Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 10:39:46AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
 MJ Ray writes (Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute):
  There is a lamentable personal dispute between Sven Luther and some
  other developers.  There have been some attempts at reconciliation and
  various offers, but none have succeeded in ending this dispute.
 ...
  1. Sven Luther is suspended [...]
 
 This is absurd.  We need a general way of dealing with these kind of
 problems which does not include GRs !

We needed it a year ago already, and back then the only way was the DPL,
who failed, and oriented me at a GR.

I applaud your proposal, even if it is too late to do me any good, but
please have a look at the propsoals i have made in response to
anthony's. I think it is important to set up these things in order to
not even allow for the impression of foul play in the future.

Look at real-life court, they have had centuries to fine-tune these
procedures, and have a mechanism of dealing with the few loop-holes
left.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 12:08:04PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
 Sven Luther writes (Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal 
 dispute):
  On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 10:39:46AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
   [stuff]
  
  I applaud your proposal, [...]
 
 OMG WTF.  I'm very sorry everyone.  Obviously it must have been a
 terrible idea.  I take it back.

Ok, Ian, Since i have already been expulsed, don't you think that this
you said above was gloating and unjust provocation ? 

I don't expect you are sensible enough to present apologizes, but it is
fun how the DPL accused me of lacking empathy, and then how you could
say stuff like the above without feeling shame.

For everyone, 

I was expulsed because i was the target of a FUD campaign, and most
everything people reproach to me, is also something that people like Ian
above are to a degree also coupable of.

People was afraid of a fair trial, where i could have presented my
evidence, and been able to provide argumentation, instead people send
menaces and provocation of the above kind my way, and then they wonder
why i felt agressed.

Disgusted,

Sven Luther



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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:29:34PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 08:47:26PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 07:10:14PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
   On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 11:41:28AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:47:11AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 No, you are just a DD whose access to lists has been suspended.

A sub-DD all the same, what about all those others who participated in
those flamewars ?
   
   Sven, with all due respect, please do not try to be party and judge at
   the same time. Not only does that not work, it also makes you look
   rather bad.
  
  Wouter, i am just pointing out that there are more than one to
  participate in a flamewar,
 
 We all know that, so that doesn't exactly help anyone.

Yet, i was the only punished. Why is that ? 

  and pinpointing me is more of the same injustice which is at the heart
  of this mess.
 
 Maybe so; but OTOH, if you keep pointing fingers to other people, then
 that doesn't exactly help resolve the situation; on the contrary.

I kept asking for a fair trial.

 I'm not saying you're wrong if you claim other people did something
 wrong; I'm only saying you're not helping anyone or anything by doing
 so.

how can you justify people getting so angry when i asked to be handed
fairly ? 

  Notice that if the situation where inversed, and i was on the winning
  side, i would have said exactly the same. That said, if the situation
  where inversed this issue would be solved since ages or would never have
  arrised.
 
 You can't know that. It may very well be that in such a situation the
 other end wouldn't want a compromise.

Well, given that all was in the hand of frans, i can tell you that if
the situation where inversed, and i had all the possibility to solve it,
and was offered a conciliation, i would have jumped on it.

This is because i am a good guy, probably too good, which is why i
suffered here.

   I understand you want to be a Debian Developer again, with all rights
   and privileges which that implies, but can we please take this process
   one step at a time? First, find a way out of the current situation that
   gives you voting and upload rights again without pissing off others.
  
  Exact. That is the problem. The fact that people would get pissed by the
  situation being solved fairly is in itself an indication that there is a
  problem beside myself. 
 
 I'm not contesting that; all I'm saying is that your all-or-nothing
 approach does little to help alleviate the problem.

All or nothing ? Again, this is FUD. In may 2006, i proposed a
reasonable compromise to Steve, involving me stopping from posting on
the debian-boot mailing list, but being able to work on d-i without
restriction. Does this sound all or nothing ? Even Steve Langasek said
it was a reasonable proposal (but *shurg* he did say).

 The fact is, currently you can't get it all; so I suggest you take your
 losses and deal with what you /can/ get. After all, a bit is better than
 nothing at all, isn't it?

i can get nothing, i never could. It was always : *YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT IT
AND THAT IS IT*.

 Nobody claims that the process has to stop there and then. Rome wasn't

Heu, the current state seems pretty definitive. There is no place for a
continuation, and when i tried to propose a mediation, and a meeting at
debconf, people shouted at me.

 built in a day; and besides decades of negotiations, peace in the Middle
 East and Northern Ireland isn't completely reality yet either.

Right. But the death are dead. 

 If you want to say that your end goal is to get more than what you'll
 get out of this, then I understand that, and I don't think anyone can
 object to that; but if you want your immediate goal to be more, then
 sorry, but you won't get that.

My end goal is to be handled fairly, to get blamed for the
responsability i have, but no more, and that both parties are equally
blamed. But this was apparently too much to ask.

Sadly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:47:11AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  But then you are a stigmatized sub-DD, and not a DD anymore.
 
 No, you are just a DD whose access to lists has been suspended.

A sub-DD all the same, what about all those others who participated in
those flamewars ? It takes two you know to create the mess we are in,
and i have done only replying to folk, and posted only a few posts by
myself.

  Do we really want to go into creating castes of DDs ?
 
 No, but it's already happened.  Let's move on.

I prefer fixing it, now is the right moment to solve it once and for all
in the right way.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:52:15AM +, Cord Beermann wrote:
 Hallo! Du (Sven Luther) hast geschrieben:
 
  A sub-DD all the same, what about all those others who participated in
  those flamewars ? It takes two you know to create the mess we are in,
  and i have done only replying to folk, and posted only a few posts by
  myself.
 
 I really don't want to extend the block i added to d-project, so
 please stop to refrain the 'the others have hit back first'-thing.
 
 You are right, that it takes two to get a flamewar, but there is an
 important pragmatic reason, why we stopped you and not the others
 (yet): You are one, and the others are many, so it is easier to stop
 the war that way.
 
 This doesn't mean that listmasters will not act on other parties, if
 we think it is appropriate.

Ok, can you provide a bit more guidelines about what i am allowed to,
and what not ? I believe that this was non-inflamatory,
non-too-quick-mailing, discussion with MJ Ray, and thus a legit post to
make.

What are the guidelines ? Or is it just that right now a certain amount
of people are too angry to be reasonable in these matters ? Well, we
could certainly setup a moratorium on all issues concerning this for a
week or so, but it should touch everyone.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 07:10:14PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 11:41:28AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:47:11AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
   No, you are just a DD whose access to lists has been suspended.
  
  A sub-DD all the same, what about all those others who participated in
  those flamewars ?
 
 Sven, with all due respect, please do not try to be party and judge at
 the same time. Not only does that not work, it also makes you look
 rather bad.

Wouter, i am just pointing out that there are more than one to
participate in a flamewar, and pinpointing me is more of the same
injustice which is at the heart of this mess.

Notice that if the situation where inversed, and i was on the winning
side, i would have said exactly the same. That said, if the situation
where inversed this issue would be solved since ages or would never have
arrised.

I have been thinking about this issue since a long time, and despite
what is claimed, i have a very good understanding about what is going
wrong, what i feel, as well as what the others in this feel. Upto a
point at least, since i understand how they feel but not why.

 I understand you want to be a Debian Developer again, with all rights
 and privileges which that implies, but can we please take this process
 one step at a time? First, find a way out of the current situation that
 gives you voting and upload rights again without pissing off others.

Exact. That is the problem. The fact that people would get pissed by the
situation being solved fairly is in itself an indication that there is a
problem beside myself. 

 I understand you don't want the situation to remain like that forever,
 but nobody's said it has to.
 
 Sometimes, in life, you have to make compromises; and if you don't want
 to compromise, then there are two options: either you get kicked out
 entirely, or the fight between you and the rest of the world continues
 until the end of times.

Well, i have proposed many compromises, including the first one since
the begining of this mess. I have yet to see a compromise proposal
toward me though, so let's see.

I am not forcing the issue, just pointing out my point of view, but if
nobody is interested ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 11:43:29AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
  Sven == Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
   Do we really want to go into creating castes of DDs ?
  
  No, but it's already happened.  Let's move on.
 
 Sven I prefer fixing it, now is the right moment to solve it once
 Sven and for all in the right way.
 
 Just an observation:
 
 This whole problem seems to be because everyone, from both sides, is
 thinking about the situation in terms of what *they* want or don't
 want:
 
 * I want these flame wars to go away
 * I want the mailing lists to become technical content again
 * I want Sven to go away and not come back
 * I want Sven to stop posting so much
 * I want Sven to stop posting inflammatory posts
 * I want to be sure these problems don't reoccur
 * I want Debian to treat me fairly
 * I want Debian to treat developers fairly
 * I want Debian to have fare processes to deal with this in the future
 * I want ...
 * etc
 
 Some of these may or may not conflict. No particular order. I probably
 missed some.
 
 This strategy is not going to work. Just saying I want ... is not
 going to convince the other party to change their mind and give it to
 you.

Notice that in the above, i said : i prefer fixing it, and notice the
semantic difference between that and i want. But then maybe we don't
speak the same language. I guess none of this matters though, since
debian has decided to expulse me anyway, just like they did for
Jonathan/Ted Walter, without ever thinking of setting up a procedure to
handle expulsion fairly.

Sadly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 07:26:03PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...]
  The main point you are missing, that if you remove the suspension, and
  debian claims something about the fault of the previous events to be
  shared (which nobody disputes they are), then the list behaviour become
  no more a problem than for other DDs waging random flamewars. [...]
 
 So if the GR contained: 2. Responsibility for the previous events is
 shared. then that is an end to it, in your opinion?

Sure, this is all i am asking. Not sure why everyone translates this to
i wont be satisfied if i don't get my way, which is more what the
other side has been showing, but then as i said, people judge me not on
what i say, but on what they believe i say.

   4. Evading the suspension will be regarded as a second offence of
   header-forgery on lists.debian.org and should result in immediate
   expulsion, as in the Debian Machine Usage Policies.
 
  Hey, this is not needed, i am a man of word, as i have shown with the 2
  month ban, and this portrays me as an evil doer, which i reject.
 
  You don't need this clause.
 
 I hope we don't need that clause and I expect we don't need that
 clause, but I want to leave it there just in case, as a warning.  It
 is not meant to portray anyone as an evil-doer - it is meant to record
 unambiguously that we're already (at least) one step along that path.

Well, just look at the mail on -curiosa, or the various folk who have
been probvoking me on irc (like pusling for example, but they are
others), and that the fact that Frans used to bash me at the most minor
occasion in bug reports, and being overly sensitive seeing offense where
no offense was meant.

The main problem is that this has reached such a dramatic proportion,
where everyone is quite jumpy, like i was over the kernel team thingy
earlier.

So a most neutral we won't mention this issue again, and everyone doing
so will be warned, and if he persists insert random punishment
Immediate expulsion for a single mention, could be too hard.

   5. Discussion of Sven Luther is banned from all lists where he is
   suspended, because there is no right of reply.
 
  Why not simply join all list related issues in a common : discussion
  about this dispute is banned from all lists, and let it be at that ? 
 
 Because future -vote threads should be allowed to revisit this if
 people want.

Yes, this is also an important point for the above. I expect to be
proposing a reform of the expulsion process, and it will make sense to
look at the current mess as an example of what has gone bad. Some may
interpret that badly, and ask for immediate expulsion though,
accordyingto 4. above.

In general, i am sure most DDs can be reasonable, and distinguish
between speaking about the issue in a constructive way, in order to
advance some other issue, over repeated whining, don't you think ?

 [...]
  They should not complain if they get forked if there is a refusal, nor
  feel pissed if some other media is chosen, but i guess that is common
  sense :)
 
 Indeed.
 
  MJ, l like this proposal, i think you are too heavy weight on the
  unneeded technicalities. A much simpler and straightforward solution
  would be [...]
 
 Sorry, I feel that proposal is too simple - it does not protect the
 lists from others doing similar, or explain what will happen if you

Your proposal also don't protect the lists from others doing similar (if
i undertsood this well), it just protects then from me doing it.

 fail or succeed.  (And actually, it doesn't do a few other things that
 you previously requested.) I regret that my proposal makes you a
 named special case, but the suspension already did that.

Indeed, and that is exactly the main reproach i have against this whole
mess. If everyone involved in it had been equally suspended, i would be
happy. I am not the sole responsible for this mess, why should i be the
only punished ? And a resolution which keeps this strong unfairness
exhibits the same problem as the previous resolutions.

 Hope that explains,

Yep, hope it is ok to discuss this here ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal: GR to deal with effects of a personal dispute

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 06:13:40PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
 On Thu, 31 May 2007, Brian May wrote:
  Is it possible to act as a developer without mailing list access?
 
 Yes, just as it's possible to act as a developer if you've been
 excluded from using [EMAIL PROTECTED]; you just have to use an
 intermediate who can send on messages on your behalf.

But then you are a stigmatized sub-DD, and not a DD anymore.

Do we really want to go into creating castes of DDs ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 10:25:13AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
  Sven == Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 Sven [...] It is acceptable, for security reasons, that not every
 Sven Debian Developper has access to some of these ressources,
 Sven but if he request such an access, he should obtain it in a
 Sven timely fashion (no less than two weeks).
 
 Did you, perhaps, mean to say no *more* than two weeks?.
 
 Or maybe I just misread it, sorry if I did.

Yes, no more than two weeks, 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 01:13:55AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 06:20:33PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  I don't recognize the suspension as valid,
 
 Too bad, since apparently everyone else does (or at least if they don't,
 they aren't saying so)

Well, the DAMs set up a procedure, and they didn't follow it, they made
the expulsion procedure a lynch mob, where the one side who won was the
one able to tell the worse things about the other, independent of it
being right or not. They hide the facts, in order to not make people
notice that it was something done as a mafioso manipulation of the DPL
election, since frans and co didn't want me to participate, and at least
Joerg had a private axe to grind with Anthony Towns.

 [...]
  We all joined Debian thinking each DD is equal in right and duties,
 
 No, that's not true. You apparently did, but I sure as hell didn't.
 Please don't speak for anyone save yourself.

Yeah, you also believe that it is ok for debian to be unfair, and that i
should be removed just because the other side in this is so vital that
you fear that they will stop working on debian if they don't get their
way.

You told me you won't even try to mediate, because you knew frans would
not hear you or anyone.

Well, i believed that debian should be fair, and i believed that all DDs
are equal, and that if you wanted to participate on something you could,
and i believe many many other DDs believed such, and this is the cause
of the huge level of frustration that has been around lately.

So, i guess that if you are right, then i have been lied to. Who will
give me back my lost time Debian has vampirized out of me after it has
lured me with false promises ?

 (now people can go ahead and flame me again for feeding the troll as
 they did last time, but I don't think it's good to leave inaccuracies
 like these standing)

Yeah, it is astunding how much time and energy people can invest in
this, while a bit of good will and a tenth of the time should have
solved this a year ago,

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

By this resolution, the Debian Project resolves that :

= START OF THE GR text =
  - No part of the Debian Infrastructure, is the sole province of a few select
Debian Developpers, but is under the responsability and ownership of the
project as a whole, and thus of each individual Debian Developper.

  - The Debian Instrastructure, includes, but is not limited to, the different
Debian owned machines, the autobuilders, the archive, the mailing lists,
the different source repositories, hosted at alioth or somewhere else, the
core debian related projects at alioth or elsewhere, the mailing lists,
the irc channels, the different teams, ...

  - As thus, no Debian Developper can be negated access of a ressource of the
Debian Infrastructure. It is acceptable, for security reasons, that not
every Debian Developper has access to some of these ressources, but if he
request such an access, he should obtain it in a timely fashion (no less
than two weeks).
=  END OF THE GR text  =

Sven Luther
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGWaOn2WTeT3CRQaQRAnZxAJ48JPNCC0OJLjtJ857OW1V4rfDU6ACdHfF4
xzjuLRVzUnlIT0+3HXG5Mtc=
=od5T
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 05:57:54PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 Hi Sven
 
 As you are suspended for one year, your proposal is not valid according to [1]
 as your key is not in the keyring.

I don't recognize the suspension as valid, and furthermore, if enough DD
second the GR it is valid.

 Please stop pestering us with this childish behaviour. It's not because you
 make you very difficult to work with and as a result loose some priviliges
 that every DD should have access to the whole Debian infrastructure...

Every DD that wants to work on a given area of debian should be allowed
to do so, why should some be more privileged than others ? We all joined
Debian thinking each DD is equal in right and duties, and that we would
not hide problems, and then we face repeated case of a few select people
having power, and manipulating things in the darkness.

Just look at the arm buildd mess, or any of the numerous case of
power-play over this last year.

Sven LUther


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Re: GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 06:40:31PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 Sven Luther wrote:
  On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 05:57:54PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
  Hi Sven
 
  As you are suspended for one year, your proposal is not valid according to 
  [1]
  as your key is not in the keyring.
  
  I don't recognize the suspension as valid, and furthermore, if enough DD
  second the GR it is valid.
 
 No, it's not as you could have read in the reference I pointed you to.

Ok, if you want to go legalese, then the DAMs did not follow their own
procedure, and acted against the expressed wish of the project, as thus,
the removal of my key from the keyring is not warranted, and the act of
only 2 people, one of which spoke to me the day after they sent the
expulsion procedure to me, and chose not to speak with me about this.

The suspension is invalid, and the result of corruption and shady
dealings, so, since the system you speak of is corrupt in the first
place, then it cannot deny me to make a GR.

  Please stop pestering us with this childish behaviour. It's not because you
  make you very difficult to work with and as a result loose some priviliges
  that every DD should have access to the whole Debian infrastructure...
  
  Every DD that wants to work on a given area of debian should be allowed
  to do so, why should some be more privileged than others ? We all joined
  Debian thinking each DD is equal in right and duties, and that we would
  not hide problems, and then we face repeated case of a few select people
  having power, and manipulating things in the darkness.
 
 You don't need alioth access to be able to work on it.

No, but there is no reason i should not have acess. I was admin of it,
and the one who created it in the first place.

  Just look at the arm buildd mess, or any of the numerous case of
  power-play over this last year.
 
 The arm buildd mess you probably are referring to was not caused by
 power-play, but by bad communication in two directions.

Ah, right ? And in your revisionist world, how do you justify that
Aurelien Jarno's right to upload packages was removed ?

Saddened,

Sven Luther



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Re: GR PROPOSAL : The Debian Infrastructure is owned by the whole Debian project, and not a few select individuals.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 10:04:19PM +0200, Bart Martens wrote:
 On Sun, 2007-05-27 at 17:30 +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  By this resolution, the Debian Project resolves that :
  
  = START OF THE GR text =
- No part of the Debian Infrastructure, is the sole province of a few 
  select
  Debian Developpers, but is under the responsability and ownership of the
  project as a whole, and thus of each individual Debian Developper.
  
- The Debian Instrastructure, includes, but is not limited to, the 
  different
  Debian owned machines, the autobuilders, the archive, the mailing lists,
  the different source repositories, hosted at alioth or somewhere else, 
  the
  core debian related projects at alioth or elsewhere, the mailing lists,
  the irc channels, the different teams, ...
  
- As thus, no Debian Developper can be negated access of a ressource of 
  the
  Debian Infrastructure. It is acceptable, for security reasons, that not
  every Debian Developper has access to some of these ressources, but if 
  he
  request such an access, he should obtain it in a timely fashion (no less
  than two weeks).
  =  END OF THE GR text  =
 
 I don't support this GR proposal because I want it to remain possible to
 deny DD's access to some parts of Debian.

Why ? And who will chose what parts of Debian, and who get access or not ? 

If there really are critical parts, then they should be especially
named, and a procedure set in place to determine who gets access to it
or not, in order to avoid the situation we have since a few year, where
a handful of DDs have the infrastructure as hostage, and make everything
they want with it, not even speaking about my own case where it was used
as a weapon in a private vendetta.

Even past DPLs where not able to break this power-grab, which is why i
candidated as DPL, and why people decided to resort to mafioso politics
to stop me.

Debian needs more transparency and honour, 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 10:42:13AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:51:23PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  It is amazing to what step people can resort just to silence the voice
  of their own concience and don't be reminded of their shame.
 
 There is no shame here. There is only annoyance.

There is shame, there is shame, because you support the side who did not
which the solution solved, you support the side who did make sure the
annoyance would not get away, there is shame, because i asked you to
help solving this, and you declined, because the you said the other
party would not hear you.

There is shame, because of the way the DAMs handled this, without
following their own guidelines, without enough transparency in the
proceeding.

There is shame, because, you, as did the two last DPLs and the DAMs,
have recognized that Debian has acted unfairly toward me. You all claim
the current situation was inevitable, but was another solution even
tried ? 

There is shame, because i proposed to have an in-real-life meeting at
FOSDEM, and it was rejected, and Frans passed beside me without
returning my greeting, and Holger was insulting to me, and Geert
attacked me for organizing a TV set for the FOSDEM booth.

There is shame, because Debian let people try to expulse me because i
candidated as DPL, and the DAMs turned the request in such a way as this
would not be apparent.

There is shame, because nobody recognize the hurt and suffering this has
caused to me, because undertending this behaviour is the idea of
considering fellow DDs as machines which can be exploited and thrown
away at the minor inconvenience.

There is shame, and i question your honour and human decency for not
recognizing it, i am sure i don't understand how you can look yourself
in a mirror after the mail you posted.

But then, i am not surprised anymore, and if you all want me to go away,
i will certainly never again lose my time and work to be vampirized by
debian, but i will always continue to making my voice heard to remember
your concience of your shame.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 09:15:34PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 07:36:57PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 10:42:13AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
   On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:51:23PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
It is amazing to what step people can resort just to silence the voice
of their own concience and don't be reminded of their shame.
   
   There is no shame here. There is only annoyance.
  
  There is shame, there is shame, because you support the side who did not
  which the solution solved, you support the side who did make sure the
  annoyance would not get away, there is shame, because i asked you to
  help solving this, and you declined, because the you said the other
  party would not hear you.
 
 Actually, you asked me to mediate. To that I replied that, given the
 fact that Frans has publically stated that he's not interested in
 mediation anymore, I didn't think it'd be a fruitful use of my time to
 attempt a mediation.

Notice that Frans has said he was not interested in thinking about me.
This did not stop him from being the motor of the renewed expulsion
request.

 That doesn't mean I don't want to help you anymore.

Oh, and how could that be ? I think your last mail was pretty clear,
that even if the way i was handled was highly unfair, i was to be
sacrificed just becasue frans and a few other with influence chose to
behave like arrogant assholes ? 

  There is shame, because of the way the DAMs handled this, without
  following their own guidelines, without enough transparency in the
  proceeding.
  
  There is shame, because, you, as did the two last DPLs and the DAMs,
  have recognized that Debian has acted unfairly toward me. You all claim
  the current situation was inevitable, but was another solution even
  tried ? 
 [...]
 
 No, that's not true. What is true is that you think people *should* be
 ashamed of themselves because of all the reasons you quoted. However,
 the hard and cold fact is that they aren't, and there's nothing you can
 do about that. They're only annoyed; and that, I'm afraid, is entirely
 because of your own doing.

Debian should be ashamed because it has no way of handling social
conflicts except siding with one party and trying to silence the other,
*AND* because it is absolutely not interested in making things change.

 I feel there won't be anything which you will accept as a resolution
 unless and until you realise this hard truth:

You would be surprised by what i would accept as a resolution, care to
try ? 

 There is a difference between how you percieve things to be (I'm being
 treated unfairly) and how other people percieve things to be (Sven is
 an annoying brat); and if you want those other people to listen to you
 and to change their attitude towards you, their opinion matters more

Ah, yes, right ? Like i did after Fabio decided to mediate, and suddenly
i was to be banned from the lists without provocation ? Like i was
during january/february, and suddenly Frans and a few others decided to
come again after me and try to expulse me ? Like i did when i tried to
write the wiki page, which was constructive and positive, and was told
to Fuck off ? 

 than your own. That doesn't mean they're always right, or that you
 should ignore your own opinion; but you should consider theirs more than
 your own if you want them to change.

I think they have expressed themselves enough when asked about their
opinion by the DAMs, opinion they plainly ignored to go with their
already decided way, which was to get me out of the way, so that frans
and co would continue to do good work and make sure to get etch
released. Reread those, they where 70:7 people strongly against the
expulsion. Not counting all those who mentioned afterward that they
considered the DAMs decision as plainly stupid ? 

 I'm sorry, but I do think that this is the situation.

Sure, so easy.

I will tell you something else. I cared for debian, i gave inumbrable
hours of my time, made sacrifices for it. Nobody denies that i achieved
great things, and that the teams in which i took a leadership role
achieved great things.

Sure, i react badly to agression, and i think nobody denies that what
was done to me since over a year can be considered as agression. Sure, i
was under a very bad personal stress, but i challenge you to go out look
at the archive and count the number of times where i tried to get this
issue solved. I also challenge you to find a single case where this
issue was fairly addressed. 

So, if debian had wanted, this issue could have been solved over a year
ago, and we would all be coding hapilly ever after.

This is the shame of debian, that it chose to let the issue get out of
hand, instead of trying to solve it, and it is a shame shared by every
DD and associated. I share it too, because i know i have misbehaved, but
at least i made an effort to help solve it, many efforts even, probably
more than what you or any other would

Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 12:05:39AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 Clint Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 02:07:36PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 
  If you're out to improve the world and get it rid of all social
  unfairnesses, I suggest you find yourself another project.
 
  Now there's a shitty thing to say.
 
 Anything else would be simply inaccurate.
 
 What do you expect?  Do you tell people that breaking up with their
 partners is a shitty thing to do?  Lots of breakups are unfair.  They
 happen anyway.  Some of them come complete with the horrified and offended
 ex who can't understand why the relationship fell apart and who can't
 believe how horribly unfair the breakup was, and keeps hanging around,
 convinced that one day you'll realize just how badly you treated them and
 then everything will be wonderful again.  Often they're wonderfully decent
 human beings -- after all, that's why the relationship started in the
 first place.  Those are sometimes the ones that make you feel like crap.
 You still don't get back together, and if you do, it's inevitably a
 horrible mistake.
 
 It was a failure of social interaction.  Last time I checked, we're still
 humans, with all the associated baggage and standard problems.  If you

Yes, we are all humans, except me, right ? 

 spend the rest of time revisiting decisions over and over.  At some point,
 you have to say enough is enough, walk away from the mess, and move on.
 Poking at it forever doesn't make it better.

So, why was the expulsion process restarted against me in february,
while i was trying to walk away from the mess and move on ? In february,
what could be reproached to me.

The problem is that we are all humans, but there are differences in
human behaviour, you can recognize your errors, and try to make amends,
and search a resolution, or you can behave badly, refuse any kind of
compromise apart full victory, and go at the other's throat until you
kill him.

Debian has decided to support the second behaviour here, and Debian not
being an amorphous thing with his own mind, debian is each and all
individual DDs, and this mean, that *YOU* have decided to support this
behaviour, and i was the victim sacrificed, and left bleeding on the
road side, because the other side could not accept anything but full
bloody victory.

You may see this as normal, but it will hurt debian in the long run far
far more than everything i have or could have done, and it is indeed a
shitty thing to let happen, which is why everyone prefers me silenced
rather than pointing the finger to what happened, and showing them their
guilt in this.

You don't like the messenge, so you shoot the messenger, right ?

Well, i believed better of humanity, i believed better of my fellow DDs,
i guess this is all my fault in believing in goodness rather than evil.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 10:48:45AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Fri, 18 May 2007 00:05:39 -0700, Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
  What do you expect?  Do you tell people that breaking up with their
  partners is a shitty thing to do?  Lots of breakups are unfair.  They
  happen anyway.  Some of them come complete with the horrified and
  offended ex who can't understand why the relationship fell apart and
  who can't believe how horribly unfair the breakup was, and keeps
  hanging around, convinced that one day you'll realize just how badly
  you treated them and then everything will be wonderful again.  Often
  they're wonderfully decent human beings -- after all, that's why the
  relationship started in the first place.  Those are sometimes the ones
  that make you feel like crap.  You still don't get back together, and
  if you do, it's inevitably a horrible mistake.
 
 While all this is quite true, I don't think that it applies in
  this case: I don't see that the issue was handled unfairly.  The only
  unfair thing seems to be that the year long suspension did not come
  with a corresponding ban on the non technical mailing lists.

Naturally, you being on the winning side of it, it can only be fair,
right ? And the fact that many have compared your list behaviour with
mine, but nobody ever inquieted you, has nothing to do with it.

Notice that one can map the starting of the problems involving me,
exactly to the time you started showing interest again in the kernel
team, and that you, jonas where as present in the flamewar of that time
as me.

  It was a failure of social interaction. 
 
 I think that is being far too unspecific. It was disruptive
  behaviour by a single individual, who managed  to get into a series of
  off putting, time wasting, irrelevant juvenile spats with a veritable
  who's who of people who are more than casually and peripherally
  involved in Debian, and action was taken to minimize the disruption.

Right, and you yourself, or frans, or others, have absolutely no fault
in what happened ? 

 This scores long off topic thread (which, in my official role,
  I do have to monitor) seems proof enough to me that the situation has
  not changed appreciably.

Indeed, the situation has not changed, despite my numerous appeals for
a reasonable fair and just solution on this. I proposed that we held an
in-person meeting at FOSDEM, so we could solve this in a RL fashion, but
nobody was interested, and prefered to relaunch the hostilities in
restarting the ban.

 In the meanwhile, if this is not about an item that we are
  planning to hold a vote on, can we move this thread to some other
  mailing list, where I can safely killfile it?

This will come to a vote, don't worry.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 01:23:50PM +1000, Brian May wrote:
  Sven == Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 Sven It is easy enough, that the powers-in-debian stop to try to
 Sven punish me for it, an,d that a real and fair mediation
 Sven happens, and that the other party honestly tries to forget
 Sven the past grudges.
 
 Unfortunately I don't think a fair resolution will happen. As unfair
 as this might be.

Why not ? I would like an answer to his from every DD who posted here,
not speaking in some generic way, but explaining why they believe that
themselves should be unfair to me. Already Wouter has explained why he
believed it was more important to satisfy the other party and be unfair
to me, but most everyone else hides behind an anonymous 'it', as you do.

The fact remains, that i have made every effort to get this issue
resolved, that i have proposed RL encounters, and everything, which
where always rejected by the other party.

So, if the debian project aknowledges that it has handled me unfairly,
apologizes for the harrasment i have been under since over a year, and
publicly says that the other party in this was not even interested in
making the least minimal effort, this would satisfy me.

Debian owes me this, each and every DD owes me this, and more
importantly each DD owes this to Debian and their own concience.

 Sven How do you expect me to forget the old grudges, when each
 Sven time i tried to forget them, they where forced down my
 Sven throat with more extreme agression ? First after christmas
 Sven with an unwarranted demand of a list ban, then in end of
 Sven february with a renewed expulsion request.
 
 Some people might see this as justification for banning you from the
 mailing lists. If you weren't subscribed to the mailing lists, people
 might stop publicly trying to provoke you.

Don't hide behind 'some people', this unpersonification of it, is
nothing but hiding behind your responsability.

Either some people think i should be banned from the lists, and they act
on this openly and honestly, but these dealings in the darkness, with
mystery and manipulation is undign of debian, and hurts debian far more
than anaything i could have done.

Face it, most people would have prefered to blissedly ignore all this,
and there are only a few people, a couple handful out of thousand of DDs
who are out to punish me. In this, the DAMs have acted to protect their
cabal, the little subgroup of people in power who could not be satisfied
by anything but total vengeance.

Debian doesn't need this, and this kind of behaviour is the cause of all
the problems debian has been facing.

As such, it is my duty, as it is the duty of all honorable DDs to fight
against such, and failing so, to claim it widely so that such execrable
behaviour doesn't get un-punished.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 11:51:28PM -0400, Clint Adams wrote:
 On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 02:07:36PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
  If you're out to improve the world and get it rid of all social
  unfairnesses, I suggest you find yourself another project.
 
 Now there's a shitty thing to say.

Welcome to Debian, and the way those in power would like it to be. And
then you wonder i am having such a problem since over a year now.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 02:07:36PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:19:29AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
  I am glad never to have worked full-time in such a workplace and would
  like to remind the project that another world is possible.
 
 Debian isn't out to rid the world of social unfairness; instead, Debian

Wouter, in this case, there is no amorphous Debian, but the individual
DDs. 

By saying that you don't want debian to be fair, you mean it is
acceptable, that you, Wouter, are unfair to your fellow DD.

 is out to provide a Free Operating system. If social conflicts get in
 the way of that goal, it's not unreasonable to remove the person who
 seems to be involved in many of those conflicts -- whether or not that
 person is the cause of those conflicts.

The end justifies the mean. This was indeed the discourse Christian
Perrier held to me at Solution Linux Paris by end of january.

The problem is that such a behaviour will hurt the project worse in the
long run.

 If you're out to improve the world and get it rid of all social
 unfairnesses, I suggest you find yourself another project.
 
  Instead of lusting after such hard-and-heavy rulings, which almost
  never happen in volunteer projects, we must try to find practical
  solutions.
 
 In this case, I think the most practical solution is what's being done,
 even if I agree that it's not totally fair to Sven.

If the Debian project where to publicly claim that it has behaved
unfairly to me, would commend me for the efforts of conciliation i have
made, and clearly state that the other party did not even make any
effort at conciliation, then i guess things will be different.

In this case though, the only way for Debian to still expulse me, is to
do as the DAMs have done, and then collect the most damaging and hurting
email snipplets they could find, without caring of their trueness or
not, and use that to give themselves and debian a good concience.

So, if i really have to go because frans and a few others are egoist
bastards who cannot be happy coding if i am not destroyed in the worse
possible way, well, why not, but say this publicly, and don't add
hypocicy to unfairness.

But this is not how i saw debian, and i bet you that most other DDs also
will not recognize themselves in this debian you are constructing, and i
will remind this to you if you present yourself as DPL next year.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 10:04:18AM +0300, Kalle Kivimaa wrote:
 Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  The expulsion procedure calls for such statements to be sent to both the
  DAMs and to -private.  So it's reasonable to discount mails from developers
  who didn't follow directions, isn't it?
 
 Yes. OTOH the procedure also calls for such statements to contain
 (new) reasoning for or against the expulsion. I didn't have anything
 new to add to the reasonings (either for or against) so, as per the
 procedure, I didn't send a me too! email. So, counting the
 statements on -private only tells us that X developers were for it
 and Y against. We cannot say that X/(X+Y) of all developers were for
 and Y/(X+Y) against.

Which is why the procedure is defective, and which is why i don't
consider it as anything else than the decision of two persons, who
drafted a procedure to justify themselves.

Let's reform this procedure, so the decision can only be taken by a full
(semi-private) GR-like vote, so as to remove any trace of subjectivity
and possible accusation of manipulation, or behind the scene shady
dealings.

In particular this procedure is the equivalent of a verbal lynch mob,
where the party who is able to say the more agressive and insulting
thing about the expulsee is the one who wins, independently of these
things being true, misguided, or pure manipulations and lies.

Furthermore, any expulsion request should be preceded by a true
mediation effort, and the fact that this current event has gone so far
is proof of the failure of debian and the deficiency of the procedure.
And the circumstances of it, the length of it, the full one-sidedness of
all the powerful who where involved in it, the hints of blackmail by the
d-i team, are what makes this case most probably the most shameful thing
which ever happened in debian.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 03:20:31PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
 
 [Sven Luther]
  So, you are wrong, this is not about me, it is about debian, about its
  fundamental unability to handle social conflicts, about some DDs who
  sadly have achieved a situation of power, knowing no other way to handle
  critics without hurting the other side as much as they can.
 
 If this is really not about you, then please, please, keep it that way.
 
 Let me propose something: You, Sven Luther, may continue to talk about
 what is wrong with Debian's handling of social situations ... but you
 will stop using yourself as an example.  Do not even _mention_
 yourself, nor your conflicts with d-i and d-kernel, nor the mediation
 attempts, nor your suspension.

Well, this would work, if the punishment i was under, where not so
personal. 

  - i am barred from committing to the d-i svn repo, and trying to work
through the BTS, led to frustration as frans did go on vacation, not
applying the patches, and then blaming me for lost patches.

  - i later got banned from uploading .udeb packages, even though the
right to do so was explicitly included in the original mediation
from Anthony Towns, and the package in question was my own package.

  - i later got banned from the list for two months, without apparent
reason.

  - then i got suspended for a year.

If this is not personal, what is it ? 

For your information, if i had not been suspended, and the expulsion
request got dismissed, i would have taken a vacation from debian, and
maybe worked in an inpersonal manner to do some changes about what i
felt was working badly in debian. Already after the Jonathan/Ted
expulsion i wanted to reform the expulsion procedure, so it is more
fair, and will not leave any occasion of accusation of one-sidedness.

I told this to Ganneff, and could they let me be ? No, i was punished
unfairly instead.

 If you have a point to make, surely you can make it using other
 examples.  One case study does not make a pattern.  If you think Debian
 has a systemic problem, it should be easy to find other evidence.  (Or
 indeed, if you cannot find evidence that does not involve you
 personally, you would do well to ask yourself why not.)

Other evidence, let's look at mrvn's or ij's DDship for example ?

 My proposal isn't arbitrary: I have two reasons for it.  First, we have
 already heard your story many, many times; I find it extremely unlikely
 that you have anything to add to it that we haven't already heard.

Sure, i have repeated it many times, but on the other time, each time i
was trusting, and tried to behave, and didn't repeat me, i got punished
more for it, so this shows me that doing what you propose will serve
nothing, and that issues as grave as this one, will only come to the
attention if your stire the issue and insist on it heavily.

Sad, isn't it, but look back all this last year, and tell me how i could
reach a different conclusion.

 Second, because of the long history of your case, nobody can be
 impartial about it, least of all you.

This is where you are wrong, i know perfectly what i have done wrong,
and i apologized for it, and tried to better myself. Experience showed
me that such is ignored and counter productive. I also have the will to
solve this issue, and am ready to make concession, all i ask is for a
honest attempt to fairly solve this issue, even if the other side is
fully unwilling and, like Joey Hess did, make some menaces of stopping
all work on d-i if the decision does not go their way.

Saddened,

Sven Luther



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Re: A question to the Debian community...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 09:18:00PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
 On Thursday 10 May 2007, Sven Luther wrote:
  The procedure calls for the number of supporters being reached in 15
  days between the original call or the procedure to be dismissed. The
  original expulsion procedure started by Anthony Towns, was done on
  January 2 or so, and should have been dismissed on January 16 or so,
  because it didn't reach enough supporters.
 
  A third expulsion procedure should have been started on February 21 or
  whatever it was, probably by Frans Pop or whoever retriggered the
  expulsion procedure back then after i presented myself as DPL
  candidate, and the DAMs should not have included the expulsion supports
  of the original request of Andres Salomon, nor those of Anthony Towns,
  and should have provided the full signed mails as evidence, and not
  remove the dates, and refuse to communicate them despite many demands
  for it, both by myself, and uninvolved bystanders.
 
 Complete nonsense. And this was explained in the mail from the DAMs on 
 d-private [1] that announced the decision. The procedure was put _on hold_ 
 from Jan 3 to Feb 7 after a telephone conversation from Ganneff to Sven, 
 partially in view of the self-imposed ban from the mailing lists.
 There was never anything like a third procedure and it certainly was 
 not started by me. 

Ok, Frans, this is a perfect occasion for you to give some explanation:

On February 7, someone, probably you, since you where cited by others
has having encouraged them to support the expulsion, retriggered the
expulsion procedure.

At that time, i was following my ban from the lists, and there could be
nothing to reproach to me, except of my decision to candidate as DPL,
which happened the day before this fatidic date.

Can you explain to me the reason for which this expulsion request was
restarted on february 7, i would be very very interested about it,
especially given Anthony Towns mail stating his surprise about why the
action was retrigered.

Furthermore, around newyear, you took the resolution to ignore anything
concerning me, and yet, you chose to ignore this, and actively pursue
the expulsion request, and recruit supporters for it.

How can you justify this, as a response to :

  An last a personal message to Frans, remember when we where in
  Extremadura, we had a good time, and we worked side by side. I
  seriously lament that it all degenerated like it did. I certainly have
  my part of responsability in this, but i passed though times, as you
  know. Let's put pride and arrogance and remembrance of past hurts
  aside, and let's again work on d-i all together, as it should be.

and :

  Sven Luther proposed a face-to-face meeting between him, Frans Pop and
  others involved in this issue, as well as outsiders who are interested
  in helping get this resolved smoothly, during FOSDEM 2007, which is
  over, and that both parties stop the hostilities until then.

I remember you, that at FOSDEM, you passed beside me, looking the other
way and not returning my greeting, that Holger, when i asked him how my
presentation was, and if i had managed to not be controversial about the
issue opposing us, told me that Debian would be better without me, and
that James Troup, on the day after the email about the expulsion
procedure was sent to me and got lost in the new debian greylisting,
didn't mention it in any way.

Frans, since the begining, you have never ever attempted to solve the
problem, you have never recognized that you may have some part of fault
in what happened, and you have often used your technical power to
further punish me, just becasue you where unwilling to try to solve the
issue.

 As someone who threatens others with court action for lying [2], I suggest 
 that you yourself start being a lot more careful about making false or 
 unsubstantiated claims and accusations.

Again, you are deforming what happened, in a (maybe not so) subtle
tentative to manipulate the opinion.

I have never told Holger that he lied, i have said that him saying that
i was lying, without giving proof of it, is called diffamation, and that
this is something punishable by RL law in many juridictions.

I have never lied in this matter, i may have been mistaked some times,
but honestly mistaken, and have apologized when shown my errors, which
is more than what you were able to do.

Yet, what i am faced here is a disgusting campaign of diffamation of the
worse sort, and especially Holger, has no lesson to give to me, in the
way he behaved in this matter.

So, i stand by it, Holger, and others like you, have gone onto a year
long camapign of maniuplation and diffamation over this year and more,
in which i fell and played into your hand, i agree, but what you have
done is something punisheable in real life courts.

 Disgusted and unfriendly,

I guess you can be disgusted each time you look at yourself in a mirror
and think about what you have done, unless your pride

Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 10:29:24AM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
 * Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] [070511 07:47]:
  Sometimes, a problem needs to magnified to the extreme, so that people
  finally feel embarassed that they where unable to solve it years ago.
 
 If you magnify the wrong part, you might magnify a little problem that
 would be no problem at all without the big problem you want to resolve.
 Which might cause people to think the little problem needs fixing while
 the big problem would have been no problem without the little one.

Possibly, but can you point out the little problem here ? I guess we
have two problems :

  - the original problem between frans and me.

  - the 'email flood' problem.

so, i suppose your mail hints at the 'email flood' problem being the
biggest one, because it is hard to ignore, and the original problem
being only a minor issue, because it can be ignored by most, and could
be forgotten if i chose to be silent about it.

Does this summarize your point ? And if so, can you point to the
consequences of both these problems ? 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:41:56AM +0200, Martin Wuertele wrote:
 Hi Sven!
 
 * Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-05-11 10:38]:
 
  Possibly, but can you point out the little problem here ? I guess we
  have two problems :
  
- the original problem between frans and me.
  
- the 'email flood' problem.
 
 Currently I only see one problem: you.

Exact, which is why we are still having this problem, and why the only
response debian had to this messy social problem was to punish me, in
order to hope to silence me.

What about addressing the real problem and fixing the underlying issue
instead ? 

 Martin, annoyed by you turning every thread on every debian list into a
 svenl-was-treated-so-bad-one

Oh, so i suppose from the above that debian has had only a single thread
on their mailing lists these couple of past weeks/months ?

Reality check please, i did post 2 posts in this thread on april 28/29,
and then nothing happened until a few days ago. Then suddenly people
noticed, and i started receiving agressive mails both in private and
here, of people asking me to shut up, and other such.

So, who is the problem here, is it me, or people like you who post angry
mail and have no intention of helping solving the problem.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:18:33PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:10:14AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
  Because I would seek one that mandates listmasters banning Sven Luther
  from all lists, and DAMs expelling for ban-evasion.  I realise that
  there is a way for it to continue after that, but hopefully it wouldn't.
 
 Did you (or somebody else) ask the listmasters to have Sven banned from
 the lists he disturbs?

The list master have been asked to censor me on the debian lists
already. I suppose their decision was to not do it, but they did ask me
to stay absent from the lists, which i mostly did these past weeks,
until two posts i made two weeks ago or so retrigered this matter.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: Question for Sven Luther Gay Nigger Association of America (Was: A question to the Debian community ...)

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:18:51AM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
 Sven,
 
 Are you member or associated with GNAA ? Because you are acting and
 trolling like you were.

So if so, i suppose this post proves your own GNAA membership, no ? Or
did you have something positive to contribute to this topic ?

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 08:00:56PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:50:28AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:41:56AM +0200, Martin Wuertele wrote:
   Martin, annoyed by you turning every thread on every debian list into a
   svenl-was-treated-so-bad-one
  
  Oh, so i suppose from the above that debian has had only a single thread
  on their mailing lists these couple of past weeks/months ?
 
 It seems that way. At least, every thread on debian-vote and
 debian-project eventually evolves in to Sven's gripes with the world.

every thread ? I have mostly not posted since the end of marsch or so,
and really restarted participating in this thread yesterday.

Do you really want to make us believe that this is the only thread which
was discussed, to backup your claim about *EVERY THREAD* ?

It sure may seem so to you, but what about basing your reasoning on
actual facts for a change ? 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:03:48AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Holger Levsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Thursday 10 May 2007 10:15, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
   The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
   is irrelevant.
  
  It's also wrong.
 
 So what is the count that DAMs received?  I mean, if one says that's wrong,
 then one should know what is right in order to say that.

I use the 70:7 statistic, after having counted the actual mails to
-private, leaving out the dubious ones, in order to be fair to the other
side.

But Holger doesn't have anything valide to say, so he resort to FUD and
diffamation, if not plain agression, has he has done so often during
these events.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:14:59AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Do you recognize that reinstating Sven's access would not be a resolution,
  since he has a long list of other grievances he likes to air publically, and
  that no resolution to the present problem would be satisfactory to Sven
  other than his reinstatement?
 
 I think some reinstatement is a vital part of any resolution.  I think that
 d-i core access reinstatement is unworkable, even though I think its removal
 was very badly done.  I'm not sure whether Sven is unsatisfiable: Sven, what
 within the boundaries above would satisfy you?

I have said so uncountable times already. But i will repeat this for you
here.

I am open to any resolution of this issue which is both fair and just. I
guess everyone recognize, at least in private, that the current handling
of the situation, was neither fair, nor effective, and that the only
messures where ever increasing attempts to punish me in order to tame
me, while giving full reason to the other party.

I believe that any solution to such an issue, will recognize the faults
of both sides equally, and distribute the punishement in an equal way
also, or preferably, not actually deal any punishement but try to find a
workeable consensus.

I have asked for this since over a year now, both in private
conversation with Anthony, and others, who insisted to held such
negotiation non-publicly. I have not seen this happen though, and i defy
anyone to actually honestly come up and say this is the case.

I understand that the other party in this dispute are on the victorious
side, and are unwilling to make any concession, and apparently are
menacing to cease all debian involvement if things don't go their way,
as Joey Hess did on the wiki pages.

This is not an acceptable situation to me, and if the other party of
this dispute is unable to do the decent thing, at least the debian
project as a whole should not silently approve to their behaviour like
it has done for over a year now, but give them a public blame for making
no effort to resolve the issue.

I also expect them to stop the constant agressions i have suffered from
them this last year, especially the totally unprovoked ones, like the
expulsion request re-activation at the start of february, which was
totally unwarranted. And i want that people like Holger stop their
diffamations and manipulations, and in general behaving like lying
bastards. Especially as they supported the expulsion request accusing me
of exactly the same things they are doing themselves.

I don't care about d-i access, if it comes to that, i will fork the d-i
parts i need, and so be it, the d-i team and debian as a whole will be
the looser for that, but there is nothing i can do about it. It has been
(from memory) over 6 months since i last asked for d-i commit access
restoration, maybe more by now. But i also want a possible fork of d-i
or other infrastructure to be considered fairly for a possible
replacement of the stuff of the other camp.

Does this sound so outlandish ? Is not everything i ask only what every
DD could expect in full fairness ? And could anyone object to it yet
regain their own good concience ?

  Does this mean that you will be submitting a GR to have Sven banned from the
  mailing lists?
 
 Yes.

Oh well, and if this does not succeed in silencing me, will you also
resort to hiring goons to punish me physically, or eliminate me ? What
is the next step ?

It is amazing to what step people can resort just to silence the voice
of their own concience and don't be reminded of their shame.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:33:38PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:32:15PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:18:33PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
   On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:10:14AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
Because I would seek one that mandates listmasters banning Sven Luther
from all lists, and DAMs expelling for ban-evasion.  I realise that
there is a way for it to continue after that, but hopefully it wouldn't.
   
   Did you (or somebody else) ask the listmasters to have Sven banned from
   the lists he disturbs?
  
  The list master have been asked to censor me on the debian lists
  already. I suppose their decision was to not do it, but they did ask me
  to stay absent from the lists, which i mostly did these past weeks,
  until two posts i made two weeks ago or so retrigered this matter.
 
 So in other words you violated their request?

I was not banned, as i was in january/february, so i have a right to
actually do a couple of posts.

No, i did not violate any kind of request, as there was no request, but
an informal suggestion, and i did not hear anything anymore about the
issue. This was in middle to late marsch.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:34:47PM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
 On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:29:56PM +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 wrote:
  On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 11:03:48AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
   Holger Levsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Thursday 10 May 2007 10:15, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
 The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 
 statistic
 is irrelevant.

It's also wrong.
   
   So what is the count that DAMs received?  I mean, if one says that's 
   wrong,
   then one should know what is right in order to say that.
  
  I use the 70:7 statistic, after having counted the actual mails to
  -private, leaving out the dubious ones, in order to be fair to the other
  side.
 
 Considering DAMs expressed explicitely that opinions should be sent
 directly to them, how can you consider mails to -private as a metric ?

I know only what i can measure.

The DAMs in this matter acted as a nebulous dark spot. They have not
provided any evidence supporting the procedure of the expulsion, they
have not provided the signed mails of supporters, they have not provided
the dates of the supporter mails. When they finally reached their
decision, they have only assembled a list of hateful things people said
against me, without even bothering to check what part of it was truth
and which was lies and plain diffamation. We cannot even check on it,
because they obscured the provenance of those mails.

Furthermore, i personnally meet James Troup sunday afternoon on FOSDEM,
and even exchanged a few words with him, a day after the expulsion
procedure notification was sent to me, and he said nothing to me, not
even, have you received the mail in question.

The whole expulsion procedure is sick, bad, even evil, as it currently
stands, the DAMs are fully unqualified to judge on such a matter, and
don't measure the gravity of what was happening, and this whole
procedure and its resolution are more akin to a verbal lynch-mob than
any semblance of justice.

So, in a 70:7 way, people on d-p where strongly or very strongly opposed
to the expulsion, yet most of them where ignored, or only smallly
represented.

If the DAMs have received so many private mails, then let them claim so,
and provide the gpg signed mails to a trusted party for verification,
but in the current state of the procedure and the events, it is nothing
but a set of non-transparent shameful dealing in the darkness, and the
procedure should be reformed.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 01:43:33PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On Friday 11 May 2007 12:03, MJ Ray wrote:
The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
is irrelevant.
   It's also wrong.
  So what is the count that DAMs received?  I mean, if one says that's wrong,
  then one should know what is right in order to say that.
 
 No. To be able to say something is wrong, you dont need to know whats right. 
 Obviously it's good to know whats right, but it's not needed. (And obviously 
 I dont read the DAMs mail.)
 
 Only 7 people having supported the expulsion cannot be true, as the the 
 procedure requires 15 supporters and afaik there were enough.

70:7 (more or less, i think it was more 77:7 or something such), did
express themselves, mostly strongly or very strongly, against the
expulsion, during the public discussion procedure. This is the publicly
expressed opinion of the DDs, as all the rest was hidden in the DAMs
mailbox, who chose not to give a transparent account of it, but did
chose to mangle them in this request.

 Also I wonder where all those supporters of Sven are now. I wouldnt be 
 surprised if by now, more people have killfilled Sven and all messages 
 refering to his messages, than there are supporters of him in Debian. 
 I should probably do the same.

Yeah, you are happy, you won, i was temporarily expulsed, and now you
stand gloating over it. I suppose you are proud of you, but this is a
shame to debian, and this shame is shared between all who let it happen,
and thus lend their silent support to the way you and frans and the
others have behaved.

Holger, your action speak louder than words, i came to you at FOSDEM,
asking you your advice on my FOSDEM kernel presentation, and if i had
managed to be fair about the d-i problematic in it, and you where
arrogant and haugthy, already knowing of the new expulsion request you
had apparently discussed somewhere, while i was abidding by the ban, and
stated debian would be a better place without me. 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:06:04AM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On Thursday 10 May 2007 10:15, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
  The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
  is irrelevant.
 
 It's also wrong.
 
 The evidence: people hardly reply to the claims anymore, and even less 
 (almost 
 no one by now) reply in support.

Holger, you, being the one person i spoke to this about in FOSDEM, while
you knew that the expulsion request was rescheduled, while i did not,
have no place giving lections here, especially as you told me quite
haugthily : Debian would be a better place without you, while i asked
your advice of how i had managed the FOSDEM talk about the kernel in a
non-controversial way, and asked for your opinion, so you would tell me
if my speach was acceptable, and if not, what i should have avoided.

Also, in the past, you have behaved in aggressive and unacceptable ways,
you responded to my solution-searching wiki page with a bunch of
over-agressive borderline insulting stuff, which you retired in shame
soon after, and just look at your mails on this topic on various mailing
lists, which have nothing to envy to what is reproached to me.

And on top of that, you are on the attacking side of this mess, and as
the others of your camp, rejected any attempt at conciliation, prefering
to go for the kill. And never have you nor any of your camp had the
dignity to even care about presenting apologizes, or even recognizing
that you may have a fault in what happened.

Shame on you, such behaviour as you exhibited is what hurts debian, not
mine.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 06:15:37PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
 On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 06:32:41PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 11:45:03PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
   On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 08:21:15AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
Well, i got suspended for a year, because i dared present myself as DPL,
   No, that's simply not true.
   You have delusions of grandeur.
  
 [..]
  The decision was solely taken by the two DAMs, contrary to a 70:7
  majority of opinion of DDs, while one of the points of my DPL plateform
 
 The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
 is irrelevant. The procedure calls for opinions only.

The procedure calls for the number of supporters being reached in 15
days between the original call or the procedure to be dismissed. The
original expulsion procedure started by Anthony Towns, was done on
January 2 or so, and should have been dismissed on January 16 or so,
because it didn't reach enough supporters.

A third expulsion procedure should have been started on February 21 or
whatever it was, probably by Frans Pop or whoever retriggered the
expulsion procedure back then after i presented myself as DPL
candidate, and the DAMs should not have included the expulsion supports
of the original request of Andres Salomon, nor those of Anthony Towns,
and should have provided the full signed mails as evidence, and not
remove the dates, and refuse to communicate them despite many demands
for it, both by myself, and uninvolved bystanders.

The current procedure is of the mafioso-politics kind, and it has been
speculated (not by me), that this may have been a maneuver by the DAMs
in order to further hurt the DPL re-candidature of Anthony Towns, which
himself protested the renewal of the procedure, and didn't understand
why his expulsion request was not dismissed on january 16 as per the
procedure.

If this is like that, i find it extremely sick that anybody in debian
could chose to use me as they did, in order to further they own private
vendetta.

 The individual supporting emails aren't relevant. The DAMs are allowed
 to make a judgement call, which they did. The only appeal would be via GR.

The DAMs have dreamed up a procedure, and when i contested it after
Ted/Jonathan Walters heavy-handed expulsion, i was strongly discouraged
to pursue it. It is interesting to note, that the DAMs where long of the
opinion that they predated the constitution, and where not bound with
it, and this brings us down to the 'cabal' which believes they own
Debian, and can do what they want with it, without any though of human
decensy. This is of the same vein of James Troup telling about various
potential DDs 'me living, he will never be a DD'.

Also, about a GR, i have been suspended, so i lost all power to contest
this decision, do you find this fair ? Especially given all the
unclarities and manipulations and shameful behaviour that happened
during this time ? 

Since the begining this was a mess, and all i wanted was for this social
mess to be solved in a fair way, while the other side, supported by this
by the consent of the powers-that-be could accept nothing but a bloody
victory.

This is why debian is sick, why Debian is unable to solve its social
problems, and why we are having this discussion now.

So, this is an appeal to stop throwing stones at me, but to lock into
ourselves, and decide if we want this kind of behaviour to continue or
if we want to clear the shady dealing of the past, and change debian so
it will be able to deal with social conflicts in a sane and fair way, in
order for everyone to go back to hacking every after. I have made every
possible appertures in this way since over a year now, but i was always
meet with either sympathetic words but without action, or just
tentatives to silence me or punish me more, so you could go back to
happily ignoring the ignominy which was happening, while i suffered.

 Later, Sven wrote:
  So, you too, believe that what was done to me was acceptable, that
  everything is justifiable, so long as your precious mailbox is left
  empty ? And well, the reality is that the expulsion request got
 
 The irony is that the one thing the DAMs *didn't* do is prevent you from
 posting to the mailing lists.

Yeah, right, it was a stupid decision, who was solely aimed at punishing
me more, and satisfying those who could accept nothing but a bloody
victory. Do you want to approve that, or will you revolt over such
behaviour and ask for a fair resolution of this social mess ? 

If you are sick of this recuring mess, please lobby the DPL to apoint a
social committee, who will be neutral and of good faith, and
sufficiently socially skilled to be able to reach a decision, and
sufficiently honourable to resist the tentative of manipulation which
have been happening in this (and probably many other) case. Or if the
DPL wishes not to move on this (he claimed that there are other more
important social problems, and i should

Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:06:04AM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On Thursday 10 May 2007 10:15, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
  The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
  is irrelevant.
 
 It's also wrong.
 
 The evidence: people hardly reply to the claims anymore, and even less 
 (almost 
 no one by now) reply in support.

Holger, ...

If you once again accuse me of lying, i guess i will have to take RL
action against you for diffamation, we will see how you can defend
yourself in a RL court, and what publicity this will bring to Debian.

If you are a man of honour, you will not publicly apologize for those
accusation of lying you have made, which are very grave accusations
indeed. But, i have very little hope that you or anyone of the other
side in this affair will ever be able to do the honourable thing in
these actions.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:02:06PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
 On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:06:04AM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
  Hi,
  
  On Thursday 10 May 2007 10:15, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
   The expulsion procedure doesn't call for a vote, so your 70:7 statistic
   is irrelevant.
  
  It's also wrong.
  
  The evidence: people hardly reply to the claims anymore, and even less 
  (almost 
  no one by now) reply in support.
 
 Holger, ...
 
 If you once again accuse me of lying, i guess i will have to take RL
 action against you for diffamation, we will see how you can defend
 yourself in a RL court, and what publicity this will bring to Debian.
 
 If you are a man of honour, you will not publicly apologize for those

:s/not/now

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 03:01:40AM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
 
 [Sven Luther]
  So, you too, believe that what was done to me was acceptable, that
  everything is justifiable
 
 Stop it, Sven, stop it.  This thread is about Sam Hocevar and GNAA.  It
 is not about Sven Luther.  We have had lots of other threads about Sven
 Luther.  Can you please let us have just _one_ thread that is about
 something else?  If that's not too much to ask.

Notice that the sub-thread was not about me, but about the mafioso
politicks happening in debian lately, of which both my expulsion request
which got retrigered the day after i announced my DPL candidature, and
the tentative of diffamation against Sam over the GNAA issue are two
examples.

It was not me who brang myself again on the main topic, but the various
people who screamed me to shut up, both here and in private, which was
mostly what happened in the threads about me in the last month, which
where *ALWAYS* restarted by some guys while i was behaving and correct,
and always in such a way that it hurt me more and was impossible to
ignore.

Why don't you complain to those guys ? Or maybe, you, like others who
talked to me in private are afraid to ? What was the quote ? i have
some packages which need to pass NEW, so i cannot make waves right now ?

Debian is sick, and its disease was what i wanted to fight as DPL
candidate, and this is why i was scheduled for expulsion. Sam also had
some measures along these lines as DPL candidate, and he is now subject
to the attack of mafioso-like diffamation tactics, and it is not by
trying to shut me up, that these facts will change.

So, you are wrong, this is not about me, it is about debian, about its
fundamental unability to handle social conflicts, about some DDs who
sadly have achieved a situation of power, knowing no other way to handle
critics without hurting the other side as much as they can.

What happened to the let's have fun again ? Or was it meant by
removing all those who you have ever had any kind of argument against in
the past ? 

So, will debian mature and grow up, and recognize that it messed up in
this case, as it probably did in many others as well, and make a
positive effort to solve the social problem, instead of resorting to
punishment of the minority even while those in power exhibited
less-than-perfect behaviour, just so you Peter, and others like you can
have a clean mailbox ? 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 03:47:55PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  The DAMs, who did not follow their own procedure [...]
 
 I contacted Sven Luther directly with an offer to start a GR to rescind
 the decision and optionally do some other stuff.  I've seen no reply.

Huh, i must have missed that one, can you resend it ? 

 The offer stands and now the problem resurfaces, I will do something
 to resolve this one way or the other instead of letting this problem
 (endless mailing list noise) continue.  In the absence of feedback from
 Sven, I'll just make a guess at what's best.

My proposal is the following :

  That this is used as an experiment in how to solve social conflicts in
  debian, in the hope that a fair procedure is set up which will enable
  to avoid such problems in the past.

  We should setup a committe who could be trusted by both parties, and
  trusted to take decision in full clarity and transparency, and with a
  real argumentation they would not be ashamed of to present in public,
  contrary to what happened upto now.

  This committee would then investigate the issue, try to talk with all
  parties involved, and get them to forget their old grudges, and come
  to an agreement on how this could go forward without punishing one
  side and hoping they will go away.

 Any objections, comments or advice?

I welcome such a decision, i am unsure a GR is needed, it was my
opinion, that now that we have a DPL who may be able to take an
impartial decision on the issue, he could nominate such a committee, or
give a self formed committee real delegation power. But i may be wrong
on this, and maybe a GR is the only solution, i am unsure of this.

So, who is interested in finding a fair and human solution to this mess,
a solution which debian would not be ashamed of, and need to hide in the
DAMs mailbox, and at the same time pioneer a mechanism that can be used
in the future to deal with social problems like these ones ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 09:33:13AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  I contacted Sven Luther directly with an offer to start a GR to rescind
  the decision and optionally do some other stuff.  I've seen no reply.
 
  The offer stands and now the problem resurfaces, I will do something
  to resolve this one way or the other instead of letting this problem
  (endless mailing list noise) continue.  In the absence of feedback from
  Sven, I'll just make a guess at what's best.
 
  Any objections, comments or advice?
 
 Why do you believe that a GR would do anything to resolve the endless
 mailing list noise?  I don't see any evidence that it would, regardless of
 the outcome.

What do you believe is causing the noise in question ? And what do you
believe would stop it ? You seem to have some ideas about that, and i
would be very interested in your enlightenment on this.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:08:08PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  What do you believe is causing the noise in question ?
 
 Every time any topic comes up which comes anywhere near anything related
 to your experiences, you bring up your experiences in that thread.  After
 that, various people (usually different each time) respond, you respond to
 every message everyone writes, various people respond to all your
 messages, and we go down the same path again.

The noise is only a symptom of the real problem though. Figthing the
symptom, epecially in the way it was tried this past year will have no
chance to stop the symptom, and as said the clumsy way this was handled
only increased the symptoms.

 I'm not calling this noise to belittle the problems in question.  I don't
 necessarily agree with you, but I understand why you're upset.  I'm
 calling this noise because it doesn't change anything, and because no
 matter how many times we go down this same discussion pattern, it's not
 going to change anything.  It's just emotional venting, of the same
 emotions that have been vented many, many times before.  We've been having
 exactly the same discussion in exactly the same way for something like two
 years now, and no one's mind is at this point going to change.  In fact,
 the more that this comes up, the more set in concrete everyone's opinions
 are going to be, and the more people are going to develop knee-jerk
 reactions to the whole thing.

So, why not try to solve the issue ? The way it currently is, it only
encourages the noise to continue. Everytime i tried to stop it and
behave, i was punished worse for it, as the two latest cases have
showed, both after christmas where after a month and some of relative
silent i was suddenly going to be banned, and in late february, where my
two month self-imposed absence from debian lists was responded by a
renewed expulsion request.

  And what do you believe would stop it ?
 
 For everyone talking about these things, most definitely including
 everyone who responds to you when you bring up your experiences, to stop
 unless there is some concrete evidence that something specific and
 immediate is going to change.

Nothing is going to change, we are at this since over a year now, and it
has only gotten worse, despite my numerous attempts at conciliation and
good behaviour. Neither the powers in debian who should have acted as
mediator, nor the other party, ever made any positive gesture to solve
this issue, and ressorted only to more abuse.

 Having a GR is just going to result in another long discussion, some
 conclusion which some people will be happy with and some people won't be
 happy with, and no real incentive to stop talking about it still.  It

Which is why i told MJ Ray that i was unsure a GR would be a good idea,
but favour using this case as an experiment for setting up an
infrastructure able to deal with social problems in a fair and efficient
way, which debian sorely lacks.

 could change the situation for you personally if the GR overturns your
 suspension.  I don't mean to imply it couldn't possibly do that.  However,
 the discussion was specifically about the *noise*, and I don't see any
 sign that a GR would do anything about the noise, regardless of the
 outcome.

So, you don't believe in solving the problem which is causing the noise
in the first place ? Or maybe you do not believe Debian is capable of
growing up, and find an answer to such situations which don't deal with
shoting up one party ? 

 It's painfully simple, so much so that it's a cliche, but it really does
 come down to deciding what may change and what won't and to stop spending
 energy, time, and resources on ineffectual things.  There may be ways to
 change your situation (although given how many times the above pattern has
 been followed, I think that regardless of any merits the entire situation
 is now set in concrete), but discussing it publicly on mailing lists
 clearly isn't one of them, as has been demonstrated time and time again
 for more than a year now.

No, you are wrong. The reason this has ended as it is now, is that both
Anthony back then, and the DAMs more recently insisted in keeping these
discussions private, either fully private, or debian private.

 I probably won't respond further to this thread, for all the reasons
 spelled out above.

A shame, this only means this situation will perdure, until a more
radical solution against me is used, either a full ban from the mailist
lists, which was already tried, or more definitive methods debian is not
yet ready to ressort to.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 09:49:53AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
  Sven == Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 Sven   This committee would then investigate the issue, try to
 Sven talk with all parties involved, and get them to forget their
 Sven old grudges, and come to an agreement on how this could go
 Sven forward without punishing one side and hoping they will go
 Sven away.
 
 What do you think is the minimum required for *you* to forget your old
 grudges?

It is easy enough, that the powers-in-debian stop to try to punish me
for it, an,d that a real and fair mediation happens, and that the other
party honestly tries to forget the past grudges. 

No solution can happen without this, and anyone thinking that the
current way of handling this mess, will have any chance to solve the
situation is a fool.

I made numerous attempts to solve it, which were meet with contempt by
the other party, and ignored by debian. Even the proposal i made on
november to try to find a solution, and have an in-face meeting at
FOSDEM, was meet with contempt, and a renewed expulsion request by the
other party. And so we lost a formidable oportunity to solve this.

 Lets *assume* the other party is not going to budge. They continue to
 justify the decision to have you expelled. No number of emails, GRs,
 committees, or mediators can change their minds, as they have already
 decided.

Well, there it is. We are faced with two parties in a dispute. One party
is mostly alone, has made mistakes, but is honestly trying to solve this
issue. The other party has made mistakes too, but never admitted to it,
and has meet all attempts at conciliation with stronger agression.
Furthermore, they are more numerous, and are able to use the debian
infrastructure to force their position down the throat of the other
side. 

If they are unwilling to change their mind, if they are unwilling to put
their pride and past grudges apart, and if debian as a whole stands
beside them, or at least let them do as they please, then debian has a
much more serious problem than any bunch of mails i can write, even if i
write ten times as many of them.

 Would there be anything else that could happen to allow you to forget
 your old grudges?

How do you expect me to forget the old grudges, when each time i tried
to forget them, they where forced down my throat with more extreme
agression ? First after christmas with an unwarranted demand of a list
ban, then in end of february with a renewed expulsion request.

I guess that the debian project owes me apologies for these last two
events, at the very least, well, maybe not the debian project, but those
in power who let it happen that way, i doubt debian is honest enough
with itself that this will be able to happen, and most of those who
where sympathetic to my cause, chose, for whatever reason, not to act. I
understand them to a poiint, since all those who expressed themselves
during the expulsion procedure of late february/marsch, where ignored by
the DAMs.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:32:26PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 I think it's worth one more response to say that I simply do not agree
 that this problem is somehow horribly embarassing, unexpected, or a sign
 of a fundamental deficiency in the Debian project.  There are other things
 that *are* signs of fundamental deficiencies in the project, but I don't
 think this is one of them.
 
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  So, you don't believe in solving the problem which is causing the noise
  in the first place ?
 
 I don't believe it's possible to solve it in the way that would satisfy
 everyone and thereby eliminate the noise without fundamentally changing
 human nature or brainwashing people.
 
  Or maybe you do not believe Debian is capable of growing up, and find an
  answer to such situations which don't deal with shoting up one party ?
 
 This isn't growing up, nor is it a lack of maturity.  These aren't
 problems that are somehow unusually common in Debian because Debian
 doesn't have social maturity.  These are the sorts of problems I've seen
 in every workplace or open source project that I've been in, given the
 presence of personality conflicts (which eventually always happen when
 enough people are involved), and there usually isn't a solution.  Someone
 in a position of power makes a decision that is often more or less
 arbitrary and people either decide to live with it or leave.  Around that
 process, there is inevitably a ton of noise, but it always comes down to
 the same thing in the end.
 
 The difference in a professional workplace is that the people in authority
 aren't shy to make decisions, make them much earlier and faster, and
 enforce them in a considerably more draconian fashion than Debian does.

There is a fundamental difference though. Debian is not a workplace, and
we are all volunteers. This all started because the d-i leadership felt
i was not respectful enough of them, because i chose to discuss
technical issues they prefered ignored, and well, me being passionate
about debian and what i do, i was maybe more blunt or whatever.

You are also wrong in the fact that you don't believe that this is a
fundamental defficiency. This event all by itself, is, even in a
caricatural way, an example, a microcosm, of all the fundamental
defficiencies the project has, or at least many of them, including the
high-handedness of the DAMs, the frustration to not be able to work on
what one cares about because some few in power want to block it, the
fact that a few persons have a personal power in debian and don't feel
like sharing it (just ask yourself why ij and mrvn are no DDS), that
those in power are a stubborn lot, full of pride and arrogance, and
accept no critic whatsoever, and take no prisoner in a disagreement.

But, Debian has many reasons to be ashamed of what happened, because
here we had a dispute, where a very active contributor faced a personal
problem, and was under harrasment and attack by a few people, and chose
to look the other side, and each so called 'mediation attemtps' where
fully one sided, and no honest and fair attempts to solve the issue.

Debian should be ashamed, because it has failed us all in not solving
this issue when it started, and solved it by june 2006 at the latest,
and each individual developper which chose to ignore these events, even
if they disaproved, or expressed their sympathy in private, share this
shame.

Let me just give you an anonymous (for obvious reason) quote for
finishing :

   Can we put this on hold for a while?  There are a few things I
   want to pass
   through NEW, and a few changes I'd like committed in d-i, before I
   consider
   doing something that could be considered a defiance.

Do you not see that the fact that DDs have opinions such as these, in
itself shows the whole sickness of the situation ? What happened to us
all getting together, in order to create the best OS ever, in a friendly
and nice way ? But then maybe Debian was never such, and it was only me
being naive and young which made me think so, but then i severly regret
all the years i gave my time and work without counting.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:05:04PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
 On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 03:47:55PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
  Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   The DAMs, who did not follow their own procedure [...]
 
  I contacted Sven Luther directly with an offer to start a GR to rescind
  the decision and optionally do some other stuff.  I've seen no reply.
 
  The offer stands and now the problem resurfaces, I will do something
  to resolve this one way or the other instead of letting this problem
  (endless mailing list noise) continue.  In the absence of feedback from
  Sven, I'll just make a guess at what's best.
 
  Any objections, comments or advice?
 
 Do you recognize that reinstating Sven's access would not be a resolution,
 since he has a long list of other grievances he likes to air publically, and
 that no resolution to the present problem would be satisfactory to Sven
 other than his reinstatement?
 
 Does this mean that you will be submitting a GR to have Sven banned from the
 mailing lists?

Steve,

What about stopping the FUD, and actually trying to solve this issue as
it should have been solved last year ? In an equitable and fair fashion ?

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 01:06:09PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
 On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 15:47 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
  Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   The DAMs, who did not follow their own procedure [...]
  
  I contacted Sven Luther directly with an offer to start a GR to rescind
  the decision and optionally do some other stuff.  I've seen no reply.
  
  The offer stands and now the problem resurfaces, I will do something
  to resolve this one way or the other instead of letting this problem
  (endless mailing list noise) continue.  In the absence of feedback from
  Sven, I'll just make a guess at what's best.
  
  Any objections, comments or advice?
 
 I object.  Starting more GRs will magnify the problem once more.

Sometimes, a problem needs to magnified to the extreme, so that people
finally feel embarassed that they where unable to solve it years ago.

Sad isn't it,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 02:01:52AM +0200, Rob Burgers wrote:
 you know all this flamin is starting to make you guys look like childeren..
 yer profesionals act like it otherwise debian will lose its user base.

Well, i got suspended for a year, because i dared present myself as DPL,
and some felt threatened by this. The handling of the expulsion request
was all but fair, in the same vain of what happened since over a year,
and taken solely by two persons, without any attempt to try to slve the
dispute in other way, and against the 10:1 wish of the DDship, as
expressed during the expulsion procedure. I even meet in person James
Troup at the begining of the expulsion procedure, and he did not speak a
single word to me about the subject, nor was the oportunity that so many
of us where at FOSDEM taken to have an in-life resolution of the
problem.

Yet, i fear that the way an expulsion procedure was used to fight my DPL
candidature, and the diffamation campaign sam is under go beyond mere
'childishness', and if debian really supports this kind of behaviour,
where censorship and the abuse of power by a few to get their way is
pursued, then Debian better dies quickly, because it will have lost all
right to the loyalty and devotion of its DDship.

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 11:45:03PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
 On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 08:21:15AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 02:01:52AM +0200, Rob Burgers wrote:
   you know all this flamin is starting to make you guys look like 
   childeren..
   yer profesionals act like it otherwise debian will lose its user base.
  
  Well, i got suspended for a year, because i dared present myself as DPL,
 
 No, that's simply not true.
 
 You have delusions of grandeur.

The expulsion request got retrigered the day after i candidated as DPL,
even though the DAMs chose to use Anthony's original start of january
mail, which Anthony protested that he did not understand why it was not
abandoned after the two weeks without enough seconds as per the
procedure.

The decision was solely taken by the two DAMs, contrary to a 70:7
majority of opinion of DDs, while one of the points of my DPL plateform
would have been to take action against all those who visibly are
bloquing debian, and guess what, one of the DAMs was clearly in that
category, altough i am unosure if this influenced him or not.

The DAMs have rejected repeated requests, and not only by me, to make
full transparency over the supporters, and provide the signed support
mail, including the actual dates.

So, sorry Hamish, but if you would consider the facts, before denying
me, please ask the DAMs to make full transparency over what happened
when, so we can judge on actual evidence, and not from hint in the
nebulous correspondence of what happened.

For all i know, this may as well have been a full conspiration by the
DAMs since they chose not to provide valid information, aimed either at
me or at Anthony Towns.

In all cases, it is a shame to debian, and even if a lot of furious guys
come out and scream on me, like some already did, this will not change
that fact, but sure, go ahead, close your eyes to the facts, and stone
the messenger.

Saddened,

Sven LUther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 11:23:21PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
 On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 08:21 +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 02:01:52AM +0200, Rob Burgers wrote:
   you know all this flamin is starting to make you guys look like 
   childeren..
   yer profesionals act like it otherwise debian will lose its user base.
  
  Well, i got suspended for a year, because i dared present myself as DPL,
  and some felt threatened by this.
 
 No-one could feel threatened by you, except perhaps that you could talk
 them to death.

So, you too, believe that what was done to me was acceptable, that
everything is justifiable, so long as your precious mailbox is left
empty ? And well, the reality is that the expulsion request got
retriggered, probably by frans pop from what i could glean as evidence
from the few scraps of information that the DAMs have provided, the day
after my DPL candidature, while i had not posted in months.

So, evidence contradicts your above claim.

  The handling of the expulsion request
  was all but fair, in the same vain of what happened since over a year,
  and taken solely by two persons,
 snip
 
 Otherwise known as the DAMs, who have this job.

The DAMs, who did not follow their own procedure, who did refuse to
provide the dates of the expulsion requests, because they knew well
enough that it would show the irregularities of the procedure, who
ignored the 70:7 expressed opinion of the DDs against the expulsion. The
DAMs of who James Troup is one of them, to which i spoke shortly at
FOSDEM the day after they decided to relaunch the expulsion request, and
they did send me a mail which got eaten up by the new greylisting
thingy, and who did not mention me anything about this, nor did any of
the DDs at FOSDEM even speak to me.

so, the DAMs may have this job, but they defined a procedure for
expulsion, but did not follow it. They should not have this job,
especially as they seem little suited to do a good job of it. 

Saddened,

Sven Luther


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Re: Question for Sam Hocevar xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxx

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 06:02:47PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
 On Sat, 05 May 2007, Craig Sanders wrote:
  if he wants to move on and grow up and put it behind him, let him.
  it's not like a stupid parody organisation actually harms anyone or
  anything.
 
 Except that most parody organizations don't have a long history of
 attacking Debian-associated IRC channels and operators within them,
 coupled with anti-feminism/anti-semitic/anti-homosexual rhetoric.
 
 Regardless, I'm personally more concerned by the appearance that
 people who asked this question of Sam before voting were lied to than
 the nature of a ill-conceived group of trolls. I don't know if Mathew
 Garrett's allegations are true or not, but their implications for the
 trustworthiness of our DPL if true are troubling.

Well, he would not be the first DPL who had an honestity problem, just
look at the manipulative lies of our previous DPL. 

But again, i fear that the people bringing this always to the front, are
not really interested in the best of debian, but in mafioso like
politics, which is something really disgusting.

Saddened,

Sven LUther


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A question to the Debian community ... (Was: Question for Sam Hocevar Gay Nigger Association of America)

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 05:41:03AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
 Sam Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
I DID NOT CREATE THIS WEBSITE AND I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THIS ORGANISATION.
 
 While I appreciate that member is almost certainly something without 
 any especially well defined meaning, you seem to have had a @gnaa.us 
 email address and there's evidence of you having been an operator on 
 #gnaa at some point. What distinction do you make between membership and 
 association?

Hi Matthew, hi fellow Debian developpers, hi Debian community at large, 

I am now reacting to this mail, since it is not the first time since the
election that i see Sam attacked over his supposed GNAA sympathies. I
have no idea about sam's relationship with GNAA or not, nor do i
seriously care.

But, this insistence, which comes after the expulsion procedure against
me which was restarted the day after i announced my DPL candidacy, while
i was being utterly silent on the Debian mailing list, gives me a very
very bad feeling.

It seems to me, as if a subset of Debian, which felt threatened by
myself announcing my intentions to candidate as DPL, may also in some
way feel threatened by sam acting as DPL, and there seem to be a lot of
hidden maneuvering and stuff as far as i can tell.

So, do we really want Debian to be a place of political maneuvering,
like what we have seen this past year and more ? I thought the massive
vote in favour of Sam and against Anthony was a clear answer to that,
but it seems some have not yet learned about it, and are still trying to
bring in mafioso-like politicks into debian.

Saddened,

Sven LUther


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Re: A question to the Debian community ...

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 01:16:16PM +0200, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  But, this insistence, which comes after the expulsion procedure against
  me which was restarted the day after i announced my DPL candidacy, while
  i was being utterly silent on the Debian mailing list, gives me a very
  very bad feeling.
 
 Sven, fuck off. It's not always about you.

So much for politeness, ...

Sven Luther


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Re: Request for GR: clarifying the license text licensing / freeness issue

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 12:42:41AM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote:
 This one time, at band camp, Michelle Konzack said:
  Am 2007-04-23 19:42:02, schrieb Charles Plessy:
   Le Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 12:25:31PM +0200, Josip Rodin a écrit :
'We promise that the Debian system and all its components will be free
according to these guidelines.'.
   
   Dear Josip,
   
   are you really sure that the licences are components of the Debian
   system? If one removes them, the system, on a functionnal point of
   view, still works as before... Nothing Depends: on the licences.
  
  [ command 'apt-cache show base-files' ]
  Package: base-files
  Version: 3.1.2
  Priority: required
  ^^
  
  I find this DEPENDS enough!
 
 Try rm -rf /usr/share/common-licenses/ .  Does your system break?  No?
 Then you have willfully misunderstood Josip's point.

But, if you do that in base-files, then suddenly half our packages become
non-distributable, because we lose alll right to distribute them.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Question to all the candidates: what mistakes have you made and what did you learn of it

[Sven Luther]

Hi all,

Since so much of the perceived troubles debian has been having lately can be
traced down to arrogance and pride, as well as failures to communicate, i want
to ask these question to the DPL candidates now :

  1) Can you tell us a few of the most important mistakes you have made during
  these past two years with regard to debian ?

  (I am particularly interested in the replies from Steve and Anthony, who
  where in power the last term, but also of other who had similar leadership
  activities in some other sub-team in debian).

  2) What do you believe where the consequences of those mistakes ?

  3) What do you think in retrospect you would have done differently ?

  4) What lessons did these mistakes teach you, and how will this affect
  similar situations you will be facing as DPL if elected, or as normal DD if
  not elected ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther

  


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Re: Question to all the candidates: what mistakes have you made and what did you learn of it

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 11:08:26AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
 On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
  On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Sven Luther wrote:
 1) Can you tell us a few of the most important mistakes you have made 
   during
 these past two years with regard to debian ?
  
  The announce of an Ubuntu freeze on d-d-a.
 
 FWIW, I voluntarily overlooked technical mistakes like the one which
 resulted in
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/02/msg00015.html
 because I think that's not the kind of mistakes that Sven was referring
 to.

Indeed, i was refering to let's call them social mistakes.

technical problems can easily be overcome if there is enough good-will on all
sides, and enough competence and time. If they remain problems, then they are
no more purely technical problems, but of the more ugly social kind ones.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Debian Project Leader Elections 2007: Draft ballot

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 04:06:34PM +, Ian Jackson wrote:
 Manoj Srivastava writes (Re: Debian Project Leader Elections 2007: Draft 
 ballot):
  [   ] Choice 1: Wouter Verhelst
 ...
  [   ] Choice A: None Of The Above
 
 Would it be possible to use just letters, rather than both letters and
 numbers ?  That will make everything a little less confusing - in
 particular it makes it impossible to mistake rankings for choices and
 vice versa.
 
 
 Could it be permitted rearrange the entries on the ballot ?  It would
 be much clearer to be able to vote:
 
  [ 1 ] Choice B: Bob
  [ 2 ] Choice A: Alice
  [ 3 ] Choice Z: None Of The Above
  [ 4 ] Choice C: Carol
  ...
 
 
 Ideally it would be possible for the letters to be vaguely mnemonic:
 
 [   ] Choice W: Wouter Verhelst
 [   ] Choice A: Aigars Mahinovs
 [   ] Choice G: Gustavo Franco
 [   ] Choice L: Sven Luther
 [   ] Choice H: Sam Hocevar
 [   ] Choice M: Steve McIntyre
 [   ] Choice R: Raphaël Hertzog
 [   ] Choice A: Anthony Towns
 [   ] Choice S: Simon Richter
 [   ] Choice Z: None Of The Above
 
 (or similar).

Ian, since i retired my candidature, this problematic became mooth, as we will
no more need to go beyond the 9 choices.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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My DPL candidature ...

[Sven Luther]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi, ...

Well, given the current situation, with the expulsion process started by
Anthony Town and Steve McIntyre against me still running, i think it is best
for everyone if i retire myself as DPL candidate.

There have been rumors that i candidated as DPL only to get some kind of
revenge in the ongoing conflict with Frans and the d-i leadership, or to
get attention to my case, and even folk who should know better like Wouter
Verhelst seem to share this opinion. Well, to all those who thought so, i
guess this shows how they would have acted in my place, and shows how little
regard they have for debian to think that anyone could use the DPL election to
further his own personal interest, so, shame on you for your bad thoughts.

Furthermore it pains me to see Debian fall down so far, to see people asking
for my expulsion after i decided to run as DPL candidate, because of the above
opinions, or in fear of what i would do if elected. It is sad to see such
mafioso-like politics come to debian, which should have been something more
pure and better.

In any case, just to dispel some doubts, no, i did never plan to use the DPL
election as a mean to attract attention, but because i saw problems in debian,
to which i believed i have some answers, and would have tried to solve and
bring debian out of the conflict-generating mood we have seen last year, and
back into a constructive, motivating state as it should have been. There are
other candidates who are pushing for these ideas, so i don't feel myself
forced to continue running for DPL in the current circunstances.

So, i thus officially announce my retirement from the DPL election, which
undoubtly will make Manoj's live easier, and we will not fear anymore
confusion in the voting system with regard to the complexity of it :)

And for those who want to flame me in return, please do so in private, or in
the -private thread about my expulsion.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

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Re: Question for candidates: the d-i conflict

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 06:45:48PM +, Steve McIntyre wrote:
 On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 02:10:32PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
 Hi,
 
 I'd like to ask Anthony and Steve what they think of how they handled
 the conflict between Frans Pop and Sven Luther, and other candidates how
 they would have handled this conflict.
 
 I believe I handled the dispute fairly. I spoke to both Sven and Frans
 a huge amount over the months while we tried to mediate. AJ and I came
 up with what we thought was a fair compromise to allow work to
 continue, but it was not found acceptable. At that point we were
 accused of back-stabbing and conspiracy, so I withdrew from the
 proceedings as I saw no reasonable way forward.

Steve, early in the first mediation, i made the proposal to :

  1) i stop discussing problematic issues on debian-boot, and in general keep
  a low profile.
  2) my svn commit access is restablished.
  3) i work only on areas where i know nobody else is working, and which
  interest me, namely the apus and prep ports, for example.

I would like to know from you, why you did not even give me a return about
this until i insisted, and if you proposed this compromise to Frans, and what
effort did you make to actually try to reach a compromise which was acceptable
to both parties.

For your information, quoting Steve Langasek on irc about the above proposal :

  vorlon Seems reasonable, but *shrug*

Also, in your opinion of what should be a mediation, do you find it normal and
acceptable that the decision would be taken without even discussing it with
both parties, and seeing if it is acceptable, before going forward and taking
it ? 

 To everyone: how would you avoid such situations to become this
 problematic in the future?
 
 It's difficult to say, as each situation is unique. In the hope that
 we have reasonable people involved, then mediation may succeed in
 other cases.

So, a second question. Which of the persons involved in this incident do you
consider as non-reasonable ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Summary for the upload package rules GR

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 11:41:26PM +0100, Bastian Venthur wrote:
 Bill Allombert schrieb:
  Questions raised in the discussion period that are relevant to the GR.
 [...]
  Q) We should only allow source-only upload!
  
  A) This is orthogonal to this GR. If developers are not allowed to do
  combined source and binary packages uploads, this GR is moot.
 
 I've voted against the GR solely because of this reason. I think we
 should aim for source only uploads in the long run, so consequently
 voting in favor of this GR would be a step in the wrong direction.

Why did you not propose an amendment to the GR then, which allowe for
source-only uploads ?

Or propose a new GR on the subject ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Debian Project Leader Elections 2007: Sven Luther

[Sven Luther]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

I hereby declare myself as candidate as DPL.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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8YmuDd/+1r8eZyAgSVtaLxY=
=+aIN
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Re: First call for vote on immediate vote under section 4.2.2

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 09:52:59AM +, MJ Ray wrote:
 Kalle Kivimaa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...]
  Which issues would those be, then?
 
 I've posted lists in the past, such as
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/09/msg00409.html
 
  If I look at the controversial issues aj has rised, I find these
  three:
  
  1. Sven vs. the rest of the d-i team mediation
  2. Using project funds to pay some developers
  3. Revoking the policy editor delegation
4. Aj's handling of the non-free firmware vote.

Aj asked me to hold my call for vote on frederik's proposal, and asked that we
come up with a 'consensual' proposal. he then claims Manoj's proposal is
consensual, while not only it is clear it is not, and it is contrary to the
will of the kernel team. He then let's Manoj manipulate the vote to get his
pet resolution voted and avoid having the better 'consensual' resolution,
leaving the whole issue a complete mess, and forcing the RMs to release an
interpretation of the vote, which is at odds with what was actually voted on.

  In #1 aj was explicitly asked to make a decision by a party in the
  controversy. In #2 aj first solicited opinions and then decided *not*
  to go forward. #3 was a snap judgement based on the behaviour of a
  delegate and it looks like aj is already reconsidering it.
 
 AFAIK, I've not seen the request to aj for No.1 and he described it as
 being asked to review the situation - not to issue a ruling - in
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/05/msg00235.html
 It is still a current problem.

Well, the original mediation was a joke, and aj's inability to mediate, or to
apoint someone capable of actually understanding what a mediation is about, is
what left us with this mess.

But then, it is probably because aj was afraid that frans would leave the d-i
team, and we would be left without a d-i release manager, but even then, this
only proves that the mediation failed completely.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: First call for vote on immediate vote under section 4.2.2

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 11:39:05AM +, MJ Ray wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  [...] aj's inability to mediate [...] is what left us with this mess.
 
 Not really.  Messages like 
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/03/msg01054.html 
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/03/msg01075.html and 
 http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/04/msg01076.html left us with 
 that mess, but the ruling didn't offer any way to clear this mess up in 
 the long term.

Well, yes, the idea of the mediation was to solve the issue, not let it stay
open forever, and hope it would go away. I have tried to do my best, but Frans
is simply not making any effort, and since he has all the power and
satisfaction, why should he ?

Still, we can both agree 

  But then, it is probably because aj was afraid that [...]
 
 I don't see how guessing others' views helps here.

Well, given that the main complaint seems to be that frans did feel that i was
not respectful enough (private communication, so no mail archive), and others
have hinted that the release of etch was more important than solving this
(again private irc exchange), i really don't know what else to guess.

It would have helped if the mediation had involved some clear listing of the
actual grieves, instead of giving all the reason to frans as it did.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: First call for vote on immediate vote under section 4.2.2

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 11:13:06AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
 Finally, I am getting annoyed by all these GRs and the waste of time
 that comes with them. Maybe I should thus propose a vote to resolve
 that DDs must now stop wasting time and get back to work.

Hey, you should have seconded my No more GRs until the etch release proposal
weeks ago :) I was helding exactly the same argumentation as you are having
now, but i was the laughing stock of everyone, including you back then.

You won't probably not read this, since i believe you blacklisted me or
something, so ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal to delay the decition of the DPL of the withdrawal of the Package Policy Committee delegation

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 06:10:46PM -0500, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
 Hi,
 
 As I count, this resolution to delay the decition of the DPL
  of the withdrawal of the Package Policy Committee delegation  has
  received 2K sponsors, which means that § 4.2.2.2 of the constitution
  to be called into action.
 
 ,
 | 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election
 |   4.1. Powers
 | 3. Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate.
 |   4.2. Procedure
 | 2. Delaying a decision by the Project Leader or their Delegate:
 |  1. If the Project Leader or their Delegate, or the Technical
 | Committee, has made a decision, then Developers can override
 | them by passing a resolution to do so; see s4.1(3).
 |  2. If such a resolution is sponsored by at least 2K Developers,
 | or if it is proposed by the Technical Committee, the
 | resolution puts the decision immediately on hold (provided
 | that resolution itself says so).
 |  4. If the decision is put on hold, an immediate vote is held to
 | determine whether the decision will stand until the full vote
 | on the decision is made or whether the implementation of the
 | original decision will be delayed until then. There is no
 | quorum for this immediate procedural vote.
 `
 
 So, an immediate procedural vote has to be held to determine
  whether the decision will stand until the full vote, on the decision
  is made or whether the implementation of the original decision
  (i.e. withdrawl of delegation from the policy delegates) will be
  delayed until then.
 
 I am proposing the following draft ballot for this immediate
  vote, while I go about setting up the voting infrastructure.  The
  vote page containing the details of this general resolution is not
  yet up, but as soon as it is it would be found at:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_008

Manoj, ...

You are overpassing your rights as secretary, it is not for you as secretary
to call for a vote, or take any such actions, but it is only the proposer and
the seconders who can do such.

This action of yours right now, casts more light to your abysmal behaviour on
the non-free firmware vote, where you first let the issue wait until you where
able to propose a proposal of your liking, and then hurried in to get the vote
down, thus rejecting other proposals which where better and more in line of
what debian needed, and which you didn't want.

In light of this and your actions here, i strongly propose that on issues you
have a strong interest or opinion, that someone else than you is in charge of
doing the day-to-day work of the secretary, maybe the DPL or TC would be
adequate on this here, or maybe some kind of assistant secretary either
permanent or delegated for the occasion.

Anthony, can you comment on this ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal to delay the decition of the DPL of the withdrawal of the Package Policy Committee delegation

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 12:03:33AM -0700, Jurij Smakov wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 08:46:21AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
 [...]
  You are overpassing your rights as secretary, it is not for you as secretary
  to call for a vote, or take any such actions, but it is only the proposer 
  and
  the seconders who can do such.
 
 Did you actually read this passage from constitution which was quoted 
 in Secretary's message? Section 4.2.2 describes in detail the 
 procedure for delaying a decision by DPL, and I believe that 
 everything is done in accordance with it.

Not really, but i read the way resolution votes where handled (Annex A.),
which says :

  A.2.1 The proposer or a sponsor of a motion or an amendment may call for
  a vote, providing that the minimum discussion period (if any) has elapsed.

It may indeed have missed the point about reverting decisions : 

  4.2.4 If the decision is put on hold, an immediate vote is held to determine
  whether the decision will stand until the full vote on the decision is made
  or whether the implementation of the original decision will be delayed until
  then. There is no quorum for this immediate procedural vote.

But nowhere in section 4.2 does it speak about who issues the call for vote,
while A.4.2 isvery clear about this.

In any case, independent of the actual text, there is evident conflict of
interest, both here as ian jackson pointed ou, and in the non-free vote, and
we need to engage in some reflection as to not see this happen again. Do you
have anything constructive to say about this ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Proposal to delay the decition of the DPL of the withdrawal of the Package Policy Committee delegation

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 10:37:48AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:11:08 +0100, Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
  Manoj, your conflict of interest here is too severe, I think.  Would
  you please formally delegate the interpretation of the constitution
  with respect to maintenance of policy to someone else ?
 
  I don't think you've been grinding your own axe here but, I would
  like to ask you to do us a favour and present the appearance of
  propriety as well as the fact of it.
 
 Duly noted.  But since the secretary's job routinely involves
  running votes and DPL elections in which I have strong opinions, and
  interpreting the constitution is an integral part of the process, I
  would not be secretary if I did not think I could do my job
  impartially despite that.  
 
 If it appears to me that my judgement as secretary is being
  affected, I shall immediately  recuse myself and delegate the power.

I fear that your judgement to notice such conflict of interest is not so good
as you think, since this is already the second time in a few weeks you are at
the extreme limit of this boundary.

Sven Luther


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Re: Kernel Firmware issue: are GPLed sourceless firmwares legal to distribute ?

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 02:10:37PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
 MJ Ray wrote:
  While fairly simple, it is totally incorrect, as public distribution in
  breach of copyright carries criminal liability in England, as I previously
  posted.  See the Copyright Designs and Patents Act as amended, under
  the criminal liability heading. http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/cdpa1.htm
  I suspect most of the EU has similar law these days, although I cannot
  name them.
 
 You're correct, there is criminal liability in most of Europe
 for intentional infringement of copyright. Many countries do
 however require the copyright holder to file charges against
 the infringer first. The police won't act by itself (how could
 they, they have no evidence of an illegal act unless the
 copyright holder files the accusation of distribution without
 a license).
 
 I do wonder, are the copyright holders of the firmware the only
 people with standing to sue? If the combination of firmware and
 GPL-licensed kernel is a derivative of the kernel, then anyone
 with a copyright interest in the kernel can sue for not obeying
 the GPL.

Please check past debian-legal discussion about this.

IANAL and everything, but all times we discussed the issue the opinion that
prevaled, was that the firmware do not constitute a derivative work of the
kernel, in the same way that if the firmware is contained in a flash on the
card, it does not constitute a derivative work of the kernel, and in the same
way a free compressor which can generate compressed archive with builtin
uncompressor binaries, is not a derivative work of the compressed files it
contains.

More arguments on this can be found in the list archive.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 03:46:57PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
 
 [Manoj Srivastava]
  Given this official statement, I also suggest that the GR
   proposal is moot, since the proposer himself believes that the kernel
   modules in question can not be distributed by Debian legally.
 
 There are a few firmware files which are sourceless but explicitly
 _not_ GPL - these are still covered by some or all of the GRs under
 past and present consideration.

I don't understand which GRs cover this one ? 

 Whether this subset of firmware matters much to end users, I couldn't
 say.

tg3, e100 maybe too, those are some very widely widespread ethernet drivers,
used among others in servers, where netbooting is a must.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [Amendement] override of resolutions 005, 006, 007, 008

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 08:13:36PM +, Bill Allombert wrote:
 Dear Debian voters,
 
 I humbly submit to your elevated mass the following amendment
 to the latest General Resolution proposed by Sven Luther.
 
 =
 The Debian project resolves that:
 
 1) Sven Luther is the best Debian developer ever. Ever.

Bill, can you please tell me why you do this ? What have i ever done to you to
get this kind of handling ? 

All i did over this firmware issue, is to try to achieve a resolution which is
in the best interest of debian, maybe not in the best way ever, but i believe
that the resolution i proposed is light-years better than the one which was
voted upon, and you would also say so if you had bothered to read it. 

Many have publicly or privately commented on it, and said that it was the
better resolution, like Andreas Barth for example.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [Amendement] override of resolutions 005, 006, 007, 008

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 10:42:59AM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 08:00:42AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 08:13:36PM +, Bill Allombert wrote:
   Dear Debian voters,
   
   I humbly submit to your elevated mass the following amendment
   to the latest General Resolution proposed by Sven Luther.
   
   =
   The Debian project resolves that:
   
   1) Sven Luther is the best Debian developer ever. Ever.
  
  Bill, can you please tell me why you do this ? What have i ever done to you 
  to
  get this kind of handling ? 
 
 He Sven cool down, I assure you this was friendly meant. Read the rest
 of the amendment! 
 
  All i did over this firmware issue, is to try to achieve a resolution which 
  is
  in the best interest of debian, maybe not in the best way ever, but i 
  believe
  that the resolution i proposed is light-years better than the one which was
  voted upon, and you would also say so if you had bothered to read it. 
 
 Are you genuinely afraid this amendement could be voted above your GR ?

No, i am sick fo being joked or bashed upon regularly, and i would have
prefered that you not mention me in your proposal.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Kernel Firmware issue: are GPLed sourceless firmwares legal to distribute ?

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 03:49:25PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
 The answer to the question in the subject is simple: NO.
 
 This is a matter of copyright law.  If we do not have permission to 
 distribute, it is illegal to distribute.  GPL grants permission to 
 distribute *only* if we distribute source.  So, GPLed sourceless == NO 
 PERMISSON.
 
 I will list the usual caveats so that nobody else brings them up.
 
 (1) Obviously if we have an alternate license (dual-licensing) which doesn't 
 require source we can use that license.
 (2) If the material is so trivial it is uncopyrightable we can obviously 
 distribute it.  (The classic example is CRC tables, which contain no 
 creative content beyond the CRC polynomial which is generally public 
 domain.)  Likewise if it was published prior to 1988 in the US without
 copyright notices, or is in the public domain for some other reason.
 (3) If the copyright holder for the firmware donated the firmware to Linux
 with the understanding that it would be redistributed by Debian and other 
 distributors, this may constitute an implicit license to distribute.  This 
 would be a case of dual-licensing, but an unpleasant one because we'd be
 relying on an *implied* license.  This requires tracing down the donation of
 the material to the Linux kernel and ascertaining the state of mind of the
 donor (perhaps by reading press releases).  This clearly applies only to 
 some of the firmware; other pieces have no such 'paper trail'.  Also, this
 implicit license *does not* include a license to modify, because I've never 
 seen any indication that any firmware donor intended that their
 firmware be modified.
 (4) If the hex lumps really are the preferred form for modification, then
 we have the source and this is not a case of 'sourceless firmware'.  I have
 not yet seen a case where there is any evidence that this is true.  It is,
 however, theoretically possible.  If the firmware author came forward and 
 said Yes, that's the form in which we modify the firmware, this would be 
 the case.

Thanks Nerode for this complete reply.

It seems thay 3) is probably the best way we have to be able to distribute
sourceless de-facto GPLed firmwares, but as you say, it will be a mess.

I suppose the firmwares resolutions, both the one voted, and the one i
proposed, both allow to include those firmwares into main under these
conditions, for etch only, altough the resolution voted upon is probably much
less clear in its wording. It is regretable that Manoj losed patience suddenly
after more than a month an a half of discussing the issues. But we will see.

I think we all now await impatiently the statement of the RMs on what will
happend with the tg3 and acenic firmwares, and if we need a new vote or not.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 01:34:11PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
 On Sun, 15 Oct 2006, Sven Luther wrote:
  Well, we all know it is sourceless GPLed firmware, and we chose just
  to say the contrary, because it is convenient to us.
 
 If we know[1] a work is a sourceless GPLed work, then we cannot
 distribute it *at* *all*. Doing otherwise is wholly inappropriate, GR
 or no GR, and opens up us and our mirror operators to a whole scope of
 liability that they should not be facing.

This is indeed true, but mitigated by the fact that everyone does the same,
and that more often than not the copyright holder are distributing it
themselves, thus they hardly can sue us (or win the following case) over it.

But the whole idea of this GR, was to let this whole issue pass, and ask the
copyright holders (if they can be found, difficult in some cases, like the
acenic one) to clarify their position and provide an explicit license,
post-etch.

The new proposal says exactly that :

  5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual license,
 and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
 We will include these firmware in Debian Etch and review them after the
 release. Vendors of such firmware may wish to investigate the licensing
 terms, and make sure the GPL distribution conditions are respected,
 especially with regards to source availability.

the voted-upon resolution is less clear and precise about this, and will bring
more confusion than anything else.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 07:05:54PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:02:10 +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
  Well, i blame Manoj (not wearing his secretary hat) for doing the
  call for vote, after i had made the final proposal, proposal which
  should have been consensual, and Manoj (as-DD) was aware off, and
  even helped with the wording.
 
  I blame Manoj (wearing his secretary hat) for actually following
  through on the vote, knowing there was an important proposal
  missing, as he has done in the past, and his power as secretary
  allowed.
 
  This comes from an evident conflict of interest, for Manoj being at
  the same time proposer of the amdendment in question, doing the call
  for vote, being the secretary, and holding the delegation of the DPL
  to shorten the vote.
 
 At this point, can we have someone volunteer tos end anything
  germane that sven says to me separately?  I can not longer tolerate
  the abuse; so either someone moderates sven's official mail on voting
  related issues to me, or I'll regretfully have to stop being the
  secretary.

Manoj, first, sorry, this was intented to be a private email.

But that said, you did indeed decide to hurry up the vote, and this resulted
in a ballot which was not complete. And the explanation you gave for it where
that you believed, like Steve Langasek also said, that i acted in bad faith,
and did not speak for the kernel team on this, and believed the proposal did
not reach enough seconds.

Steve Langasek replied to the DPL it was not right to start the vote on the
ballot, and you perfectly know i asked you the same, numerous time, on irc and
here. 

 My intentions are to drop every communication sven send to any
  mailing list or irc channel.

So you are incapable of responding to the above accusations, to admit you
blundered on this one, and so you have to destroy me further in order to get
out with the head high.

You already did this almost a year ago, over the ramdisk generator issues. Oh
well, i know what to expect from you now.

Finally, notice that i am not the first one which critics your work as
secretary, the cosmetical changes where highly criticized back then, you got
remarks about the amend the constitution short title about the asset
handling GR, you got apparently highly flamed by someone (Steve ?) about not
including the rationale in the vote content, to a point you decided to ask
extra effort from proposers beyond what is in the constitution. you also got
some critic about the form of one of these ballots, which generated a 10+ long
thread i didn't really read.

Manoj, you do a great job as secretary, everyone thinks so, but you are also
only human, and it is normal you make mistakes from time to time, especially
in cases as stressfull as the recent times. It is normal for folk around you
to tell you about them, but it is a bit strange to see you go into full
counter-attack mode when someone tells you about those issues.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [AMENDMENT] Re: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed.

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 02:14:58AM +0200, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
  BEGIN OF PROPOSAL 
 We, the Debian project, find freeness that we want for firmware used by
 the kernel is an important question, and that we will have to deal with
 this.  However, we think that we as a project need more time to deal
 with it, and having more general resolutions isn't going to solve this.
 
 Therefor we will not have another general resolution about firmware until
 after the release of etch and atleast 6 moths have passed since this
 general resolution.  This does not mean we will not discuss this issue,
 or work on getting things better.
  END OF PROPOSAL 

Kurt, you do know that even if you passed this, it is anti-constitutional, and
not binding any way ? I proposed a no more GRs until the etch release
proposal a few weeks ago, you know. In any case, your proposal will be put to
vote after the already seconded proposal you are unhappy with.

Also, i want you to explain something about this. You say the current
resolution is fine, while you said that you voted without even reading it, and
that it has some consequences that the kernel team didn't want.

Also, i want to know from you how a resolution that the RMs already said,
before the vote was completed, that they would not respect it, can in any
sense of the word be a good proposal.

Are you going to step behind your words, and help the kernel team investigate
those issues, as well help coding the code which will prune the kernel from
those firmwares the current resolution forces us to remove ? Are you going to
do user support, when those users will be unable to use debian to install
their systems ? Or maybe you will single-handedly implement non-free loading
support in d-i, and convince the d-i leadership that they should indeed
include it in etch, despite them saying No way about exactly this. Not
speaking about those in the kernel team who said they would leave if those
firmwares where removed.

Or do you think we should indeed delay etch at least 6 months as the d-i team
said we should. This is indeed a possibility, but then why not say so directly ?

There are many folk who are all so happy to critic my mails and actions and
thinkings about the subject, but then, they don't care about the mess caused,
because they don't will be the ones having to handle it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Someone else please take over (Was: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed. (Was: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.))

[Sven Luther]

Hi all,

I am more than sick of the turn this is taking, and seeing how Jurij,
following in Andres steps, is starting to bash on me, and how of the kernel
team, only Kyle seconded the changed proposal, and how Steve and Manoj
constantly attack me and deny me having tried to reach a consensus within the
kernel team, before enlarging this consensus to the outside teams.

I don't know anymore what you think of the current resolution, it is my
understanding that it was not what we the kernel team wanted, as per the
statement written by Jurij after the irc meeting, and that some of you have
threatened to leave all kernel work for debian if we where to remove the
firmwares, which the current resolution does indeed do.

All this came because i was left almost alone in dealing with this, and
because you where not vigilant enough and let this mess happen. I am sick of
having to get the constant bashing, and then have all the project fall on me
because i post so much.

So, please, someone else handle this, and makes sure there are enough people
seconding the new proposal, and make sure the project does indeed vote on it
with a 3:1 majority as Manoj claims it needs, or start on removing all those
firmwares, but i want to hear no critic or outrage from all those who remained
silent while this was happening, i sent enough warnings to debian-kernel and
spoke about it on irc that you have only yourself to blame for it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 07:21:49PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:03:59 +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
  On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 04:05:57PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
  Can you spell out for us which kernel modules, in the opinion of
  the kernel team, are certainly sourceless GPL stuff? Please make
  sure you have the official opinion of the kernel team, and that you
  are saying that these modules do contain sourceless GPL'd material.
 
  The complete list at :
 
  http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing?action=show#head-93ba883132bc3ebc09131100ec6bb6fbfb5e3e61
 
  Include code which Larry stated where unlikely to be the actual form
  of modification. I think he even said something along the lines of
  no sane coder would write such directly in hex.
 
  There are some which are big enough that it would not be practical
  to write them directly in hex, so there is little doubt about the
  outcome.
 
 Folks, if this is indeed the official opinion of the kernel
  team (since that is what was solicited, then regardless of any GR, we
  need to remove every thing mentioned by Sven from the kernel
  immediately, since we are not allowed to distribute them.

This is my own opinion this time, and i specifically said that others of the
kernel team should give an official statement.

 Given this official statement, I also suggest that the GR
  proposal is moot, since the proposer himself believes that the kernel
  modules in question can not be distributed by Debian legally.

 I appreciate there not being any more GR's on this subject :),
  since now we have to remove these modules, as per  the official
  kernel team position.

Ah, so now you want to censor an already seconded GR ? And your word on what
needs removing has more weight that what the project decides in a GR ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed. (Was: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.)

[Sven Luther]

Hello,

Ok, since the proposal in its amended by Manoj form passed, we need to add an
amendment to this proposal, accordying to Manoj, so that we don't have two
proposals in effect at the same time, leaving it a full mess.

So, i propose this amendment, as discussed with Manoj, and need your seconds
on this one too.

=== START OF PROPOSAL ===
Definition: For the purpose of this resolution, the firmware mentioned below
designates binary data included in some of the linux kernel drivers, usually as
hex-encoded variables and whose purpose is to be loaded into a given piece of
hardware, and be run outside the main memory space of the main processor(s).

  0. This resolution overrides the resolution just voted
 (http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007).

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software
 community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware
 issue, both upstream and in the debian packaging; however, it is not
 yet finally sorted out.

  3. We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit out;
 for this reason, we will treat removal of problematic firmware as a
 best-effort process, and in no case add additional problematic material
 to the upstream released kernel tarball.

  4. We allow inclusion of such firmware into Debian Etch, even if their license
 does not normally allow modification, as long as we are legally allowed to
 distribute them.
  5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual license,
 and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
 We will include these firmware in Debian Etch and review them after the
 release. Vendors of such firmware may wish to investigate the licensing
 terms, and make sure the GPL distribution conditions are respected,
 especially with regards to source availability.

  6. We will include those firmware into the debian linux kernel package as well
 as the installer components (.udebs) used by the debian-installer.
 END OF PROPOSAL 

Only change, is the addition of clause 0. which states the override. I am not
totally satisfied by this text, so if someone has a better idea, it would be
nice.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


On Sat, Oct 07, 2006 at 06:49:17AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1
 
 Hello, ...
 
 Since there seems nobody objected to the proposal, and the few returns i had
 were mostly positive, i am now making the following proposal.
 
 I will add below the original rationale of Frederik's proposal, on whom
 this one is based, as well as the position statement of the kernel team, which
 emerged from the irc meeting from last saturday about this issue, and which is
 reflected in the below proposal.
 
 For the secretary : The proposal is only the part between the two below
 START/END OF PROPOSAL markers :)
 
  === START OF PROPOSAL ===
 Definition: For the purpose of this resolution, the firmware mentioned below
 designates binary data included in some of the linux kernel drivers, usually 
 as
 hex-encoded variables and whose purpose is to be loaded into a given piece of
 hardware, and be run outside the main memory space of the main processor(s).
 
   1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software
  community (Social Contract #4);
 
   2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware
  issue, both upstream and in the debian packaging; however, it is not
  yet finally sorted out.
 
   3. We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit 
 out;
  for this reason, we will treat removal of problematic firmware as a
  best-effort process, and in no case add additional problematic material
  to the upstream released kernel tarball.
 
   4. We allow inclusion of such firmware into Debian Etch, even if their 
 license
  does not normally allow modification, as long as we are legally allowed 
 to
  distribute them.
 
   5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual 
 license,
  and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
  We will include these firmware in Debian Etch and review them after the
  release. Vendors of such firmware may wish to investigate the licensing
  terms, and make sure the GPL distribution conditions are respected,
  especially with regards to source availability.
 
   6. We will include those firmware into the debian linux kernel package as 
 well
  as the installer components (.udebs) used by the debian-installer.
   END OF PROPOSAL 
 
 Rationale:
 ==
 
 Overview:
 
 The Linux kernel source contains device drivers that ship with firmware
 files provided by the hardware manufacturer. They are uploaded during
 the driver initialization to the corresponding hardware device.
 
 Some of these binary image files

Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 03:57:28PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
  Probably, but then choice 1. of the ballot currently under vote
  should have had 3:1 supermajority also, which added to misleading
  wording of the short title compared to the actual content of the
  proposal, cast some serious doubt as to the validity of the vote
  being currently held.
 
 Nope. Choice 1 (I am assuming you mean the gr_firmware's
  release etch despite firmware issues option, though that is not at
  all clear) in no way requires anything that violates the DFSG or the
  social contract, so it does not need the super majority.

Well, it :

  1. allows for releasing firmware binaries under the GPL lacking propper 
sources.

  = This is a violation of DFSG 2 (Source Code) :

  The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source
  code as well as compiled form.

  2. means removal of support for thos users needing non-free firmware to
  install. This coupled with the staunch refusal of the d-i team to implement
  non-free loading in d-i, leads to an inability of some of our users to
  install on their hardware using debian, even on non-free media. This is
  especially true with the removal of such popular drivers, like the tg3
  driver, which will have to go with the resolution just voted.

  = This is a violation of SC4 (Our priorities are our users and free software)
  and SC5 (Works that do not meet our free software standards) :

  We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
  community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.

   We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that do not
   conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created contrib
   and non-free areas in our archive for these works. The packages in these
   areas are not part of the Debian system, although they have been configured
   for use with Debian. We encourage CD manufacturers to read the licenses of
   the packages in these areas and determine if they can distribute the
   packages on their CDs. Thus, although non-free works are not a part of
   Debian, we support their use and provide infrastructure for non-free
   packages (such as our bug tracking system and mailing lists).

Notice how SC5 says : we support their use and provide infrastructure for
non-free packages. This clearly includes support for installing non-free
firmware on our installer medias.

The first point is probably uninportant, since the resolution passed by
271:42, thus more than getting this 3:1 majority. I wonder how many of those
voters didn't realize what they where voting on, but i guess we will never
know for sure.

On the other hand, thiesecond point is not really violated here, but it also
means that we need a GR vote in order to be able to release etch without a
proper support for loading non-free firmware .udebs from d-i, and that this
would be a 3:1 vote ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 10:52:57AM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
 On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 10:17:56AM +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 wrote:
  Notice how SC5 says : we support their use and provide infrastructure for
  non-free packages. This clearly includes support for installing non-free
  firmware on our installer medias.
 
 Notice how SC5 says : we support their use and provide *infrastructure
 for non-free packages*, which clearly means we provide ftp space for
 non-free packages, not installing non-free firmware on our installer
 medias.

Oh ? Please tell me which dictionary says that infrastructure means ftp
archive ? We especially removed the ftp area wording from the social
contract for this purpose in the pre-sarge GRs.

I believe you could call the installer media and their own .udeb archive,
infrastructure needed in order to install debian, no ? 

And anyway, the intent is clear, we promise in SC5 to support our users which
need non-free, and purely and simply removing tg3, acenic and a bunch of other
modules, without a non-free installer or support for them in our installer is
clearly a violation of SC5.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 08:42:41AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:17:56 +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
  On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 03:57:28PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
   Probably, but then choice 1. of the ballot currently under vote
   should have had 3:1 supermajority also, which added to misleading
   wording of the short title compared to the actual content of the
   proposal, cast some serious doubt as to the validity of the vote
   being currently held.
  
  Nope. Choice 1 (I am assuming you mean the gr_firmware's release
  etch despite firmware issues option, though that is not at all
  clear) in no way requires anything that violates the DFSG or the
  social contract, so it does not need the super majority.
 
  Well, it :
 
1. allows for releasing firmware binaries under the GPL lacking
   propper sources.
 
 Wrong.  It only allows us to distribute drivers that upstream
  is implying we have sources for --  and we have no proof that the
  sources are not in the preferred form of modification.  Guessing that
  the preferred form of modification is not proof.

Well, we all know it is sourceless GPLed firmware, and we chose just to say
the contrary, because it is convenient to us. IANAL, so i couldn't say if this
is indeed a proper defense in court if we get sued, but i guess that it may be
problematic. But then on the otherhand, i suppose the risk of getting sued is
as negligible as the risk of getting sued over the other firmwares which are
non-distributable.

Manoj, this is just a matter of how much you can lie to yourself, and i am
sorry, but my own concience is not letting me say to the world something which
we evidently know is wrong. You may have a much loser concience for this one
point though.

 {SNIP a whole lot of hostile text}

Manoj, ...

Please tell me (in private) what in the rest of the text you feel is hostile.
It seems a pretty correct analysis of the problem, and i don't see a single
line of agressiveness or hostily in it. But then, naturally, you are the
native english speaker, and i may severly mis-understand some nuances of what
i wrote, so please inform me of where the hostility is, so i may correct this
in the future.

And if, after you reread it, you cannot justify it as hostile, i would
appreciate if you would take the above defaming coment back.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed. (Was: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.)

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 08:54:18PM +0200, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
 On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 10:07:02AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  Hello,
  
  Ok, since the proposal in its amended by Manoj form passed, we need to add 
  an
  amendment to this proposal, accordying to Manoj, so that we don't have two
  proposals in effect at the same time, leaving it a full mess.
 
 Which 2 proposals are in effect that conflict?  We only had 1 vote on
 this as far as I know, so I don't see how it can conflict.

This is a new proposal, which was not in the ballot, because Manoj hurried the
election along the way, while he knew the kernel team was working on a better
proposal. It actually says the contrary of what the resolution we just voted
says. This proposal will go to vote in a week or so, since it has enough
seconds, and if approved, it will be in direct contradiction to the current
proposal on many points.

Have you actually read the resolution which was voted ? Have you voted for it,
and if so i am interested in knowing what you thought you where voting for.

  So, i propose this amendment, as discussed with Manoj, and need your seconds
  on this one too.
  
  === START OF PROPOSAL ===
 [...]
5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual 
  license,
   and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
   We will include these firmware in Debian Etch and review them after the
   release. Vendors of such firmware may wish to investigate the licensing
   terms, and make sure the GPL distribution conditions are respected,
   especially with regards to source availability.
  
6. We will include those firmware into the debian linux kernel package as 
  well
   as the installer components (.udebs) used by the debian-installer.
   END OF PROPOSAL 
  
  Only change, is the addition of clause 0. which states the override. I am 
  not
  totally satisfied by this text, so if someone has a better idea, it would be
  nice.
 
 Atleast points 5 and 6 aren't in GR we voted on either.

Indeed. This is a completely different proposal that the one under vote, whose
original text amended in this, is at : 

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/10/msg00183.html

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed. (Was: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.)

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 11:51:11PM +0200, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
 On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 11:08:13PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  
  This is a new proposal, which was not in the ballot, because Manoj hurried 
  the
  election along the way, while he knew the kernel team was working on a 
  better
  proposal. 
 
 Please do not blame our secretary for following the constitution.  You
 only have yourself to blame that it didn't make it on the ballot.

Well, i blame Manoj (not wearing his secretary hat) for doing the call for
vote, after i had made the final proposal, proposal which should have been
consensual, and Manoj (as-DD) was aware off, and even helped with the wording.

I blame Manoj (wearing his secretary hat) for actually following through on
the vote, knowing there was an important proposal missing, as he has done in
the past, and his power as secretary allowed.

This comes from an evident conflict of interest, for Manoj being at the same
time proposer of the amdendment in question, doing the call for vote, being
the secretary, and holding the delegation of the DPL to shorten the vote.

  Have you actually read the resolution which was voted ? Have you voted for 
  it,
  and if so i am interested in knowing what you thought you where voting for.
 
 Yes I voted for it, and no I didn't read any of the proposals, I
 just placed some random numbers in front of the choises.

Nice, so, i want to know what you think is the effect of the resolution you
voted ? Will we keep the non-free firmwares, or not, some of them, and if so
which ? And what is it you actually wanted.

 But I did not compare what we voted on and your proposol, I wrongly
 assumed that you were talking about that, so it made little sense to me.

Ok, please read this mail : 

  
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing?action=show#head-c26dd537094f806af748898fb0c8c512c99e4be4

Which should make all the differences very clear.

 I'm sorry if I don't always read what you say, you tend to write too
 much, and repeat yourself too much, and I don't have the time to read
 it and find out what changed.

Sure, which is why i started new threads for important stuff, and why i tried
to send the above to d-d-a, but someone along the way diverted it. Not sure
why, and if they abused their powers to do so though.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: seconds searched for override of resolution 007 needed. (Was: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.)

[Sven Luther]

Sorry, was supposed to be a private reply.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 04:05:57PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 Can you spell out for us which kernel modules, in the opinion
  of the kernel team, are certainly sourceless GPL stuff? Please make
  sure you have the official opinion of the kernel team, and that you
  are saying that these modules do contain sourceless GPL'd material.

The complete list at :

http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing?action=show#head-93ba883132bc3ebc09131100ec6bb6fbfb5e3e61

Include code which Larry stated where unlikely to be the actual form of
modification. I think he even said something along the lines of no sane coder
would write such directly in hex. 

There are some which are big enough that it would not be practical to write
them directly in hex, so there is little doubt about the outcome.

Furthermore, i want to reminid you about the broadcom/tg3 precedent, for such
a case which was previously sourceless GPL, and now, after clarification from
the copyright holder after *OUR* prompting, shows :

 * Firmware is:
 *  Derived from proprietary unpublished source code,
 *  Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Broadcom Corporation.
 *
 *  Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware
 *  data in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright
 *  notice is accompanying it.
 
Notice how it says : Derived from proprietary unpublished source code.

This precedent and anlysis shows that a huge portion of the 40+ or so affected
firmwares are most probably sourceless GPL files, and thus illegal to
distribute. See also various hints concerning variables and defines with CODE
in their name, or UCODE or variants thereof.

So, you want an official statement of the kernel team ? What about :

  
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing?action=show#head-98e7641feaea08b775f4d5c58d071b77ff172c90

Which says : 

  2. Sourceless binary blobs distributed under GPL.

   This situation has been interpreted as a violation of the terms of GPL, which
   requires the distribution to be accompanied by the source code. Removal of
   firmware in this category will cause effective removal of a large number of
   important drivers, resulting in a severe negative impact on our users.

No direct list is given here, but again this was based on larry's list.

In any case, i will let others reply to this, as it is clear you won't accept
my word for this, and it is past time others of the kernel team got involved
in this again.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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position statement from the kernel team over the current non-free firmware GR vote (Was: Call for votes for GR: : Handling source-less firmware in the Linux kernel)

[Sven Luther]

Hello,

The kernel team consider that neither of the two proposals currently under
vote [1] are a good solution to the non-free firmware problem. Furthermore, 
a consensual proposal has now reached enough seconds [2] to be put to vote,
and is much preferable, both in clearness of text as in actual content. 

The proposal made by Josselin (Choice 2) will have a hard time to pass,
as it needs 3:1 supermajority. It gives a longer term exception for
firmwares beyond the etch release, which we believe not being necessary,
and furthermore, it is an amendment to the original proposal from Steve,
now withdrawn, and is thus less clean.

The proposal originally from Frederik as amended by Manoj (Choice 1) has
serious issues. It doesn't correspond to the wish of the kernel team,
as expressed by the position statement at [3] following the kernel team
meeting about the firmware issue. This proposal is titled : Choice 1:
Release Etch even with kernel firmware issues but this is highly
misleading, since the actual proposal in many ways contradicts this.
The proposal states : 

  1. It forces us to not release as part of etch those firmwares removed
 in sarge, which include popular drivers used for installation as tg3
 and acenic (Point 3.).

  2. It means illegal to distribute firmwares will have to go (good),
 altough it is silent about the sourceless GPL ones (Point 4.).

  3. It means we will not distribute firmwares with non-DFSG free licenses
 (Point 4.). This is highly confusing, because the distinction is made
 on the licenses, and not on the actual freeness, and it thus favours
 firmwares under free licenses, but not respecting the terms of the
 licenses, over those firmwares whose copyright holder has clarified
 their licensing, like broadcom did for the tg3 license.

Furthermore, the current choice 1, which will allow to ship sourceless GPLed
firmwares, should have needed a 3:1 supermajority, as it directly contradicts
the DFSG.

For all these reasons, the kernel team believes that the solution proposed
at [3], and which already reached enough seconds, and will thus be needed
to be voted on, is a better solution, and since it is not possible anymore
to amend the current ballot, we urge all voters to vote Further Discussion,
and allow for the recast of a new ballot containing the better solution, and
possible other amendments (like a rewording of Josselin's proposal on top of
the consensual proposal for example).

On behalf of the Debian Kernel Team, 

Friendly,

Sven Luther

  [1] - http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007
  [2] - http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/10/msg00183.html
  [3] - 
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing#head-98e7641feaea08b775f4d5c58d071b77ff172c90


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 09:04:48AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Sat, 7 Oct 2006 06:49:17 +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
4. We allow inclusion of such firmware into Debian Etch, even if
   their license does not normally allow modification, as long as
   we are legally allowed to distribute them.
 
 This clause is a violation of the DFSG, being able to modify
  whatever we ship (apart from license texts) is a core part of what
  free software is. Electing not to apply the DFSG violates the SC,
  which says everything we produce would be free according to the
  DFSG. 
 
 
 No matter how you look at it, this proposal supersedes either
  the DFSG or the SC, or both, even though it does so only
  temporarily -- and superseding a foundation document requires a 3:1
  super majority.

Probably, but then choice 1. of the ballot currently under vote should have
had 3:1 supermajority also, which added to misleading wording of the short
title compared to the actual content of the proposal, cast some serious doubt
as to the validity of the vote being currently held.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: position statement from the kernel team over the current non-free firmware GR vote (Was: Call for votes for GR: : Handling source-less firmware in the Linux kernel)

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 05:14:21PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
 On Friday 13 October 2006 16:13, Sven Luther wrote:
  For all these reasons, the kernel team believes that the solution
  proposed at [3], and which already reached enough seconds, and will thus
  be needed to be voted on, is a better solution, and since it is not
  possible anymore to amend the current ballot,
 
 
  we urge all voters to vote Further Discussion,
 
 Why is this needed? Can't the new ballot be voted on anyway even if the 
 current one is already accepted?

Not with the current wording, accordying to Manoj. If Choice 1. passes, the we
will have to amend the second proposal accordyingly, but this is an attempt
not to do so.

Also, considering the confusion involving the wording of the short
description, we will have the same mess as in the cosmetic changes days,
which i believe is not a good thing.

 As the vote is already underway (and the voting period almost finished), it 
 seems that this call for recasting votes *could* have very undesired 
 effects depending on who decides to recast their votes and who not.

Well, voting the two proposals in order of preferance but below FD, should
have no ill effect.

 For example, I'd expect people who want a less restrictive solution for Etch 
 to change their vote sooner than people who would prefer all firmware to be 
 removed.

Which in itself lends strength to the claim that the wording of the short
description is misleading, right ? 

 It seems to me changing votes is very ill-advised and I would therefore urge 
 all voters to just vote the current ballot in the way they think best, 
 looking only at the options available in the ballot and to not be 
 distracted by things that may or may not happen later.
 I at least will not change the vote I've already submitted.

And how much of that is directly correlated to your anti-sven campaign ? 

Has has repeteadly been the case these past few month, your prejudice is
showing, and you don't lose an occasion to bash on me, right ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Firmware vote rationale

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 02:23:05PM +, Thaddeus H. Black wrote:
 This is to record the reason behind my firmware GR vote
 (not that you are expected to mind what I think, but I
 wish to go on record at vote time anyway).  Debian
 should in my view treat firmware differently than other
 software.  Although this does not necessarily mean that
 Debian should distribute the firmware, trying to fit the
 DFSG to firmware is like trying to fit A.J.'s shoe to an
 elephant; the two were never made to go together.
 
 My vote:
 
 [ 1 ] Choice 1: Release Etch even with firmware
 [ 3 ] Choice 2: Special DFSG exception [3:1]
 [ 2 ] Choice 3: Further discussion

Notice that Choice 1:, including the amendment proposed by Manoj says :

  3.
  We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the progress
  made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian relative to the Sarge
  release in Etch

  4.
  We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit out;
  for this reason, we will treat removal of sourceless firmware as a
  best-effort process, and deliver firmware in udebs as long as it is
  necessary for installation (like all udebs), and firmware included in the
  kernel itself as part of Debian Etch, as long as we are legally allowed to
  do so, and the firmware is distributed upstream under a license that
  complies with the DFSG.

Point 3. says we cannot release etch with those firmwares which where stripped
for the sarge release, which include, among others, the tg3 firmware, for a
very popular gigabit ethernet driver.

Point 4. forbids distribution of the illegally to distribute firmware, which
include all those firmwares which are de-facto under the GPL, but lack
sources. Point 4. also forbids distribution of DFSG non-free firmwares, and
thus we must get ride of all the problematic firmwares, and the short title is
highly misleading, if not a plain tentative to abuse the voter.

As such, the best vote in this current situation, is to rank Further
discussion above all other choices, and to consider the proposal favored by
the kernel team, and which was coined to reach a consensus everyone could
agree with, and found at :

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/10/msg00183.html

(Still needs 2 seconds though).

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Final consensual proposal for the problematic firmware issue in the linux kernel sources.

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 10:37:50AM -0700, Kevin B. McCarty wrote:
 I second the proposal below.  It explicitly takes effect only for Etch,
 and it will allow installation on machines requiring tg3 net drivers (of
 which I have one).
 
 I believe this is the fourth second, so it only needs one more?

Indeed, it needs only one more second.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Call for votes

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 11:56:12PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:51:32 +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 
 
 
  Given the way the secretary has hurried the vote, and the way
  everyone is ignoring the more mature proposal at :
 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/10/msg00183.html
 
  i now release the call for vote, and ask for a vote to be held with
  the original proposal from Frederik, which has had enough seconds
  since August 31.
 
 
 Frederik accepted the formal amendment, so there is no
  original proposal. There was no objection from anyone,  and the GR

There was objection, at least from me.

  has already been put to vote.
 
 If you and at least 5 other people feel that there needs to be
  a vote on  the initial version of Frederik's proposal, feel free to
  repropose it independently.

Everyone is ignoring me anyway, so you perfectly know that this will never
happen, thanks very much.

I feel strongly that the way things are currently going is dishonest on your
part, as well as on the part of the DPL, who asked me to delay the call for
vote.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Call for votes (Was: kernel firmwares: GR proposal)

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 09:20:37PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
 On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 09:51:32PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
  i now release the call for vote, and ask for a vote to be held with the
  original proposal from Frederik, which has had enough seconds since August 
  31.
 
 As a point of order, the original proposal from Frederik was superseded once
 he accepted Manoj's amendment, and several of the seconders of the original
 proposal also seconded the amended proposal, indicating their acceptance of
 the amendment.  Under the constitution, this means the proposal must get a
 new proposer and the seconds must be re-established in order to have a
 formal proposal.

Yeah, i know, Manoj told that. I wonder why it is not possible to keep the old
proposal ongoing, the same way a seconder can retake a proposal the original
proposer retire, not sure this makes sense.

That said, i consider that this proposal currently under vote is not a good
one, that i have been wronged when i agreed to delay the original call to vote
on the DPLs urging, since it is clear that all the effort i have done is now
showed in the trashcan, since we are voting on Manoj's proposal, which will
mean we have to get ride of a number of firmwares, among them the tg3
firmware, which is contrary to the result of the kernel team position
statement and will.

Frederik i don't understand why you did let that happen, and why you didn't at
least second the proposal we worked on together.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Call for votes for GR: : Handling source-less firmware in the Linux kernel

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Oct 07, 2006 at 06:52:41PM -0500, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
 - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 c2d43675-9efa-4809-a4aa-af042b62786e
 [   ] Choice 1: Release Etch even with kernel firmware issues

Manoj, you have again overstepped your Secretarial position, by issuing a
misleading title for the proposal you propose.

The proposal of Frederik would have allowed etch to release, while the one
amended by you, will cause more problems that it solves, in particular it will
mean many firmwares will have to go, among them the tg3 one, and so we either
drop support for the users of those hardware (and there was general outcry for
this one, even inside the kernel team when this was first proposed), or we
delay etch until the d-i folk get the support for non-free firmware going.

So, given this poorly worded ballot, i suppose the vote will be void anyway,
and i strongly call for everyone to vote further discussion over the other
solutions.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Call for votes for GR: : Handling source-less firmware in the Linux kernel

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 01:16:39AM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
 On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Sven Luther wrote:
  On Sat, Oct 07, 2006 at 06:52:41PM -0500, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
   - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
   c2d43675-9efa-4809-a4aa-af042b62786e
   [   ] Choice 1: Release Etch even with kernel firmware issues
  
  Manoj, you have again overstepped your Secretarial position, by
  issuing a misleading title for the proposal you propose.
 
 When Frederik accepted the proposed amendment, Manoj was no longer the
 proposer. Furthermore, the title of a voting option on the ballot is
 perfectly meaningless. Attempts by the secretary to make them

It may be meaningless, but i strongly believe it is misleading the voters if
the title is the opposite of what the proposal actually says.

And since Manoj hurried the vote out, while he knew there was further
discussion ongoing, because he didn't like other proposals which where being
proposed, i think he is at least coupable of manipulation, since most voters
will chose one or the other option, to get this issue out of the way and not
have to worry.

This is as strong a manipulation of the voting system as was done in the
syntactic change days, and if this one passes, i think we should find a new,
more neutral, secretary, who can be thrusted to not let his own personal
preferences over the votes being held, get in the way of his secretarial
duties.

 informative are appreciated, but any voter who actually pays any
 attention to them should be voting the null ballot, as they clearly
 haven't informed themselves appropriately.

Yeah, this is Manoj's defense, but the reality is elsewhere, because the
secretary is well respected, and helds a position thrusted by most voters.

 Finally, there's no reason to crosspost this stuff to multiple lists;
 complaints about the form of the ballot belong on -vote.

I believe that the debian-kernel should be informed, since most people there
will wake with a serious chock if this option passes, and it is contrary to
our express wishes, as stated in our statement of position on this issue, as
for the rest, i just did a group-reply.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: RFC: Final version of kernel team's firmware GR proposal, coined to be consensual to all those of good faith involved in the current discussion.

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Oct 07, 2006 at 09:19:58AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Mmm, i think it is important to mention the fact that they are hexdumps, 
  since
  all of them are, no ? 
 
 If all of them are, then mention it if you like, but why is it important
 what form the binaries are in?

It is for documentation purpose, to make sure they are no misunderstanding.

  Why should we delete those. Since in these age of dropping rationales from 
  the
  proposal, it is important to give a bit of context too. I would like to keep
  these points.
 
 It increases the amount of research prospective supporters should do.  Is it
 important that people agree on the reasons for an action, rather than just
 agreeing on the action?

Well i can understand some, but these are points all DDs should agree to
anyway, and they are pretty clear. They also should help to decide one way or
the other if there are any doubt in the rest.

The other proposals all had such clauses.

  4. We allow inclusion of such firmware into Debian Etch, even if 
their license
 does not normally allow modification, as long as we are legally 
allowed to
 distribute them.
   
   Where 'such' = 'problematic' and apparently not limited to those *in* the
  
  Yes, those we are speaking about in clause 3. Do you have a suggestion for
  better wording ? 
  
   upstream kernel.  I think it should be limited to the upstream kernel.
  
  Point 6. clearly restricts the firmware involved to those in the debian 
  kernel
  package and associated .udebs. I take it you fear that the kernel team will
  add additional not-kernel-related firmware binaries to the debian kernel
  package ? 
 
 No, I fear that the kernel team may add additional firmware binaries not in
 the upstream kernel, especially as I thought some poster claimed they
 already did in the past.

Ok, a few reality checks here are needed :

  1) Etch will release with 2.6.18, or possibly but unlikely 2.6.17. So, we
  already know what is in upstream.

  2) The kernel team is commited to solving the issue post-etch, as is shown
  in the rationale from Frederik, and in the GPL-violation clause, altough not
  in the non-free one. We have said so enough times on the lists and irc. So,
  we are not going to add such things.

  3) In any case, the GR only concerns itself for etch, and not what comes
  afterward, and it is relatively clear, given the current timeframe, that the
  currently in unstable kernel is the one who will ship with etch.

  What about saying this :
  
3. We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit 
  out;
   for this reason, we will treat removal of problematic firmware as a
   best-effort process, and in no case add additional problematic material
   to the upstream released kernel tarball. 
 
 I think that would cover this case in points 4-6 well, yes.

Cool.

  5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual 
license,
 and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL 
license.
   
   Unless we know that its copyright holder is a Linux copyright holder,
   I can't see how its licensing is thus implied just by being there.
  
  The linux kernel tarball has a GPL licensing statement in the root of the
  tree. Any file not explicitly given an individual license is thus under the
  GPL implicitly.
 
 Are you sure of that?  The GPL instructs: 'each file should have at least
 the copyright line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.'

So, then this means that those files have no copyright/license notice at all,
and are thus fully non-distributable.

  Furthermore, those firmware hexdump are usually (well, in the cases i
  checked), found inside files, which themselves have a GPL copyright 
  statement
  at the top, and thus their full content is licensed under the GPL.
 
 That's a different, less problematic case.

Why is that less problematic, in all cases, the source is missing, and thus
the firmware non-distributable.

 [...]
  may wish is better, yes, changing that.
 
 Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for your reply, it seems most people are boycotting me, as there
was no second at all to the proposal, and very little comment.

Sven Luther


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Re: [AMENDMENT]: Release Etch now, with source-less but legal and freely licensed firmware

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 07:50:49AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
 Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  List masters, this is evidence that Frans is not going to stop this, and as 
  i
  asked yesterday, i now re-iterate the demand for his ban from debian-vote.
 
 Come on, calm down.  That one was neither insulting nor attacking.  

Ah, no ? It nothing else it is false, and it is an attack.

It claims that i tendency to take disagreement as a personal insult of his
intelligence, which is not the case, i take badly people unwilling to take an
argumented position, and then resorting to ad-hominem attacks, and the kind of
i already told you so many times i have been getting here, while at the same
time they never say things clearly, and discard anything i say as the raving
of a madman or whatever, not counting the numerous tries to shut me up i get
from various irc channels.

It mentions my inability to properly read and really consider arguments from
others, just because i don't give up on repetitious bashing and hammering of
arguments which are poorly substantivated by arguments, and there is evidence
that others in this thread, including Frans himself, are indeed not even
reading what i write.

He mentions me always wanting to get the last word, while they refuse
argumentation and try to shut me up on menace, and resort to such tactics as
banning from project or mailing lists, because they happen to have the power
to do so, instead of providing valable argumentation, and accepting countering
arguments if they happen to be wrong.

Then it further claims that i say i want to obtain consensus, while at the
same time doing all their possible to stop me from being able to reach such
consensus, not wanting to discuss possible better wording, and propose
comments.

How can this discussion go forward and be ended in a reasonable way, if some
of the parties who need to be reached consensus with are unwilling to play the
game, and resort to insidious ad-hominem attacks ? 

And this behaviour has been coming from Frans since last fall, and he did so
on purpose as he told me on irc, and is nothing but an attempt to totally
discredit me, since he and others (like Steve Langasek), are bathed in
respectability, so they have the upper hand in these discussions, even though
they are on shacky argumentative ground.

And no, if they don't like my arguments and position, it is unacceptable to
resort to such ad-hominem attacks. They should provide proper argumentation,
and not always come repeating those same dubious and shaky ones, and they
should take in account counter arguments, as i have modified the initial
proposal and position based on feedback (and even on flames here). If nothing
else, they should respect the time i spent on this issue, as i respect the
time they spend on their respective areas of interest.

This is not what is happening, so saying calm down is fine, but i have been
under this kind of stuff since over a year now, and i can't take it anymore.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [PROPOSAL] Let's ship all firmwares included inthe pristine upstream kernel tarball in debian/etch.

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 07:58:24AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
 Frank Küster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Hi,
 
  this is at least clearly worded, unambiguous, and if it succeeds will
  allow to release etch without delay (at least without delay because of
  firmware problems).
 
 It seems this is not true (qlogic), and still might be interpreted,

There is nothing we can do about qlogic, the d-i team has already decided they
will not support users needing it.

 namely as trying to force the teams and RM to include things they think

There is nothing we can do to force the RMs to do such, they already said that
they will not be held by it, and will still block distribution of things they
find undistributable (well, they and the ftp-masters).

Furthermore, the wording of the proposal allow inclusion means that we can
include all those firmwares, but by no means that we will or must. As such, it
perfectly allows to remove those firmwares the RM find non-distributable, and
allows for a technical decision to be taken by the RM team and the kernel team
(and to a lesser degree the ftp-masters), 

 are undistributable.  Furthermore, I see Sven's current actions and
 statements as being destructive only, and do not want to help with
 that. 

No. I made this proposal, because Anthony asked for a vote to be held, and
Manoj abused his power to get the vote going, while he perfectly knew the
proposal at :

  http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing

was still under discussion. This is especially bad, since as has been noted by
Steve's reply to the DPL, the current proposal doesn't allow for the
distribution of important drivers, like the tg3 one.

Furthermore, i have been trying since a couple of weeks to reach a consensual
solution, while getting destructive behaviour from those we need to reach a
consensus with, as well as intimidation on vairous irc channels.

I am hearthily sick of this, and i guess most of the folk following -vote is
also, so this minimal and clear proposal allows the discussion to end, while
at the same time allowing to get a good solution on the technical level and
out of -vote.

As such, i urge you to not revert your seconding, just because you believe i
am destructive, which i am not, especially as this has nothing whatsoever to
do with the sub-thread concerning frans insidious ad-hominem attack against
me.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: [AMENDMENT]: Release Etch now, with source-less but legal and freely licensed firmware

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 08:49:46AM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 08:06:31AM +0200, Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 wrote:
  On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 07:50:49AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
   Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   
List masters, this is evidence that Frans is not going to stop this, 
and as i
asked yesterday, i now re-iterate the demand for his ban from 
debian-vote.
   
   Come on, calm down.  That one was neither insulting nor attacking.  
  
  Ah, no ? It nothing else it is false, and it is an attack.
 
  (blah blah blah blah)
 
 *sigh* and here it starts again...

And you have again to comment on it right ? 

Sven Luther


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RFC: Final version of kernel team's firmware GR proposal, coined to be consensual to all those of good faith involved in the current discussion.

[Sven Luther]

Hello, 

I paste here the last instance of the draft proposal by the debian kernel team
[1]. Well, mostly me and Frederik, with direct input from Manoj, and reflecting
assorted comments from others, Steve and Anthony being the most prominent ones.

Please review this, especially with regard to english spelling, and comment.
This will probably be the last round of comments before we propose the
resolution for vote.

As the DPL asked us, the resolution was coined to achieve maximum consensus by
all parties involved in this discussion, both those wanting to keep the
firmware in, those wanting everything purged and those with more nuanced
opinions. It also reflects the result of the irc meeting held last saturday
about this issue, and the subsequent draft position statement of the kernel
team [2]. So, we are asking a maximum number of persons of the three involved
teams (debian-kernel, RM and debian-installer) to second this proposal.

As for proposers of alternative proposals, i urge you to read this proposal,
and if it overlaps your own proposal, to retire your proposals, in order to
present a strong consensus to the voters.

== START OF PROPOSAL == 
Definition: For the purpose of this resolution, the firmware mentioned below
design binary data encoded as hexdumps in some of the linux kernel drivers and
whose purpose is to be loaded into a given piece of hardware, and be run
outside the main memory space of the main processor(s).

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software
 community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware
 issue, both upstream and in the debian packaging; however, it is not
 yet finally sorted out;

  3. We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit out;
 for this reason, we will treat removal of problematic firmware as a
 best-effort process.

  4. We allow inclusion of such firmware into Debian Etch, even if their license
 does not normally allow modification, as long as we are legally allowed to
 distribute them.

  5. We further note that some of these firmware do not have individual license,
 and thus implicitly fall under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
 We will include these firmware in Debian Etch and review them after the
 release. Vendors of such firmware are advised to investigate the licensing
 terms, and make sure the GPL distribution conditions are respected,
 especially with regards to source availability.

  6. We will include those firmware into the debian linux kernel package as well
 as the installer components (.udebs) used by the debian-installer.
==  END OF PROPOSAL  == 

On behalf of the other proposal crafters,

Friendly,

Sven Luther

[1] - 
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing#head-bf5edfa54af87d70d2f39f434703848b55569eef
[2] - 
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing#head-98e7641feaea08b775f4d5c58d071b77ff172c90


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Re: draft ballot for the firmware vote

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 01:01:10AM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
 On Fri, 06 Oct 2006, Sven Luther wrote:
  Manoj, if you don't stop this manipulation now, i am going to ask
  for your recall as secretary, not sure if this is possible under the
  constitution.
 
 Manoj has not done *ANYTHING* that requires secretarial powers so far.
 Indeed, the secretary *CANNOT* issue a call for votes unless they are
 the proposer or sponsor of a resolution which will appear on the
 ballot. The only thing Manoj can do, which he has not yet done to my
 knowledge, is alter the ballot from what the person calling for a vote
 has suggested.

Maybe, but Manoj wearing a double hat on this, is troublesome.

  During weeks, you have resisted bringing the original proposal from
  frank to vote,
 
 Only the proposer or a sponsor can make a call for votes; if Frank
 wanted to bring the proposal to a vote, he could have done so himself.
 Since he hasn't, claiming that Manoj has resisted bringing the
 original proposal to a vote is incorrect.

I did do a call for vote when i finally noticed that it was our place to do
it, i was flamed on irc and mailing lists to do so though.

  and now, because there are new proposals you dislike, you are going
  to rush the election. This is a clear abuse of your Secretarial
  position, and is not in order.
 
 There's nothing wrong with calling for a vote at any point after the
 minimum discussion period has elapsed. If you haven't submitted
 appropriate amendments by that point in time, then it's no one else's
 fault but your own. [If they haven't been seconded by enough people,
 then they just weren't popular enough.]

Manoj was aware of the proposal being worked on, he even participated in its
reviewing.

 These proposals have been around for weeks, they've been discussed for
 weeks. Lets get on with it.

Please see the final RFC for the ballot proposed by me and frederik.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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