I'm sure people unfamiliar with this situation are horribly confused by this point.
As DPL, I think I have a duty to try and give the electorate enough information to evaluate situations like this while retaining privacy and neutrality. I'm going to try and do so. My understanding is that in early 2017, some rather public and concerning accusations were made. As DebConf17 approached, the DebConf local team made a decision that Teemu disagreed with and protested. For a while, the Debconf team failed to respond to Teemu's protest. The DPL at the time escalated and asked for them to respond. They did, declining to engage in a discussion because of the sensitive nature of the situation, but pointed Teemu at another team in Debian. Jonathan was copied at least on the mail where the local team declined to engage further, but I suspect that was in his role as a DebConf Committee Member. According to Jonathan's mail here he was not involved in the decision in question. Moreover, according to mail from another DebConf committee member, the decision is one that the local team took without involving the DCC as a whole. All evidence I have supports Jonathan and the DCC's claim that they were not involved. However, I have not explored exactly who did make the decision. The DCC wishes that they had been involved earlier in the process. I'll note that this is the kind of decision that is often taken in a very small group, and I think it would be reasonable either to involve or not to involve the DCC at the choice of the local team. (I suspect some DCC members will disagree with me). Around the time Teemu brought up this issue on debian-vote, he sent mail to the current project leader as well as people involved in the previous exchange, asking for help deescalating the situation. His proposal for how to do that seemed like it was going to be an escalation rather than a deescalation. I responded with an alternative, describing the situation under which I thought it made sense to go forward and describing what a deescalation might look like. I have received no mail sense then. --Sam
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