I started many drafts responses to this, but I've decided I won't keep flogging this particular horse. Nevertheless, since this is on the record, I want to clarify a couple of things, otherwise people not familiar with the issue might think I am making a fuzz about nothing. What I am talking about here is a years-long harassing problem that led to the burnout of many contributors of one of the core teams in Debian. As a community we had been unable to handle this person, after many attempts. Previous DPLs were asked -and tried- to mediate, without success. Mehdi was aware of the issue and after he was elected DPL in April 2016, he was asked for help. After DebConf16 passed with no visible changes, a group of long-term and core organisers asked the DPL to help find a way to remove this person from the team --but not from Debian. After waiting for two months we were informed by Mehdi that as first-step solution, he had asked this person to "stay away from Debconf17" (which had started being prepared almost a year before). This person supposedly agreed to stay away, but he continued being visibly active to this day. Furthermore, we were blamed by the DPL for "no-one asking him to stop" in public during sessions at DC16, even if it was already expressed that we were burnt-out and stressed from the constant struggle. And that we should ask DAM to remove him from the project if we wanted him out, which was never our request. Finally, the DPL stated that if the signees wanted to stop him from contributing to DebConf in the future, it was our responsibility to ensure that he gets this information straight during DC17. All this seems to me like a typical case of victim-blaming and protecting the harasser. And that is why I bring all this noise to the list. -- Martín Ferrari (Tincho)
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