Hello. [Long delay, mothers birthday, sick, etc]
On Sat, 2011-11-12 at 21:58, Youness Alaoui wrote: > > Thank you for this well written and thought out email, I agree with you on > everything you said (even the bits in which you criticize me), so thanks > again for that. The psychology minor should be worth at least something. :) > I would just like to add a few explanations, you seem to see me as someone > who barks up at raster and tries to change him by forcing him into a > corner, and you are right to believe that because I guess that's what I > show somehow. However that is and was not my initial intention, so here is > "my story" : > Initially, I've had a few interactions with raster which always seemed to > end up with me feeling bad because of how he talks to me, I kept feeling > almost bullied, but I didn't give it too much attention, I was told by > others not to take it personal as that's just how raster is. My excitement > for the project was getting hit everytime I spoke to raster. I cannot point > out a log and say "this sentence was harsh", it was just the general mood > of the discussions, the way he talks to you makes you feel dumb and he > seems condescending, even if he's trying to be nice. And while I understand > the stress issues you've brought up, I did not take these into > consideration at the time, as all I could see was someone's attitude being > that of a condescending leader who takes charge, is very stubborn, and > doesn't accept any criticism. As a side joke, someone told me that he was > able to change raster's opinion "once", and it was an accomplishment. So I > believe he is stubborn, he sees his designs, his ideas as better than > everyone else's and he understands everything while others cannot > understand what he knows, so when you give a suggestion, he turns it down > in such a way that it feels "I know better, you are stupid, your intellect > cannot begin to grasp the infinite knowledge needed to understand the issue > at hand, so I will tell you what to do and you must accept it".. this is > not what he says, but this is what it feels when you talk to him, and in > the end, he looks arrogant and almost like a bully. I'm not saying that's > who he is, I'm just saying that's what it feels like to others who talk to > him (ie. me in this case). > This attitude made me feel bad a few times and demotivated me, thankfully, > I've had some excellent chats with other devs in #e.fr and the community > there is warm and welcoming and now I usually just hang there instead of > #edevelop. > Now I've seen many people talk the same about raster, many feel the same > way, and many simply tell me not to talk to him, or that we shouldn't > discuss anything with him, and I've seen a lot of 'hate', anger, > disappointment with some of the things he does, but noone seems to just > tell him. One thing I really hate, it's that excuse of "he is like that, so > let him". That sentence pisses me off to no extent and I usually reply with > "he's a pedophile, so let him rape children because that's just how he > is?", it's an extreme counter example, and that's how I always feel when > people have to tiptoe around someone else's defects. If someone > is being an ass, you tell him he's an ass and he must fix > himself, you should not have to endure him just because it's his > personality. Everytime, the pedophile example pops to my mind, > and I get frustrated when I see people tiptoeing around others. Well, the unpleasent example aside, tiptoeing around other peoples defects is what other people actually call social skills. :) If you work with people you need to understand what they are capable of and what not. And then you need to arrange it that mostly the advantages are visible. You want change people. You may change their opinions on some aspects of a discussion and they maybe tell you that they will change (if you are the boss), but people only change from within not from the outside. Giving hints and help for the change is possible, but the change itself can not be done from the outside. > I have a lot of respect for raster, I know his skills and I'm the first to > say that he is a very talented developer. But that talent does not excuse > his behavior, if I feel offended by someone, I will tell them, I will not > keep it to myself just because I respect his programming skills. But either > way, I decided not to confront raster because it is simply not my place to > do so. But then your complain came in bursts. Held back to long and then expressed in mails he is likely to get offended by. (And you should really look for better examples, nearer to the topic and not handicapped with such problematic topics. My witch hunt term was a bad example here as well.) > Then we've had that discussion about the release, and while I was politely > trying to explain my point of view, I get increasingly pissed at raster > (and his faithful followers) ignoring some of our arguments and > concentrating on the simple "I do not like/want this" but what ticked me > off is when raster, the master of being rude, tells me that I'm the one > being rude because I give my opinion, and he has the audacity of basically > saying my opinion means nothing because I'm not a major contributor (== I'm > not him). I am usually nice and polite, but when someone pisses me off and > I reach a certain threshold (which I admit, is often quite low), I explode, > at which point, there is no limits to what I can say. So when raster yelled > at me and said that I'm rude, I did not accept that so I decided to let him > know what I think of him exactly. He ignored pretty much everything I said > though. If I think about the long mail you wrote I would say you could be happy that he ignored almost everything targetted at him personally. :) > In this specific thread, I did not start the drama (I don't believe I did), > one of the new contributors says he is also pissed at raster for the way he > spoke to him, and I replied to raster basically telling him "hint, hint, > read back what I wrote in anger last time, because you ignored it, but now > maybe you'll realize there was truth in it", at which point he finally > decides to snap at me and start yelling and taking it personal (which he > refrained from doing in the initial outburst email). > Now, I'm not trying to change raster or to force him into a corner. I'm > trying to make him realize what he's doing That is really just two sides of the same medal. Jelling at him to realize something is always forcing the person in some corner where he does react differently. The same was happening to you as you described above. You wrote that you have felt bad after talking with him. That is exactly the same. He was not giving you enough space in the discussions and you have been standing back to the wall in a corner. Making you feel bad. > because I honestly believe that > he's killing the project in some way. He's building the project, but > killing it at the same time. I don't think he has much leadership skills, > he demotivates people, he drives away contributors, he makes decisions that > are what he thinks is right and you cannot contradict it even if you know > it's the wrong move. How would you know that they are wrong? Fromyour own projects/work experience certainly. That a different communit and or workplace. Strategies that work somewhere are not bound to work elsewhere. This community needs to find strategies. Ideas from elsewhere should be welcome but that does not mean they need to be taken as is. Take me as an example. I would switch to git, I would change the coding style, I would handle releases in a different way. This may attract new developers, but it certainly will also drive others away. But I'm not trying to bring this all in here as it is already established in a very old project. I respect what is here and deal with it instead of changing every project I work on. And who knows if such changes really bring in so many new developers. Neither of us is able to predict the future. Its always a challenge to find the balance between keeping what you have and doing something new. Growing is even more of a challenge. While the EFL libs are getting momentum the E17 WM does not as much and I don't see the big market of interest develoeprs in E17 just waiting to join us. > I think that's pretty much "my story" as to this whole deal and I hope you > can understand me better, I'll answer your specific comments inlined below. To be honest, not much new turned up in here what I did not figure out from all the other mails I read. But it helped to summarize it and let me respond to kind in an easier fashion. Thanks for this. > On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Stefan Schmidt > <ste...@datenfreihafen.org>wrote: > > > I have not joined any of these flame wares before as I don't think to > > change anything significant but only start to hurt peoples feelings > > for each other. But I had to join here as it started to look like a > > witch hunt on raster here. Please take a moment when reading this. > > Thanks for your time. > > > Not a witch hunt on raster, honestly. Simply frustration at a dying > community. If someone else is causing issues, I will speak out just the > same (and if I am the one causing issues, I would not want it any other way > than people calling me out for my mistakes). You can't treat different people the same way. Simply not possible. And while you wanted to be called out like this, maybe not exatcly the same way you did it in some mails, it may not fit for others. > > On Sat, 2011-11-12 at 13:43, Youness Alaoui wrote: > > > > > > you don't seem to read what I wrote, you ignore the facts.. the facts are > > > not the commits or how bad they were, the facts were your attitude and > > > condescending bullshit. but yeah,you don't seem to be able to acknowledge > > > that, since you're perfect and everyone else is wrong. > > > > Great, personal insults are getting us really forward here. This is > > one of the social skills you are calling here for. Discussing with > > others without getting into personal insults. Given this mail and the > > long rant where you "behaved like a dick" (citation from you) are > > letting me wonder if you are able to call others for things you do not > > handle very well on your own. Something to thing about. > > > > Sorry, I don't see the personal insult in the quoted text. I do see sarcasm > though. And putting it into sarcasm does not hurt people? Its often used that way but does not make it any better. > I know quite well my issues, I am usually a nice person until you make me > snap, at which point, you won't recognize me. I have absolutely no problem > in being a dick towards people who, I believe, deserve it. I'm a > "reactionary dick" if you want.. But it own your private "social skills to improved" list. :) > I see raster as being a dick by default. > However, I am pointing out what annoys me in raster's behavior, and I > believe I am entitled to do that without the need for me to perfect.. noone > is perfect anyways, so no reason for me to shut up until I fix my own > personal issues. Surely you don't need to shut up. I need to point out that you could improve the tone of your mails when comlaining about the tone of others. > He may not respect me, so he has no reason to listen to me and change his > behavior. But I was hoping to maybe trigger others to finally speak out. I > see a lot of people angry at raster but noone talks, if I can get people he > knows and respect to finally speak their mind, maybe he'll listen to them. Maybe they don't see the situation not as the same drame, with a dying community, as you do. > > But now to the things we can change. You and Gustavo are trying to > > change this project in a direction that should be more welcoming for > > developers and users. Making the community grow. I welcome this move, > > but doing something like this can not happen by bringing everything > > down that happened so far. Raster brought this all to the point what > > we have today. Motivating people on the road and de-motivating people > > on the road. Again, very natural as we don't live in flower-power > > land. :) > > > /me wants to live in flower-power-land :) Hmm, I once had some routing informtion to it, but considered it to boring to go there. Thus I stayed active in the overall FOSS community. :) I left some parts out form your mail to focus on the important topics. I hope it did not destroy any meanings of it. > > For the matters at hand the following could be done: > > > > o Tarballs: Everyone seem to speak about daily tarballs. What I read > > from the openbsd guys have not been daily tarballs but tarballs for > > an alpha or rc to check if everything is fine beofre the actual > > release. Such tarballs are fine and have already been acknowledged > > and done before. They will even get some QA. And QA is something > > that differs from daily tarballs, like your script or a simple make > > disctheck, will produce. SOLUTION: Wait for the alpha and rc > > tarballs. > > > Tarballs as is are important, even non-QA-ed daily tarballs. And like I > told Jonathan, if he wants a guarantee that the tarball is good quality, > then he can just assume it is. Can you explain me why? I'm doing, and still do, release and distro engineering for embedded Linux system. Covering way to many software components. Thus I have to deal with the incoming software either as tarball, SCM, files or whatever. Some of them are actually releases other are tracking the bleeding edge of the development repos. If I take a tarball from a daily build, which is non-QA-ed by default I assume I could take a revision of the repo instead. If I take a release I expect a minimu set on QA from it. Depends on the project of course. Back to the topic. If daily tarballs are needed they can be done by anyone and automatically uploaded somewhere. You could do it, Jonathan could do it or others. What I read out from the mails was that tarballs have been requested for alpha and rc's. > > o OpenBSD patches: Vincent asked raster to have a look at the patches. > > He did look and pointed out what was wrong. Agreed, a bit to blunt > > maybe. He did mention better options though. Something that people > > like to ignore in this thread. (BSD specific malloc changes in > > mempool instead on every file using it, not changing API/ABI without > > discussing it here). SOLUTION: To calm this down you or Vincent or > > someone else can keep working with them to gte the changes in. That > > involves understanding why so much changes are needed and bringing > > it up here to discuss about a solution. Uninteresting work like > > reviewing patches from the ml and putting them into svn. But it > > helps to balance the load. Raster is nobody who calls others for > > doing things for him. He waits until he comes to it and does them > > alone. To me that looks like he lost his faith in this because it > > did not work out well in many cases. Sure, that is something he > > needs to improve. That is nothing that stops others from stepping up > > and doing it without being asked for though. Mike, Vincent, Cedric > > and others are reviewing patches here on the ml. That takes of load > > from raster. He did not ask them to do it. > > For your tarball script you could do the same. Why must it happen on > > the main machine? You can host them yourself and when they are > > really becoming popular they can get moved. Not enough capabilities > > for hosting? I bet e.fr or others can help out there. > > > I just think if the tarballs need to be public, they'd better be on a > public machine. I was thinking one of the e.fr machines out there or > whatever. I don't know yet how you guys would like to set it up. Talk to them. Getting a account there should be easy. Heck, even Mike got an account there ;) And uploading them automatically in your public_html is also easy enough. > > Phew, long mail. To long actually. The main point here is that it does > > not help to forcing raster into a corner here. He is the main driver > > of the project and if people like to expand it need to be done in a > > way that do not offend the people that are already working on it. > > People earn respect and faith of others in their work by actual > > doings. There must not be a leader who is always right and delegates > > work into his hierarchy of minions. You have a pet peeve topic? You > > want to improve it? Don't ask for permission, do it and improve the > > situation gradually. > > > Not very long email (I've seen and done worse) :) > As explained above, I just speak my mind, if I see something that bothers > me, I will do it, I down what to change this. Speaking up is good. Waiting for some ours to calm down and being polite in any case helps to de-escalate though. :) > I believe in brainstorming, I believe in people contributing as a group, > but I've learned in the short time I've been here, that the consensus is > "if you want something done, do it without telling anyone". I find it sad. Well, its more like doing it and discussing afterwards is people scream. Thats why so many spankies are around here. :) If you think about this resources being wasted it can make one sad, agreed. I you think about it as several steps to the final result it can make you happy. :) > That's it for my long email, sorry for taking up your time reading all of > that, I hope you can understand my motivations and my feelings a bit better. > Thank you again for your email, I really enjoyed reading your opinion on > the subject. You are welcome. regards Stefan Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ RSA(R) Conference 2012 Save $700 by Nov 18 Register now http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev1 _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
