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Re: I resigned in 2004



On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 11:01:12AM +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> I couldn't disagree more. I found it (and very nearly replied to this
> affect) to be exactly as Willy characterised it ("full of self-
> justifications" etc) and can entirely understand why, under the
> circumstances, he should have become even more upset having received
> it. To respond to the initial mail in that fashion was _incredibly_
> tone deaf.

Indeed, I was very bothered.
On the other hand, most of my reply to willy's mail was not addressed to
him, but to debian-devel@ at large, to have everybody else understand
how silly what he did was.  Replying to my email in d-private@ saying
"aye aye, I really want to go away" wold have been *far* more effecting
(even if process-wise I'd have preferred him click the damn buttons we
sent him) and his case would most likely already been closed.
Instead, he decided to throw such a bothersome mail in debian-devel.

My reply indeed had quite a grumpy tone, and I realized only after
sending it, of course.  I need to get into the habit of asking somebody
else to review my emails when they treat such matters.
But at the same time, I consider mine a very polite answer, without any
particularly accusatory wording or anything like that, nor I consider
any of what I wrote worthy of being replied with:
    Fuck you.  Do not contact me again.  I shall consider
    any further contact (from you or anyone else in regards to this matter)
    as harassment, and I shall seek legal counsel.

All I did was dumping a couple of short facts mostly for the benefits of
everybody else reading the ML, and at the same time letting Matthew know
I received and accepted his wishes.  Probably I could have just split
the email in two; I surely didn't know I would upset him so much...

> Debian may not want to be involved in any kind of retirement process,
> for whatever reason, and to simply honour those wishes (which in this
> case were made *very* clear) by just dropping it instead of continuing
> to poke at it or try to justify actions up to the point where it
> becomes clear they do not wish to be involved.

We have been working quite a lot in this direction.  All we ask to
people is to let know d-private@ in some way —possibly authenticated—
that they want to go away.  I don't think this is too much to ask, and I
will actually keep arguing over and over if anybody else try to argue
against this point.


Also, indeed I'm not an HRM person, but I believe that anybody whose
heavy emotions from events as old as 14 years before are triggered to
the point Matthew Wilcox's were by some simple emails, should seek
professional psychological counseling.

> There is absolutely no value here to Debian having the last word and/or
> being "technically in the right in having follow our procedures".

The value is in to avoid situations (that have happened) were people
came to nm@d.o saying things like "wow I discovered I've been removed
[not necessarily from the project, ISTR even people realizing only years
later that their 1024D key was really removed from the keyring and not
realizing they couldn't do anything anymore] X months/years ago, what
should I do".
I find such occurrences to be scary.  We have procedures in places to
try to limit them, procedures that have been communicated to the
projects, and that if you don't know of them the only reason I could
believe of is that you explicitly refused to be ignore.
Exceptions exists, this is not one.  He rage quit without anyone of
those in charge 14 years ago realizing, that's his fault for how I see
it.  Now we are cleaning up and we asking him what he wanted to do,
there is nothing wrong with this.  He choose to ignore our emails, fine.
We went ahead and decided to remove him, he said yes.  Cool, nothing
more.  I don't think there is anything wrong with what happened, except
the tone of his mails and this annoyingly long email I'm writing.

> The
> maximum response which I would consider to have been acceptable would
> have been:
> 
>    ACK, we will have DAM remove you instead of retire. I'm sorry to
>    have bothered you more than necessary.
> 
>    Good bye, and thank you for your contributions you made back then!
> 
> and even then I think it would have been better to simply say nothing
> at all, in accordance with Willy's wishes.

Erm.  Again, if one can't deal with such emails, you should really seek
help and support elsewhere, IMHO.
It was not my choice to have him spammed by his friends, that was his
choice when he decided to ignore the emails he admitted to have ignored;
he could have clicked that button and all he could have seen would have
been a couple of automated emails, saving himself a lot of grief.  I
don't feel any "guilt" here, sorry.

-- 
regards,
                        Mattia Rizzolo

GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18  4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540      .''`.
more about me:  https://mapreri.org                             : :'  :
Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri                  `. `'`
Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia  `-

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