Re: Call for a new DPL mediation ... This will be the only thread i will reply to in the next time about this issue.
On 19 Jun 2006, Ean Schuessler spake thusly:
> cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:
>> - AFAIK nobody is arguing that Sven's patches aren't up to snuff
>> technically
>> - AFAIK he hasn't ever abused his d-i commit rights (when he had
>> them)
>>
> These are critical questions. As an uninvolved third-party I have
> still not been able to determine why his access was stripped in the
> first place. If Sven makes critical (or even genuinely useful)
> contributions to the PPC port and there is no replacement for him
> then there must be a really great reason to suspend his access. Did
> he do something nasty to the codebase?
What if the disruption caused by an individual results in a
net loss of work being contributed? What if several people have
dropped out of teams or shied away from joining them because of the
stress, aggravation, and sheer "suck the fun out" caused by a single
individual? Why should the loss of input that resulted not be taken
into consideration?
> Was his access suspended because he simply was not liked? If Sven is
> a socially dysfunctional person and holds this work dear because of
> extensive personal labor then I can understand this emotional
> explosion. It is very upsetting if you make genuine contributions to
> a project and find yourself excluded because of some clique of more
> skillful social players. That might explain the grade school
> references that keep coming up.
It is also very upsetting when technical discussions
immediately escalate into insults, distortion of motivation,
accusations of wanting to hurt Debian, or the users, of being hide
bound in pride and stupidity, having agendas that smack of
discrimination, power grabs, or worse -- all the while actively
casting impediments in actually finding a working solution by
drowning the technical discussion in polemics and ad hominems and
casting to apportion blame before looking at the technical issues.
Add to it argument from extremes, bug severity inflation, and
constant little pin pricks that make it impossible to collaborate, I
would think that some times, it is better to reject contributions if
the net contributions decrease due to the presence of one person.
> Social politics creeping into Debian is one of the greater mortal
> dangers that we face.
Rubbish. Debian has always been far more than a cold, harsh,
faceless corporate entity with no social presence. Technical
excellence does mitigate a lack of social graces, but there are
limits to how much disruption is to be tolerated. Where you have
social interactions, and you have politics, you have subjective
social politics.
We have, by and large, despite the cat-calls about cabals from
the peanut gallery, managed to make broad decisions rationally. I
don't think we are all in a vast conspiracy to gang up on a fine
contributor without actually looking at the broad picture and the net
results of his presence or absence on a team.
> If Sven makes genuinely important technical contributions to the PPC
> installer and is being excluded for purely social reasons then we
> should take that very seriously. It might be more expedient for SPI
> to pay for some psychological therapy for Sven. :-D
Amen.
manoj
--
"Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college." P.J. O'Rourke
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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