm Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: | | avenj wrote: |
More information will be available to devs and the general public in the near future; right now devrel is working on collecting permission from complaining parties to make their complaints public and bring some transparency. |
could we have an update please? |
There's a bug with some details that's visible to all developers now. Frankly, there's nothing on there that comes close to justifying a suspension. It's unfortunate that devrel neglected to document everything they based their decision on. |
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Pythonhead
Developer
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Posts: 1801
Location: Redondo Beach, Republic of Calif.
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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| cokehabit wrote: | | also, mentioning that a non-Gentoo kernel is crap will get you suspended 11 months later. |
I don't think even Ciaran would try to convince anyone that was true. He was suspended after sending an obnoxious email to the list after being warned to stop being obnoxious.
Its unfortunate it had to come to this, but the policy on etiquette doesn't leave much room to argue:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=3&chap=2 |
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loki99
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Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Pythonhead wrote: | | cokehabit wrote: | | also, mentioning that a non-Gentoo kernel is crap will get you suspended 11 months later. |
I don't think even Ciaran would try to convince anyone that was true. He was suspended after sending an obnoxious email to the list after being warned to stop being obnoxious.
Its unfortunate it had to come to this, but the policy on etiquette doesn't leave much room to argue:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=3&chap=2 |
if this is such a clear cut case, how come pkdawson says that as far as he knows "Frankly, there's nothing on there that comes close to justifying a suspension"?
did you read the emails? will this be explained to the public as avenj promised? |
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pkdawson
Retired Dev
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 146
Location: Long Island or Buffalo, NY
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Pythonhead wrote: | | cokehabit wrote: | | also, mentioning that a non-Gentoo kernel is crap will get you suspended 11 months later. |
I don't think even Ciaran would try to convince anyone that was true. He was suspended after sending an obnoxious email to the list after being warned to stop being obnoxious.
Its unfortunate it had to come to this, but the policy on etiquette doesn't leave much room to argue:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=3&chap=2 |
True enough, though I have to wonder why that email has not been posted to the bug, and what exactly prompted it. Obviously something else was said to ciaranm by devrel, which isn't documented at all. |
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Pythonhead
Developer
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Posts: 1801
Location: Redondo Beach, Republic of Calif.
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:13 pm Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: |
if this is such a clear cut case, how come pkdawson says that as far as he knows "Frankly, there's nothing on there that comes close to justifying a suspension"?
did you read the emails? will this be explained to the public as avenj promised? |
The bug is flawed and not the sole reason he was suspended. Yeah, like I said before, I think devrel screwed up. They made some errors documenting complaints against him. That doesn't excuse the last email he sent to the list. If I had sent something like that to the list I would expect to be suspended too. Because he was deleting files about the same time he sent the mail, you might think Ciaran knew that was the last straw too.
Remember when lovechild sent his famous last forum post saying, "This will probably get me deleted, but..."
It was pretty much the same feeling I got when I read that email. |
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loki99
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Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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| pkdawson wrote: | | It's unfortunate that devrel neglected to document everything they based their decision on. |
IMO, this is simply not acceptable! how could they neglect to explain what has happend? |
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loki99
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Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Pythonhead wrote: | | ...That doesn't excuse the last email he sent to the list. ... |
so you did get to read it? |
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myuser
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
Posts: 218
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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>>> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=3&chap=2
I must admit I agree with Ciaran here, this is bit condescending, and no one seems to be professional enough to put their moniker to it.
You cannot see dates when this was created, or who else agreed it.
There are somethings in there that make some sense, but it does get watered down at the beginning as if the author is not whole heartidly in agreement with their own words.
Still, it does carry the threat of suspension so probably needs to be more consistent, and as it is a policy the author should probably seek approval from all those involved, otherwise the document itself is guilty of not being professional.
How does one determine if someone is trying to be rude, as opposed to just being rude, the former is disallowed the later accepted, it is all very confusing. |
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Pythonhead
Developer
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Location: Redondo Beach, Republic of Calif.
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: | | Pythonhead wrote: | | ...That doesn't excuse the last email he sent to the list. ... |
so you did get to read it? |
Yes, every developer is subscribed to the list he sent it to. |
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cokey
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 12:09 am Post subject: |
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and lets be honest, if the mods here banned everyone who said something wrong about love-sources then there would hardly be any users. I'm a fervent beliver in love-sources but even i will admit there has been shit patchsets, but there have also been brilliant ones.
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wdreinhart
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Posts: 569
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 6 June 2005 wrote: |
Moves
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The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
* None this week
Adds
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The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
* Colin Kingsley (tercel) - mirrorselect, miscellaneous ebuilds
* Stuart Longland (redhatter) - MIPS
* Kevin Quinn (kevquinn) - Hardened Gentoo
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* Bryan Østergaard (kloeri) - Apache lead
* Aaron Walker (ka0ttic) - joined the recruiters |
I notice there's no mention of Ciaran's suspension/expulsion/quitting/whatever from gentoo-dev land in this week's GWN. Was it just overlooked? Or was it intentionally silenced by the Gentoo PR machine? |
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96140
Retired Dev
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 1324
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 2:21 am Post subject: |
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| I don't think suspensions count for "official not working in a Gentoo dev team anymore so this person has officially left" status changes as they are currently reported in the GWN. |
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rhill
Retired Dev
Joined: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 1629
Location: sk.ca
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:04 am Post subject: |
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| Pythonhead wrote: | | If you had access to the private list you would have known about as much as me, which is to say nothing, about Ciaran being suspended because there was nothing on the list about it until he sent some wacky email to the list cussing out a developer. |
thank you (and the developers and others that have replied) for filling in some of the missing pieces for us. it's really appreciated.
| Quote: | We can argue about what parts of the procedure devrel screwed up forever but the reason he was warned can be summed up nicely with how you feel:
| Quote: | | his tactless shit-disturber look-at-me antics really grate on me sometimes |
Ciaran doesn't appear to understand that, so I can see why devrel didn't want to continue discussing it with him. If Ciaran is being genuine in his article about his concerns for Gentoo's publicity, he'd have been a little more tactful when dealing with users. Maybe he is oblivious to how his manners grate on people, but I think he understood all he had to do was mellow out and he'd still be around.
He is rightfully concerned about developers who break the tree being bad for publicity but for every story he tells about someone leaving Gentoo because a developer accidentally broke the tree, theres another story about users leaving because of the way he treats people. |
you know, when i first started my post i was going to say something similar to this. in fact i was going to say he had it coming for a long time now. somewhere along the way though i got turned around, and as he raised more and more issues that have also been bugging me personally i lost sight of that. i do have to agree. he is a talented member of the Gentoo team, and he does have many valid points, but that doesn't excuse his attitude or his actions.
actually, for the last couple weeks i noticed a significant improvement in his behaviour. he was even downright pleasent on occasion. i just figured he was getting laid. 
i think he was trying at least, but i can only imagine his frustration. maybe something just broke the the camel's back.
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loki99
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 9:53 am Post subject: |
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first of all, i'd like to thank all of you, who bother to post here, to clear things up! 
but i really would be interested, what devrel has to say to the claims Ciaran made in his observations? for example:
| Ciaran wrote: | So what's the devrel policing procedure?
1) A complaint comes in.
2) Devrel take the complaint at face value (yes, I received a note from devrel after banning someone from #gentoo for telling people to "fuck off and use debian" that person complained that I was abusing my op status, and devrel did not even bother to check logs before sending out their notice).
3) Devrel take action based upon said complaint.
4)When questioned, devrel say that "it is not up for discussion", refuse to tell the subject what the complaint was actually about and claim that "any attempt to discuss things will only make your situation worse".
5) A complaint is sent to the ombudsman , who says that he thinks that, considering devrel's "no discussion" stance, any attempt at mediation from him would be futile and that the best thing to do would be to email the gentoo-core list.
6) Devrel turn any attempt at sensible discussion into a series of attacks upon anyone who dares speak against them. |
is this real? is this the way it works? or how about this:
| Ciaran wrote: | Lying to the Public
Same with the planet. It was touted as a way of making the development process more transparent. Anyone posting about the realities of development, however, would quickly get in trouble with devrel. It turns out that they would rather lie to the users and potential future developers than to let them have an accurate picture. |
or this!
| Ciaran wrote: | | They have said this themselves I have on several occasions been told that devrel do not keep track of the gentoo-core or gentoo-dev mailing lists, and that any complaints must be sent to them directly. |
i don't care about the complaints, but wouldn't it be useful/necessary that someone of devrel keeps up with those mailinglists? why isn't there some kind of counter statement from devrel that clears things up?
edit: typo |
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Sven Vermeulen
Retired Dev
Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Posts: 1345
Location: Mechelen, Belgium
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: |
why isn't there some kind of counter statement from devrel that clears things up?
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Because they're smart enough to let things be instead of making the entire thread a flamefest beyond what comp.os.linux.advocacy is used to dealing with.
Really, there will always be individuals who believe an action is valid and others who think it is it. The purpose for having several developers in charge of devrel is to have a common decision that's not based on a single individual's opinion. |
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nevynxxx
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Joined: 12 Nov 2003
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Location: Manchester - UK
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:18 am Post subject: |
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| Sven Vermeulen wrote: | Because they're smart enough to let things be instead of making the entire thread a flamefest beyond what comp.os.linux.advocacy is used to dealing with.
Really, there will always be individuals who believe an action is valid and others who think it is it. The purpose for having several developers in charge of devrel is to have a common decision that's not based on a single individual's opinion. |
Although that logic does make sense, it would be better to have something saying "this is exactly what we did, this is why"
Unlike newsgroups you can lock forum threads.....
The problem is, if we are to believe Ciaran, devrels decisions are becoming the decisions of one person, not of a group. If we don't have a response from devrel, then how do we make an informed decision?
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