Re: dealing with aggression against project
Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@debian.org> writes:
> Suppose Debian is to receive a similar letter of aggression, e.g. "We
> IBM and Mozilla Foundation think that your duly elected project leader
> is unworthy."
I would read the letter with great interest to try to understand why they
felt that way, and probably also talk to people outside of Debian as well
as people inside of Debian, people I trusted to be honest with me, to see
if they had similar feelings or concerns that they weren't raising because
they didn't think it would do any good, or were intimidated out of
raising, or otherwise didn't feel safe to raise.
At the end of the process, I might decide that I disagreed with some or
all of the letter or that the complaints were spurious or ill-founded, but
(particularly if signed by organizations that I knew were unlikely to do
such a thing lightly) it would be worth spending some time thinking and
analyzing and trying to understand and seeing if I had some blind spot,
and what would have led to them taking such a step.
> Wouldn't the only reasonable response to that be "mind your own
> business"?
No, for some reason I don't feel the need to react to sincere external
criticism from serious organizations with knee-jerk hostility or
dismissiveness.
Even if, after a thoughtful analysis, I completely disagreed with every
point of the substance of such a letter, the most productive way to deal
with such a letter is to calmly explain why it did not seem valid and then
go on with what one was going to do anyway. It's also a good opportunity
to ensure that one's governance processes are open, transparent, and
functional, because there's always a possibility that I could disagree
completely with such a letter *and be completely wrong*, and there needs
to be a usable path for one's opinion to be outvoted.
> Note that if we start discussing response and putting it out for GR then
> we are DoS'ed successfully.
Responding to serious concerns about the governance of a public benefit
project (which I would count Debian as, although we're not formally
incorporated as such) is part of the work of that project and is a moral
and ethical obligation on the project. That doesn't mean *everyone* in
the project has any obligation to be involved, but it does mean that it's
a role the project should fill and take seriously.
Debian is, of course, a volunteer project. Therefore, if it's not
something you find interesting or useful, you're free (and encouraged!) to
ignore that process and let those of us who are willing to do the work do
it.
PS: I would not consider such a letter to be "aggression against the
project" in any meaningful way, and thus also don't agree with the subject
line of this thread.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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