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Posted Jan 26, 2017 22:18 UTC (Thu) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752)
In reply to: Transcription by corbet
Parent article: The trouble with FreeBSD

Disciplinary action against a project member is indeed moot if that member leaves the project. What can they do at that point?

Perhaps investigate why the issue went on for so long?[0] The quote above seems essentially like the "bad apples" narrative recast into question form (which was my issue with the presentation and thought the LWN article did not adequately consider). Note that I'm assuming both good faith and potential disagreement.

The "rock star developer problem" might also seem like revisionist history (is there any other kind? ;-)) to some, which again seems to detract from the value of the article. There /are/ larger issues to talk about here. Focusing on individual actions (let alone individual qualities) feels like a distraction, to this commenter at least.

As for things going on for a long time...he did, several times, that slowness to act is one of the project's big problems.

That's certainly one reading of the events (see [0]). Instead of getting mired in the (very much debatable) specifics, let me simply restate my point about how simply transcribing the presenter's claims (a) reinforces what I consider to be a misleading and counterproductive narrative about bad apples and (b) opens the article up to criticism about inadvertently reproducing a significantly slanted version of past events (I dare say the story of how Matthew Dillon left FreeBSD might not be so clear cut either[1]).

I don't consider this to be a controversial position.

[0] Had to dig a bit to find the account of the developer who was so harassed. AFAICT she's pointing out a number of facts that contradict the narrative given by the presenter and casts doubt on the willingness of the core team to actually take action https://web.archive.org/web/20161007003804/https://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-known-as-freebsdgirl/

[1] Tangentially, stereotyping people is bad enough, but all of rock-star, ninja and 10x- developer? Please :-)

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Posted Jan 26, 2017 23:08 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (3 responses)

I believe that a FreeBSD core team member's view of how the core team acted (or failed to act) is relevant, I do not apologize for covering it. You are free to disagree with it, but I'm not really sure why you're shooting the messenger here.

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Posted Jan 27, 2017 0:44 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

I thought the coverage was appropriate, you covered well the response by the community in a summarized form this was intended to be. If someone wanted more details the full talk is available to watch and the mailing lists and other information are in the FreeBSD archives.

The poster is requesting more detail than is appropriate for the intent and length of the article. I doubt there's very many people reading this that wanted a 40 page blow by blow of what happened and what the response was and I seriously doubt you'd want to write it.

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Posted Jan 27, 2017 10:18 UTC (Fri) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

The poster is requesting more detail than is appropriate for the intent and length of the article. I doubt there's very many people reading this that wanted a 40 page blow by blow of what happened and what the response was and I seriously doubt you'd want to write it.

In case it's still unclear: that's pretty much the opposite of what I requested.

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Posted Jan 27, 2017 10:14 UTC (Fri) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link]

There is no messenger here. LWN has agency in what it chooses to cover and how. Selecting to cover this presentation was an editorial choice. Choosing to relate these details of the presentation and not others. Transcribing without commenting or checking of the facts. Those are all choices that matter. They are, in effect, speech.

Choosing what to reproduce and disseminate is a statement. It may have been intentional. It may not. It's still a statement of LWN, not of the presenter.

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Posted Jan 27, 2017 0:48 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (2 responses)

Focusing on individual actions (let alone individual qualities) feels like a distraction, to this commenter at least.

My reading is that those are intended to be case studies. Providing specific, concrete examples of problems is often a better way of making a point than some kind of dry summary that people might dismiss as speculative.

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Posted Jan 27, 2017 10:36 UTC (Fri) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (1 responses)

Right. The concrete example I would expect is that, in this instance, harassment was allowed to go on until a person was driven away from the project. That the offending person left and so the core team did not take a position. That what remains of this exercise in norms setting is (in quotes in the article) a "patched-up rush job" of a code of conduct. It is at this level that I'd expect the issue to be discussed.

Reiterating my earlier point, the focus on individual qualities seems to be exactly because the narrative is "there were problematic people but that sorted itself out by everyone leaving"[0].

[0] The presentation (article?) fails to mention that the person being harassed had to leave too. I would think this bit of information would find its way into any kind of well-intentioned case study.

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Posted Feb 2, 2017 11:13 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

"The police didn't bother to investigate the fight because the perpetrators ran away".

Is that a good analogy to what happened? Aggelos is concerned because the person/people concerned left, and he has no idea whether the offender left or the victim was driven out.

Unfortunately, this seems quite common - I gather gentoo had this sort of trouble a while back :-(

Cheers,
Wol

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Posted Feb 2, 2017 11:38 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Thanks for linking to the blog post with another perspective on one of the examples given.

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Posted Feb 2, 2017 16:35 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

> I dare say the story of how Matthew Dillon left FreeBSD might not be so clear cut either

Yes, my thought as well.