Ian, On 1/7/19 10:57 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
With all due respect - and recognizing your central involvement in the init-system-neutrality issue – I have to disagree with you here.Miles Fidelman writes ("Re: Censorship in Debian"):On 1/6/19 1:38 AM, Steve Langasek wrote:[systemd stuff][systemd stuff]I appreciate that the fights over systemd have been a defining experience for many of us. Many of us are still bitter, me included. I also appreciate that in some respects these fights are still, unfortunately, being fought and harm is still being done (although things are much less bad than they were). But I really don't think it is helpful to link the recent arguments over behaviour in the project, with init system diversity problems. The issues are very different. And the toxic emotional and political baggage from the init system stuff is really bad. So bringing init system stuff into this conversation about acceptable conduct just increases the hurt and argument, but does not lead to any better conclusions.
IMHO, the issues are VERY similar - having to do with groupthink, diversion from groupthink, and really, really poor processes (and perhaps attitudes).
It's not unlike a current issue in the church I belong to. On the one hand, it's an issue over a change to one of the church's external signs - but it has blown up into an issue over who gets to make decisions (volunteer committee vs. a community-wide vote), hurt feelings among volunteers when someone deigns to protest a unilateral action (which seem to trump dissent), a rather authoritarian board that is currently asserting far more power than granted by our bylaws (IMHO), a seeming general acceptance of these authoritarian tendencies ("we don't care about that particular issue, so we're staying out of it"), and a general unwillingness to discuss issues via email list (leaving no other venue, other than stage managed meetings, called by our board, at their leisure, and at inconvenient times). People have left over this kind of bull, and I'm thinking seriously about it myself (after 30 or so years).
Where Debian is concerned, the same set of issues are playing out - this time over the Code of Conduct, but they also played, with (IMHO) far more serious consequences over the systemd issues - including your own resignation as chair of the Technical Committee. As you put it then, "While it is important that the views of the 30-40% of the project who agree with me should continue to be represented on the TC, I myself am clearly too controversial a figure at this point to do so. I should step aside to try to reduce the extent to which conversations about the project's governance are personalized." HOW IS THIS NOT THE SAME SCENARIO PLAYING OUT AGAIN?"
The current discussion makes it clear that we obviously didn't learn anything from the systemd issue – to the severe detriment of the project as a whole. It strikes me as particularly relevant to point this out – as evidence of significant underlying pathologies that go well beyond the narrow issue of "acceptable conduct." As you put it "the toxic emotional and political baggage from the init system stuff is really bad" - IMHO, the root causes are the same, and we're going through it again.
Respectfully, Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra