Re: This is getting ridiculous ...
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 08:46:39PM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> (please only public answers. No /msg on IRC....))
>
> Sven, There are (were?) people in the D-I team who are (were?) still
> hoping that one way to solve this situation can be found.
>
> Up to today, I was still in the mood of putting some hope that you
> would understand that your current conflict with Frans can only be
> solved by focusing on the areas where everybody, *including Frans*
> acknowledges your expertise.
But this cannot happen in the current situation, where any effort i make is
not acknowledged. It has been twice now since Frans came back from mexico that
he misbehaved in such a way, without me being in any way offensive or
otherwise. I don't believe that he is ever going to forget the issue, and
allow me a fair chance to prove myself.
> Gaining back the confidence would have been a very long process and
A very long process ? This is clearly the ridiculous part. And what is frans
going to do to regain my confidence ?
> that commit access which you seem to put a huge importance on would
> certainly have come back.....certainly late (I would say after Etch
> release).
Why ? It is a hindrance in me doing d-i work, and serves no other purpose than
to humiliate me, so i am thaught not to misbehave in the future.
> The trust between you and Frans has been lost. And Frans is the team
> boss (by general agreement of the D-I team). In real life, when the
> trust is broken between a manager and his employees, a usual
> recommendation to both parties is to stick with factual work and do
> the best possible to avoid putting back personal relationship
> problems.
But in real life, if he had acted such as my boss in these conditions, i would
have sued him for moral harcelement, and he would have lost. I guess even in
the US this would have passed, and certainly in more civilized countries more
so.
> Another common solution is to "separate" the people in different teams
> in the organization.
Which is pure bullshit. I have never abused my commit right, i have misbehaved
back then, but i was not the only one in doing so, and i was under personal
stress, which clearly explains this, i have apologized for it, and i have
behaved correctly since then. Have you read the irc exchange ?
> Up to now, we have tried hard with the first solution which, honestly,
> could work if you don't bring back your old griefs all time long.
No, and i will tell you why. There is a social conflict, and the current
situation is such that all the blame for it is on me, and Frans is the
innocent party who suffered and should be avenged by punishing me.
There is no way this can be solved and the grief forgoten as long as there
remains such an unfair ineguality in the perception of the problem.
I also don't recognize any right of Frans to punish me in this way, and you
others only put up with it because you are annoyed with me for posting too
much, and you support Frans for fear that he leaves d-i leadership, which
would be a shame. Also you are personally aware that sven-bashing has become a
very very popular game lately in some circles of debian, and i believe that
there is thus absolutely no valid reason to such punish me and not punish
those others.
> Actually, in the real life, you would be fired *now*. And, yes, I have
Yeah, i know that real life work is full of hypocrit and unfeeling bastards,
but i somehow believed better of debian, and i also think that many who joined
debian also are in this expectation.
> experience of that. Maybe you feel your svn commit access being
> removed as "being fired". That is not exactly true as your
> contributions are still welcomed (see last commit log....your last
> proposed patch has been commited less than 12 hours after being proposed).
Now, it is not like "being fired", it is sadistic punishment who serves little
aim. And if a boss mis-handles his employees, the time will come when he will
be fired himself too.
> We are in Debian and probably some of us put more hope in human
> behaviour than we would put in real life. This is why I *still*
> believe that things can settle. But I'm afraid I'm among the very last
> one people who believe so.
It cannot be solved as long as the situation is not clarified, and each party
accepts his own fault and torts. I accepted my part, but everyone is against
me on this, and i am unjustly threated, and nobody dares say to franz in face
that maybe he is exagerating now.
> Please think about it. Keep factual, focus on your technical
> work. Ignore Frans, he will anyway now ignore you, like it or
I cannot ignore him, since as part of his action, i am forced to be reminded
of this each time i intent to work on debian-installer.
> not. Communication between you is actually not possible and trying to
> decide who's fault this is will not help. It will only dig a bigger hole.
This i reject. Have you read the irc log, as well as the other one on
debian-devel when he just came back from mexico ? I am perfectly able to
communicate with frans, and behave correctly, it is him who has a problem with
it, and there is *NOTHING* i can do which will change that, except become a
meak slave and always fear that frans will again be annoyed with me and throw
me out.
Do you believe this is a sane situation ? I asked the DPL a month ago to solve
the issue, so we can all return to constructive work, but by his failure to
mediate, he left this inequality persist, which in turn only leads to
bitterness and desilusion, which means this situation will never be solved.
Damn it, i am a DD as well as Frans, and my contribution if of a different
form, both to debian as a whole as for debian-installer, is of no less quality
than his, and i don't see why i should be blamed and punished in this way, and
abid to some meak and submissive behaviour, while at the same time half of
debian is out there having rabid and hateful flamewars about expulsions and
whatnot, while at the same time having very insulting speach against me behind
my back.
> Some people (I know about Holger and I do so also) have offered to act
> as proxies in order to allow your contributions to D-I to continue,
> doing the best that we can. Because we believe that it's still worth
> it (and, believe me, several people will not understand why I still
> think so).
Indeed. But i won't accept any of this long (undefined ? forever ?) time
nonsense you are suggesting. Frans is clearly misbehaving on this one, and
either someone tells him the truth about this, and i can hope there will
someday be a change, or you all stand behind him and in this case i have
nothing to do anymore in trying to contribute to d-i (and probably debian as
well), and will probably need to go the fork way for those parts that i need
to get my job done, and simply forget contributing to debian about the rest.
> Please be confident in *us* even if you are actually not confident in
> some other team members.
I would feel more confident in you if it was actually publicly expressed, and
not only in private irc chats, or not at all.
> Not sure that I have proofread that mail enough....please give me some
> excuses if some part seem offending to you (or other people). They are
> not meant to be so....and I wanted to send this mail *now*.
No, it is not offending, but it fails to see the situation on my side of it.
And seriously, Frans behaviuour is ridiculous. I get to write a shell script
which will make a svn diff and send it as bug report, and then you or holger
or whoever make the commit and that's it. It means only some undefined delay
in my commits maybe, but it is *RIDICULOUS* and *SERVES NO PURPOSE* except to
humiliate me, and feed Frans's pride. It would be something to laugh about if
it wasn't so sad, and as thus, Nobody has a right, and less of them Frans, to
make any critic when i make derisive jokes about it.
I mean, if Frans really wanted to improve the situation, he would restore the
svn commit access, or maybe even would not have removed it in the first place,
and everyone would be happy coding and contributing by now.
As thus, the full responsability of this mess is solely on Frans side, as he
is also the sole person capable of solving it.
And i will tell you one more thing. Frans doesn't need control over the alioth
accounts in order to be the d-i team leader, he has showed that he has not the
maturity and impartiality to use this control for the best of debian, and
chose to use it to solve his private dispute with me, and as thus it is not in
the best interest of debian that he continunes to keep control over the d-i
project alioth accounts.
So, you know how the solution is to solve, i am the one suffering from it, not
frans, and if you suffer from these mail exchanges, there is an easy way to
solve it.
The ball is in Frans camp, there is nothing more i can do to solve the social
side of this problem, since Frans is refractive to any kind of positive and
friendly way to try to deal with it.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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