TL;DR ⇒ I'm sick of this discussion. I'm calling the DebConf chairs to
vote _NOW_ to sign or repeal the contract. I'm voting to
sign. (Do we need consensus between the three? Can we vote?)
I will probably do some netiquette breaches in this post... So,
apologies to all, but I think we are reaching a low record in the
quality of the discussion, and I don't want to risk this going even
worse. And yes, I'm keeping the quite offtopic d-project list in.
Holger Levsen dijo [Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 07:11:19PM +0100]:
> Hi,
>
> I'm sick and saddened to read these mails and will not participate in any
> further of this.
In IRC, Holger asked me what did I think of this mail in the light of
the current mood of the whole team. And yes, since the shit-slinging
began (anew) some days ago, you might find it shocking that relatively
so few messages have been written by the people involved in the
organization and in the (so much attacked) LeCamp bid.
People, (most of) the Swiss team is pissed with the lack of trust and
lack of respect we have been showing for months already, and that now
some very vocal outsiders (i.e. Debian people who are not involved in
this year's DebConf organization) are showing.
Holger is not the first person that sends an "I'm sick and
saddened...will not participate in any further..." message. Several
people have done it, with varying levels of meaning in the "will not
participate" part (from "I'm quitting this thread" to "fuck off,
organizing DebConf is for retards").
A while ago, my main argument for supporting to hold DebConf at LeCamp
instead of the several alternative venues that have been offered is
the social one. The level of mistrust of a very committed group of
long-term Debian developers, who have come up with a great proposal
for having a *different* venue, is really saddening.
And then comes this nonsense about the veto. Were there an explicit
veto or not by the local team, I think the effect is obvious. Would
you expect any of them to work their asses off for organizing DebConf
for the next 8 months (plus the "cleanup phase", preparing the report,
and a big etcetera) if we decide to discard the proposals they
initially pushed, since the very presentation of the Swiss bid? Of
course not. And we cannot commit to having a DebConf organized by a
half-assed local team complaining that things would have been better
if we had listened to them all over.
There is people contributing lots of information that can lead to a
different venue/organization/setting. At first, we thanked them. And
yes, that information led to getting some things better WRT what we
are to get. But right now, just sending quotes of some random places
that might be OK for us to work in are no longer helping — to the
contrary, they are hurting. A lot.
We have got the LeCamp owners a good extension of time to sign a
contract. We have achieved several important modifications to the
contract. Most of the organizers agree we reached a decent compromise
and we were quite happy about this achievement during our last meeting
(or non-meeting, or whatever you want to call it), just before the
shit-slinging. What else do we need? We have only until this Friday to
hand in a signed contract. And I'm more than happy to approve it.
Many things are not as perfect as we would like. No DebConf will ever
be perfect. It is what it is, and sorry, if you don't like the setting
the Swiss team is proposing, maybe this is a good DebConf for you to
watch over the very nice video stream.
The DebConf chairs delegation was (much correctly IMO) split over
three people precisely to give more chance to arguments to be
weighed and more viewpoints to be listened to. And I think my two
co-chairs (and very good friends on a personal level) are great for
the task (and I'm also very happy I was chosen, and hope I am as good
for DebConf as they are). Moray has been very busy with non-DebConf
stuff during the past days, which is completely understandable... But
we cannot hold this much longer.
So, to reach a decision, we sometimes have to resort to voting. I am
very happy that in the Debian culture voting is given very low
precedence and consensus building is always prefered. But I think we
have reached that point.
So, lets stop hearing nonsense. My vote is an unambiguous and full
"yes" to signing the contract as it is now. We don't need any more
noise regarding alternative venues.
I know another point we have not decided as clearly as we should (as
the secret non-donation thing) is how should the chairs vote. Does
66% mean we can sign? Moray, I know you have some opposition, but I
feel it's not a general, all-out opposition. Please respond to this —
I don't want this to continue snowballing (thus keeping the insult to
the involved people). Many things still deserve our attention and can
be made better. But IMO if we choose not to sign, it will amount to
not having a DebConf this year. Or, at least, losing some very
important, very hard-working contributors to the team.
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