Hello all,
Le 31 mars 2010 à 17:56, Mathias Bauer a écrit : > > Hi Sophie, > > Sophie wrote: > >> I feel that currently there is a deep smog on our communication flow, >> see Rene's feeling today, mine on l10n, others on lingu list, may be a >> not so well balanced mail from Bjoern, whatever the great work he has >> done and the not answered question from Volker about odficons01. I guess >> we have some strange times to pass along. That should not disturb us >> from what we have to do: keep the community strong, working in >> confidence, attach importance to what really has, and forget the rest. > Your last sentence really is a wise one and I thank you very much for > it. But at the beginning of this paragraph you mixed very different > things and put them together though they have completely different > backgrounds. > > I don't know much about the things on l10n, linguistic and > odficons, but my own experience from may years lets me think that they > are the usual consequences of bad communication and mistakes on what > side ever - just normal life that happens at times, not only currently. > (Doesn't make it better, but also not an extraordinary event). The > problems mentioned in the release status meeting are somewhat similar, > though I dislike the reaction to them in the meeting. > > If people make mistakes, this shouldn't be brushed under the carpet. > Nevertheless discussions about the mistakes should happen in a > respectful manner and with an appropriate tone. So if you mention Rene's > feeling in the meeting, what about the feelings of those being talked to > so rudely as it is documented in the IRC logs of several meetings? > > Now to the other things that IMHO should be seen as something different. > > I don't think that Björn's mail was unbalanced. There is only one person > (Eric Bachard) that obviously read it as a personal attack. As Eric is > already known to take nearly everything personally, I wouldn't give that > too much attention. And Björn and I have reacted immediately to Eric's > mail (though it was quite impolite), just to make things clear. > Moreover, all the work from Björn has been presented and discussed on > the dev list upfront, nothing was done in secrecy. I can't see how we > could have done that much better (perhaps except of adding a footer > "This mail is not an attack against the education project or one of its > members" to every mail sent to an OOo list). There will always be people > who misunderstand even the most balanced mails you can think of. If you > are looking for not so well balanced mails: take the reply from Eric to > Björn (though IMHO naming it "not so well balanced" would be an euphemism). > > And Martin's blog? He has reasons not to vote for Thorsten and IMHO he > is totally entitled to have them. He made them public to demonstrate > that his "no" vote for Thorsten is not founded in personal problems with > him, on the contrary: he doesn't want to give his vote to Thorsten in > spite of the respect and sympathy he has for him in person. I can't see > anything wrong here. > > Best regards, > Mathias > I have so far refrained to intervene, but now I think it's the good time for me to do so. First of all, and sorry if I sound like an aloof officier of the European Union, I would like to salute and commend the quality of the discussion here. People could have lost their temper and would not have formulated their thoughts adequately. Sophie indeed highlights issues that may have a totally different background, but she is right in taking this approach. We face a period of uncertainty in this project, and we feel we could be more ambitious while at the same time not have to do the same mistakes over and over again. This is why it is important to stick together as a community. The branding initiative was an unfortunate issue that Stefan and Cor are working on to make sure this will not happen again. I for one am happy with the new logo but it's about process, not about what we like better. Regarding Thorsten, I did not want to speak up, because of my complicated and quite public relation with his employer. True, I have been a vocal critic of Novell, for several reasons that are out of context here. The main issue that has been formulated, is that Thorsten is an engineer that may not be the best person for Product Development representative. Another one is that he and his employer have been creating what became over the year a fork of OpenOffice.org, regardless of how inaccurate or extreme this word might be for some. So these could be two valid reasons for me to vote against Thorsten and I would understand if some would do so. I may surprise some here, but I have to remind that Thorsten has been regularly contributing patches and bug reports ever since he started his work at Novell. What's more, he has been an enthusiastic member of our community, and a knowledgeable person to turn to. His involvement with the Impress module would actually lead me to believe he can be very relevant as a produce development representative and I share some of his thoughts concerning the community/product conundrum. Don't get me wrong, I'm part of the people who feel OOo is not sexy enough for people and for a variety of reasons, so I like to work on product very much. But in our case, the community is supposed to /does / should drive the product development. So to me, the "qualification" part of the issue for Thorsten is covered. The fact he works for Novell is actually not so problematic, as I'm more interested in people than in flags, and it can be a good sign of openness anyway. What I'm more worried in - and here I would welcome Thorsten's input in an honest way- is a troubling trend I have seen from may OOo Novell developers. They seem to be carrying a notion that somehow projects are divided between the ones who know the code and those who does not, creating a divide and a hostile, unwelcoming elitistic gap that exclude non code contributors. I will not elaborate so much on the fact that Free Software was created to protect users, not developers, because that is something you find practically at the front page of www.fsf.org . I'm not trying to make a point of theory here. What I'm trying to do is to ask Thorsten how he feels about community, and community cohesion (regardless of its diversity). To be sure, I and many others felt hurt and insulted by the attitude I described above, but over the years I have grown old enough to be part of the ones who hire and fires the very same "hackers", and I noticed they tend to respect that. This being said, I still feel the issue is not resolved, and I will base my personal vote for or against Thorsten on his own vision of this issue. To me that will show "his meat" . Thorsten, how you see our community? how do you see yourself in this community? That goes to you, not to your employer. Thank you, Charles. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.org
