Re: enforcement first, ask questions later?
Pierre,
Apologies that I took so long to reply to this; it ended up in my spam
folder for some reason.
On Mon, Feb 4, 2019 at 3:52 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue <peb@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Dear Gavin,
>
> Le lundi 04 février 2019 à 09:28:41-0700, Gavin Howard a écrit :
> > I am not a contributor, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
> >
> > I was planning on becoming a contributor to Debian recently and joined
> > the mailing list in preparation for doing so. And then I saw
> > everything that was happening.
> >
> > It made me nervous that people could be accused and removed without
> > any public process, opportunity to collect evidence, opportunity to
> > face their accuser, presumption of innocence, and other basic human
> > rights guaranteed, at least, by the US Constitution. (I don't know
> > about the Debian constitution.)
>
> Using references to legal arguments to determine how a private group
> should work and behave is not really a relevant thing. Debian has
> normative texts it chose as a project and none of these is entitled to
> the notion of "fair trial" or whatever like this.
I understand that, but I have more to say on it later.
> Regarding the lack of public process, I can understand how you see it as
> a good thing to hold "public trials", but others could say that such a
> "public trial" could undermine their professionnal career and their
> public image.
>
> Debian chose one way regarding publicity, you're free to think about
> alternatives.
That choice should be made by the accused, if their rights were to
actually be upheld. See below.
> That being said, don't try to involve Human Rights or any State of Law
> justice notion in this as this is mostly irrelevant to the subject.
>
> I'm pretty sure you know plenty groups where the same kind of thing
> holds. Especially in the US.
Sure I do. And I don't participate in them.
If Debian wants to be one of those groups that is Debian's choice. But
in my opinion, any organization that does not hold basic, God-given
natural rights as sacred is an organization that I will never
participate in because the culture of such organizations can easily be
turned to target some of its own members.
> > Also, when I saw someone who appeared to be in a position of
> > leadership asking for evidence of wrongdoing *after* making a decision
> > to ban someone, that was...chilling, as though there was a vendetta
> > that was fulfilled and that the leader was looking for justification
> > of such a vendetta.
>
> The fact that some people can do mistakes sometimes isn't either a hard
> piece of news or something sufficient to form any judgement, especially
> when they retracted themselves with apologies (after being called out by
> members of the project, including at least two DAM). Ironically, there
> are two persons on this list who asked for evidences of "misbehaviours"
> of other people, one who retracted, and whom you pointed a finger at,
> and one other, who is actually the original poster of the current
> thread, who offered a 500£ bounty for such "evidences" and who didn't
> retract a thing.
>
> No one having banned anyone asked for any more evidence on this list or
> another. You probably made a mistake while reading these far too long
> threads.
Or maybe I didn't read the whole thing because looking back, it seems
that this "thread" is spread across several. My point stands because
it is about the immediate perception of Debian as a project to a
person who had just joined the mailing list looking to participate.
However, after reading the cash bounty email, there is a difference:
the bounty was offered for evidence after an accusation was made but
*before* a decision. The other was asking for evidence *after* a
decision.
> > For myself, I do not have great social skills and cannot read subtle,
> > between-the-lines, subtle messages, especially through the medium of
> > email. I could see a future where, if I joined Debian, I might make an
> > innocent mistake and not realize it until I was removed from the
> > project. That does not sound fun.
>
> Do you really think that among more than a thousand people, nobody
> except the two recently expelled developers made an innocent mistake? Do
> you actually think that regarding the one whom I replied to, he's on any
> "innocent mistake" path?
>
> I really suggest that you take some time to think about it again.
Um...yes, I do. Because I have seen this thing before.
I spoke at a conference once, laying out the current problems with the
culture of programming and how to fix it, as well as how to elevate
the work software "engineers" do to a place where they might deserve
that title. One of the ideas I laid out was the possibility of
creating a certification process for software developers to become
true, certified engineers and to require certain critical
(infrastructure-level) projects to be led by such certified engineers.
What happened after my talk was that I had several managers accuse me
of "white privilege" since I did not have to work my way through
college and thus did not know what doing so was like for minorities.
The kicker? I *did* work my way through college. (My parents provided
no help, though it wasn't because they didn't love me; they didn't
because they knew it would be good for me, and they were right.) The
managers just assumed that I hadn't.
Now, may I be entirely misguided about the dynamics of this situation?
Yes; after all, I am not so great at this social thing. But the
experience I laid out above was a time when I literally did nothing
wrong and was targeted. To me, it seems like this is what happened
here, especially since evidence was asked for *after* a decision was
made.
> > So, no thank you. And best of luck to everyone.
>
> I'm sorry if the current situation discouraged you to contribute to the
> project. I'm especially sorry if by the previous email I sent, I
> contributed to this feeling. Yet I'll respect your choice, that you are
> free to overturn anytime if you feel the wish to give help and input to
> the project.
As I said above, I never will. Not until things change in Debian.
> I hope you find happiness and fun in your future projects/work.
Thank you.
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Pierre-Elliott Bécue
> GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528 F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
> It's far easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Gavin Howard
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