Hi Frans, (I am answering this email in the same group, as it also addresses some of the problems of various mailinglists and has its home on debian-powerpc.)
On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 06:22:29PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Monday 08 May 2006 11:18, you wrote:
> > it was brought to my attention that you are not reading debian-powerpc,
> > thus I am forwarding my email to you directly.
>
> That is correct, mainly as I do not have a powerpc system myself.
For being a very important list to powerpc users,
it was underinformed about the incident.
> > b) The social and personal side is important. Sven's emails are clearly
> > showing this, but some of the responses by Thomas and
> > others did not reflect this.
>
> Yes, but Sven's emails are also only showing one side of the issue.
It is only natural that Sven's emails show his side which I have considered
before answering. Still others answered with technical arguments only,
which stroke me as strange. My point in general is, that this is not
a nice way to treat a volunteer and does the organisation no good,
no matter how bad a volunteer might have behaved.
> I have not replied to the various threads because I have no interest in
> prolonging this discussion.
Best to avoid a long discussion is to have a clear and
understandable statement you can point people to.
To me not having this from the start clearly has prolonged the discussion.
> The second reason was that there was a
> mediation going on by the DPL and his "second in command" and I did not
> want to interfere in that.
This is a good reason to hold communication for a while.
I am bit astonished by the result of the mediation, though,
as there obviously was no agreement between made between the parties.
That is sad.
> > My part is: Writing this comment to help the situation.
> > I am also speaking up to support Sven. I believe
> > that he was bit badly treated in the thread.
> > No matter what he did to contribute to the situation,
> > this list has people which are new to the problem.
>
> Well, I'm afraid we disagree there and I don't feel that someone who has
> not followed all that's happened over the last year on the various lists
> and IRC channels (mostly d-boot and d-kernel, but elsewhere as well) can
> really judge the rights and wrongs here.
As I have stated earlier: I have only read debian-powerpc
and been working from this. As there will be other people doing so,
Sven, just like anybody, deserves a fair treatment to this audience,
which cannot know what has happened on other channels.
> Also, this is not really about right or wrong, but about having some fun
> while working on Debian in general and the installer in particular.
> Having fun is very important when it comes to a volunteer based project
> and I'm afraid that Sven was reducing the fun for several core members of
> the d-i team in a way that has become unacceptable.
Giving an understandable examples in a statement for this,
would be fair treatment. This would be a step after personal communication
to try to improve the situation has failed.
Assuming that Sven had the distressing personal situation he wrote about,
there should be enough base to make a new attempt and forgive some of the heat.
To me it still actually looks like this was used to Sven's disadvantage
which I would not have happen to me on a general basis.
But that is beside the point, if you and the other core members
of the d-i team are not willing to do this, no one can force you.
> > What could have been done better?
> > If Sven's commit rights have been revoked and he got "kicked out",
> > it would be very good to give a reasonable explanation
> > that people can be point people to.
> > The usage of the phrase "kicked" by Sven,
> > seems to indicate that there was
> > no common position why he left the d-i team.
>
> "Kicking out" Sven from the d-i team had already been discussed twice this
> year. Eventually we did not have to "kick him out" as Sven himself
> resigned from the team.
If the personal situation Sven write about is true,
you cannot really count the "resignation".
> We (I) revoked his commit access mainly because of the broken personal
> relationships between Sven and other members of the d-i team.
> IMO it is not good that someone who is not friendly towards a team has
> commit access to their source repository. In the long run that will only
> lead to new conflicts. It is much better to have a clean break and maybe
> resume a normal working relation later on when things have calmed down
> and people are willing to work together again.
I agree with the clean break, if both conflicting parties agree to it.
> Note that it is just as easy to grant commit access as it is to revoke it
> and I do not exclude the possibility that Sven will be allowed commit
> access again in the future. There will have to be major changes in his
> attitude for that to happen though.
I am assuming that Sven knows those criticism of him.
And my hope is there is a good way to integrate him as a volunteer for good.
[ I have deleted some of the other points as they are discussed elsewhere.
Thanks for responding, though. ]
> P.S. I will probably not be replying to any replies to this mail as almost
> everything has been said at least several times already. I really would
> like to put this behind us and start working on d-i again.
Regards,
Bernhard
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