On 19 Feb 2014, at 12:26, Joerg Schilling wrote:

> Alasdair Lumsden <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>>> Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 12:42:53 +0100
>>> From: [email protected]
>> <snip>
>>> 
>>> Well it would be great if some people at Illumos would not try to dictate
>>> things but signal that there is an interest for a collaboration.
>> 
>> illumos is collaborative. In the past year there has been around 50 
>> contributors all working on the code:
> 
> It may be that this is your personal impression, but this is not usable for a 
> general statement.
> 
> From my experiences Illumos is non-collaborative and non-trustworthy. 
> 
> This however is something that could be easily changed. Illumos would just 
> need to give a sign that there is a will for collaboration.

This is tiresome and unreasonable, Joerg.

It's been pointed out that your definition of collaboration is that your 
contribution not be evaluated by the same process that applies to anyone else 
attempting to contribute, and your complaint is that, before this process was 
established, you felt work you offered for contribution wasn't accepted. When 
this point is raised, you don't address it head-on, your responses are stuck on 
an impasse you hit with Garrett in 2010 rather than dealing with the community 
and contribution process as it's actually functioned for the last three years. 
Garrett isn't the illumos community, and I, like everyone else in the 
community, have no reason to take a position on what happened between the two 
of you four years ago or see that as relevant to what's happened since Garrett 
shepherded illumos to a collaborative community with collective technical 
direction. You may not like hearing this, but what you consider dispositive is 
generally not taken as relevant. If that's something you can't get past, 
 that's a matter of your choice rather than ongoing problems with the illumos 
community.

On top of that, over the course of several years numerous people in the 
community have given you feedback about shortcomings in your own responses to 
offered contributions to help you offer feedback that is constructive for those 
contributors and the community, and you've shown no interest in taking or 
addressing that feedback. The observed pattern is that you object to 
contributions without offering a clear problem definition that can process a 
better solution either immediately or as a later change.

Call it open source liberalism as a community value: people don't want to be 
told simply that what they've got isn't sufficient as a contribution, they want 
to be given a clear definition of what needs to be resolved so that they 
receive criticism they can address, and your feedback is often disregarded 
because you articulate criticism that is simply negative. I don't see that you 
fundamentally appreciate that otherwise valid criticism that has only negative 
expression is not satisfactory in community collaboration and may therefore be 
set aside.

You haven't taken any of this feedback, which I take to be offered in the hope 
and expectation that collaboration is possible, on board. I'm not trying to say 
that the illumos community is perfect, but you've been repeatedly unwilling to 
demonstrate that you're willing to self-scrutinise and compromise on the 
question of collaboration, even as you loudly complain about others, which 
itself becomes a further obstacle. If you're surprised that the result is that 
you therefore lack credibility, that's ultimately your problem and deficit. 
When you add to that claims that "the community" isn't trustworthy, that's 
offensive, and that's the point at which I feel compelled to write a public 
response like this one.

It's not that anyone doubts your fundamental ability as an engineer, but anyone 
who wants to be part of a community has to expect to participate by the 
standing conventions of that community. I've taken you seriously enough to read 
back through mail archives to look at the interactions you've had with the 
community over the years, and what I see is that there are serious problems on 
your end that you do not acknowledge.

There are certainly communities whose product I like and use but whose process 
I don't care to engage, and I'm able to reconcile myself to that. If you don't 
want to work by other people's rules, the result may be unfortunate, but it's 
not fundamentally a question of other's willingness or integrity. I'd certainly 
be happier if you'd begin to deal with this. I should add that, as long as your 
responses continue the pattern I describe, I have no intention of or interest 
in responding.

Kind regards,
Bayard
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