Re: A question to the Debian community ...
On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:32:26PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> I think it's worth one more response to say that I simply do not agree
> that this problem is somehow horribly embarassing, unexpected, or a sign
> of a fundamental deficiency in the Debian project. There are other things
> that *are* signs of fundamental deficiencies in the project, but I don't
> think this is one of them.
>
> Sven Luther <luther@debian.org> writes:
>
> > So, you don't believe in solving the problem which is causing the noise
> > in the first place ?
>
> I don't believe it's possible to solve it in the way that would satisfy
> everyone and thereby eliminate the noise without fundamentally changing
> human nature or brainwashing people.
>
> > Or maybe you do not believe Debian is capable of growing up, and find an
> > answer to such situations which don't deal with shoting up one party ?
>
> This isn't growing up, nor is it a lack of maturity. These aren't
> problems that are somehow unusually common in Debian because Debian
> doesn't have social maturity. These are the sorts of problems I've seen
> in every workplace or open source project that I've been in, given the
> presence of personality conflicts (which eventually always happen when
> enough people are involved), and there usually isn't a solution. Someone
> in a position of power makes a decision that is often more or less
> arbitrary and people either decide to live with it or leave. Around that
> process, there is inevitably a ton of noise, but it always comes down to
> the same thing in the end.
>
> The difference in a professional workplace is that the people in authority
> aren't shy to make decisions, make them much earlier and faster, and
> enforce them in a considerably more draconian fashion than Debian does.
There is a fundamental difference though. Debian is not a workplace, and
we are all volunteers. This all started because the d-i leadership felt
i was not respectful enough of them, because i chose to discuss
technical issues they prefered ignored, and well, me being passionate
about debian and what i do, i was maybe more blunt or whatever.
You are also wrong in the fact that you don't believe that this is a
fundamental defficiency. This event all by itself, is, even in a
caricatural way, an example, a microcosm, of all the fundamental
defficiencies the project has, or at least many of them, including the
high-handedness of the DAMs, the frustration to not be able to work on
what one cares about because some few in power want to block it, the
fact that a few persons have a personal power in debian and don't feel
like sharing it (just ask yourself why ij and mrvn are no DDS), that
those in power are a stubborn lot, full of pride and arrogance, and
accept no critic whatsoever, and take no prisoner in a disagreement.
But, Debian has many reasons to be ashamed of what happened, because
here we had a dispute, where a very active contributor faced a personal
problem, and was under harrasment and attack by a few people, and chose
to look the other side, and each so called 'mediation attemtps' where
fully one sided, and no honest and fair attempts to solve the issue.
Debian should be ashamed, because it has failed us all in not solving
this issue when it started, and solved it by june 2006 at the latest,
and each individual developper which chose to ignore these events, even
if they disaproved, or expressed their sympathy in private, share this
shame.
Let me just give you an anonymous (for obvious reason) quote for
finishing :
> Can we put this on hold for a while? There are a few things I
> want to pass
> through NEW, and a few changes I'd like committed in d-i, before I
> consider
> doing something that could be considered a defiance.
Do you not see that the fact that DDs have opinions such as these, in
itself shows the whole sickness of the situation ? What happened to us
all getting together, in order to create the best OS ever, in a friendly
and nice way ? But then maybe Debian was never such, and it was only me
being naive and young which made me think so, but then i severly regret
all the years i gave my time and work without counting.
Saddened,
Sven Luther
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