Re: Censorship in Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 03:43:33PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> It sure seems that, in some sectors, disagreement is offensive, and offense
> trumps substance.  (One might point to our current President in that regard,
> as well.)

> I kind of wonder if Debian is headed that way - given the way the discussion
> on systemd went, not that long ago.

I don't know where you've gotten the impression that the systemd discussion
implies Debian does not tolerate disagreement.

*Respectful* disagreement has always been tolerated regarding Debian's
choice of default init system.  What should not be tolerated (and all of
these have actually occurred on Debian mailing lists, which is why this is a
sore subject) is:

 - accusations that members of the TC have sold out to a particular
   commercial entity
 - refusal to accept the decision that was made in accordance with the
   Debian constitution
 - attempts to readjudicate the decision on Debian mailing lists (as opposed
   to via a GR, which Debian developers do have a right to use to override a
   TC decision if they believe it was wrong).
 - using a disagreement about init systems to justify attacks on developers'
   character, integrity, or technical competence

There is no expectation that everyone agree with every technical decision in
Debian.  The only expectation is that they engage constructively in spite of
any disagreements.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Censorship in Debian

[Russ Allbery]

Martin Steigerwald  writes:
> Ian Jackson - 05.01.19, 18:17:

>> Very competently toxic people will calculate precisely what they can
>> get away with: they will ride roughshod over weak victims or in
>> situations with less visibility; when challenged by an authority who
>> can impose consequences, they will lie and obfuscate and distract as
>> much as they can get away with.  They will turn the dispute about their
>> personal bad behaviour into a big poltical fight so as to increase the
>> cost of enforcing the rules against them.  And if that fails they will
>> do precisely as much as is needed to avoid further punishment.

> Have you actually really seen such kind of behavior?

Yes.

Worse, I was young and stupid and didn't recognize what was going on, so I
let myself get taken in by it and made excuses for them and thus became
part of the problem.  I've hopefully gotten better at recognizing the
signs earlier now.

I don't think this is a problem that Debian is commonly plagued by, but
there are absolutely people in this world who I don't want to have
anything to do with, and if they join a community I'm a member of and that
community won't eject them, I will leave.  Because life is too short to be
on edge all the time, to be in a community that I cannot trust at all, or
to pour my emotional resources into that kind of scary black hole.

Hopefully eventually they'll realize how much they hurt other people, but
they can work on realizing that somewhere far away from me and anyone and
anything I care about.  I just want to have some fun working on free
software and maybe changing the world a little bit, hopefully in the
company of some people I can call friends.  At no point in that process
did I sign up to be part of a community psychological counseling effort
for dangerous people.

I am, to be clear, saying this in the abstract, and please don't read
particular people from the current discussion into this comment.  But you
asked a general question about whether such people truly exist in the
world, and the answer is yes, they do.

Also, to be clear, if you're reading this and thinking "shit, am I one of
those people?", you're not.  Almost by definition.  I have never seen
anyone who acted that way ask themselves that question.  One of their most
defining characteristics is that nothing, *nothing* is *ever* their fault
(although some of them can fake convincing apologies).

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Re: Expulsions Policy

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 06:48:31PM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> > On the FTP Team (of which I'm a non-delegated Assistant) it can take
> > weeks to get agreement on text to send out on an issue.  The email I
> > sent relatively recently to d-d-a regarding the team's view on
> > listing individual copyright holders in debian/copyright was
> > literally months in the making.

> You are comparing the workload of the FTP team which has to deal with
> many issues a year to workload of imposed by an expulsion process when
> has been used only a few times in Debian's history.  I trust you see
> the obvious problem.

> Obvious problem aside, we apparently think it is necessary to insist
> the Technical Committee provide similar a justification on the cases
> they decide upon each year, yet you are apparently are think asking the
> people who expel members to do the same thing is imposing an
> unreasonable workload.  Is how we deal with each other so unimportant?

"We" "insist"?

The constitution only defines that the TC has the power to make technical
decisions, and the voting process by which those decisions happen.  It does
not dictate that the TC provide any particular level of detail in their
justifications for these decisions, and to the extent that the TC does
provide detailed justification, it is because they agree that this is the
correct thing to do - *not* because anyone outside the TC "insists" on it.

Now, there are some common-sense reasons why the members of the TC *would*
want to do this.  It's self-defense of their own future time to write
decisions in a way that they are less likely to be questioned, and it makes
a better precedent when the justification is given, as it allows individual
developers to reason more clearly about how the decision does or doesn't
apply to future related questions.  And I think the DAM will ultimately opt
to provide insight into their recent decisions for similar reasons.  But
that's not because the project per se is formally requiring it.

> It probably isn't, because that effort you say is so unreasonable - the
> the DAM actually do it.  Did see read the their private email to the
> person concerned - that would be it.  This thing you are focusing on,
> the written justification wasn't the change I was asking for as they
> mostly do it now.  I was asking for something entirely different -
> transparency.

Should we also require a detailed opinion from the DAM for each person who
is admitted to the project, or only for those that were once admitted but
who the DAM has subsequently decided to expel?

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Censorship in Debian

[Martin Steigerwald]

Dear Ian.

Ian Jackson - 05.01.19, 18:17:
> Very competently toxic people will calculate precisely what they can
> get away with: they will ride roughshod over weak victims or in
> situations with less visibility; when challenged by an authority who
> can impose consequences, they will lie and obfuscate and distract as
> much as they can get away with.  They will turn the dispute about
> their personal bad behaviour into a big poltical fight so as to
> increase the cost of enforcing the rules against them.  And if that
> fails they will do precisely as much as is needed to avoid further
> punishment.

Have you actually really seen such kind of behavior?

I disagree with calling people toxic.

Also I am not sure how you'd come to know about about any agenda behind 
the behavior. How do you know about the intentions?

One part of the code of conduct as I got it is to assume good 
intentions, here, if I got you correctly you assume bad, harmful 
intentions for at least some people, people that you call toxic.

I can concur that people are different, have different view-points, 
different ways to communicate, different language, different behavior. But 
people aren't inherently good or bad or toxic. Well there are people who 
just troll, but other than that?

For me, any code of conduct and its enforcement needs to be based on 
actual behavior, never on assuming intentions or assuming about how 
people are.

I just maintain some packages, but I am quite concerned about the 
current discussions on debian-project and other public mailing lists.

I am quite confused and don't really know what is going on. I feel kinda 
overwhelmed by all I read so far and it does not give me a clear picture 
on what is actually really going on here. That it appears that a good 
portion of discussions happen on debian-private or other private 
channels does not appear to improve transparency as well.

So just all the best for anyone in the position to do something 
meaningful to help improving the situation. At the moment I feel kinda 
uncomfortable about the Debian project.

Ciao,
-- 
Martin

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Jonathan Carter]

On 2019/01/05 23:24, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> Military pilots of aircraft with ejection seats are limited both to a minimum 
> and maximum height.  It's not fair that if that's your dream job that you are 
> excluded because you are too tall or too short, but it just isn't 
> economically 
> or operationally feasible to develop, test, and maintain a wide variety of 
> ejection seats to accommodate the full range of the human condition.
> 
> All accommodations have practical limits.  In my reading of the Diversity 
> Statement and CoC, I don't see that recognized and I fear how far it will be 
> taken in the future.

I want to start off by assuring you that I understand what you mean, but
I can't think of an example of such a practical limit that would
currently apply to the CoC, can you?

The closest kind of example I can think of is if someone doesn't have
access to any kind of computer, it's kind of impossible to become an
uploading DD in such a case, and it's not that we're exclusionary, just
a practical limitation. However, I don't think that specific one is even
worth mentioning in a CoC, but if you have identified specific limits,
can you share them? A CoC can always be amended or at least some
annotations made to explain it.

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) 
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄  Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 04:24:32PM -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:

> I also have a lot of sympathy for people who feel they have been
> marginalized and it being worth working on making them feel welcome/not
> marginalized, but I think it has limits (and maybe this is the core of my
> concern relative to the CoC).  Not everyone can be accommodated.  There's
> broad agreement that someone who insists on an unfettered right to be an
> ass (for most any definition) isn't going to be made to feel welcome, but
> there's also a limit to how far the project can reasonably go in catering
> to people's concerns without it getting ridiculous.

> To pick a completely different type of example of the same kind of issue:

> Military pilots of aircraft with ejection seats are limited both to a minimum 
> and maximum height.  It's not fair that if that's your dream job that you are 
> excluded because you are too tall or too short, but it just isn't 
> economically 
> or operationally feasible to develop, test, and maintain a wide variety of 
> ejection seats to accommodate the full range of the human condition.

> All accommodations have practical limits.  In my reading of the Diversity 
> Statement and CoC, I don't see that recognized and I fear how far it will be 
> taken in the future.

I actually think the Diversity Statement does capture this, in the phrase:
"as long as they interact constructively with our community".

There are people from marginalized groups in our society that have been so
traumatized by their experiences that they *cannot* assume good faith from
white cis het men.  That's not their fault; nor is it Debian's fault.  But
as a project whose membership includes an awful lot of white cis het men, if
someone finds themselves unable to engage constructively around the work of
creating a free operating system without blaming their colleagues for past
traumas experienced elsewhere, I don't think they are going to find a home
in Debian.  (In truth, I think they are unlikely to ever make it far enough
to apply for DD given the obstacles involved.)

The corollary is that white cis het men who are participating in these wider
systems of oppression should not be allowed to retraumatize those from
marginalized groups within Debian - *including* by mocking or downplaying
the significance of that trauma.

It's a natural human reaction that when one white man sees another
superficially similar white man experience consequences for his behavior
towards people from another group while protesting his innocence, the first
man worries he will also be unjustly persecuted for doing something that he
didn't know was wrong.  But just as with the #HimToo movement, this isn't
supported by the actual data.  Over two decades of Debian history and
hundreds of white men, and only one has found himself expelled by the
project for this class of conduct.  This is hardly the opening salvo of some
great purge.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: On having and using a Code of Conduct

[Joerg Jaspert]

On 15273 March 1977, Matthew Vernon wrote: 

Appeals to the DPL wouldn't be compatible with the current 
version of our constitution. 
That is sort-of orthogonal to whether they'd be a good idea or 
not :) Yes, I see that the constitution specifically prohibits 
the DPL from withdrawing the delegation of a particular decision 
and from over-ruling delegates. Presumably DAM could say "we 
will voluntarily refer appeals to the DPL for their opinion and 
do as the DPL says", but that might be too much of subverting 
the intent of the constitution.


If we say that, we would speak against the constitution, as that 
explicitly mentions DPL not having stuff to do with accounts 
(8.1.2).


I'm not sure we really want to have people delegated just to 
review DAM appeals...


No need for that. Footnote 3 of the expulsion procedure mail shows 
one body we have.


--
bye, Joerg
The answer to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a beer 
bottle, they’re on TV.

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday, January 05, 2019 08:42:57 PM Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello Russ, Scott,
> 
> On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 11:44am -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Scott Kitterman  writes:
> >> I am concerned about Debian becoming over-politicized (beyond the core
> >> issue of Free Software, which has an inherent political aspect).  I like
> >> that the diversity statement isn't anti-anything.
> > 
> > Well, I'm in the camp that says that Debian is a political project at its
> > very core, and there's very little about Debian that has ever been *not*
> > political.  But I realize this is an ongoing argument over what
> > "political" means.  (I think a lot of people have an unreasonably narrow
> > definition.)
> 
> I wonder if Scott's notion of Debian becoming over-politicised is the
> idea that more explicit political agreement is being required in order
> to participate?
> 
> Something that fascinates me about Free Software is that very different
> political positions generate reasons to support its spread.  Economic
> libertarians, socialists and anarchists, for example, all have good --
> but different -- reasons to support Free Software.
> 
> For my own part, one huge advantage of participating in Free Software
> projects is the opportunity to come to understand the quite different
> reasons that other people have for upholding the same standards of
> freedom in software.
> 
> Scott, would it be right to describe your concern as the worry that
> participation in Debian seems to be coming to require a political
> position that has more in common with other participants than simply the
> property of generating reasons to support the spread of Free Software?
> 
> (I'm not expressing a view about whether I take that concern to be
> valid.  I'm just trying to see if I've understood where Scott is coming
> from any better.)

I think that's pretty close to it.

Personally, I have strong utilitarian views on why Free Software is a good 
thing (proprietary software is a business risk I am no longer willing to 
take).  I also think it's important from a freedom perspective to enable 
individuals to not be trapped by the decisions of large, not always so caring, 
entities be they government or corporate.

I'm also a Free Speech absolutist (almost - I think the cure for bad speech is 
almost always more speech, not regulation, but only almost).

I also have a lot of sympathy for people who feel they have been marginalized 
and it being worth working on making them feel welcome/not marginalized, but I 
think it has limits (and maybe this is the core of my concern relative to the 
CoC).  Not everyone can be accommodated.  There's broad agreement that someone 
who insists on an unfettered right to be an ass (for most any definition) 
isn't going to be made to feel welcome, but there's also a limit to how far 
the project can reasonably go in catering to people's concerns without it 
getting ridiculous.

To pick a completely different type of example of the same kind of issue:

Military pilots of aircraft with ejection seats are limited both to a minimum 
and maximum height.  It's not fair that if that's your dream job that you are 
excluded because you are too tall or too short, but it just isn't economically 
or operationally feasible to develop, test, and maintain a wide variety of 
ejection seats to accommodate the full range of the human condition.

All accommodations have practical limits.  In my reading of the Diversity 
Statement and CoC, I don't see that recognized and I fear how far it will be 
taken in the future.

So that was longer than I expected and I think I understand where I'm coming 
from better myself.  Thanks.

My bottom line is that today is a very divisive time in the world with many 
forces trying to drive wedges between groups and force people into one camp or 
another and then 'hate' the other tribe.  We'll be better off in Debian the 
more of that we can ignore.  Let's focus on the things we need to focus on to 
make Debian great and ignore the rest.

Another example and I'll quit:

As a US voter, I care deeply about the results of the last US presidential 
election.  If I'm arguing US politics with you and trying to bring you to vote 
in the future in what I think is the 'right' way, then your views on the 
issues that caused you to vote one way or another are really important.  If 
we're working on Debian, as long as we can participate constructively in 
Debian together, it's irrelevant.  

So let's not be more political than we need to be to get the Debian/Free 
Software job done.

Scott K

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Sean Whitton]

Hello Russ, Scott,

On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 11:44am -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:

> Scott Kitterman  writes:

>> I am concerned about Debian becoming over-politicized (beyond the core
>> issue of Free Software, which has an inherent political aspect).  I like
>> that the diversity statement isn't anti-anything.
>
> Well, I'm in the camp that says that Debian is a political project at its
> very core, and there's very little about Debian that has ever been *not*
> political.  But I realize this is an ongoing argument over what
> "political" means.  (I think a lot of people have an unreasonably narrow
> definition.)

I wonder if Scott's notion of Debian becoming over-politicised is the
idea that more explicit political agreement is being required in order
to participate?

Something that fascinates me about Free Software is that very different
political positions generate reasons to support its spread.  Economic
libertarians, socialists and anarchists, for example, all have good --
but different -- reasons to support Free Software.

For my own part, one huge advantage of participating in Free Software
projects is the opportunity to come to understand the quite different
reasons that other people have for upholding the same standards of
freedom in software.

Scott, would it be right to describe your concern as the worry that
participation in Debian seems to be coming to require a political
position that has more in common with other participants than simply the
property of generating reasons to support the spread of Free Software?

(I'm not expressing a view about whether I take that concern to be
valid.  I'm just trying to see if I've understood where Scott is coming
from any better.)

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Re: On demotions to DM status.

[Joseph Herlant]

Hi Charles,

While I understand the concern you're voicing, I think there's a part
that's missing here (and my apologies in advance for adding to the
mass of emails that has been going on recently).

To me, the difference between the DM and DD status stands on a matter
of trust in 3 components (those are the main ones I have in mind right
now):
* trust from the rest of the community that the contributor will
act/behave in the best interest of the project
* trust from the rest of the community that the contributor read and
will follow the project documentation and standards and make it evolve
(in the best interest of the project)
* trust from the rest of the community that the contributor have the
technical expertise to help the project move forward

And I think that the demotions DD -> DM (the ones I'm aware of) did
happen because the trust in one of those 3 components was broken.
The status of DM is, to me, a status where you work on (re)building
the trust. I don't think being a DM means less technical expertise.
That would seem a bit reductive.

Cheers,
Joseph

Re: Planet Debian revisions [and 1 more messages]

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Fri 04 Jan 2019 at 05:29pm GMT, Ulrike Uhlig wrote:

>> Exactly.  I understand Ulrike's practical concerns but do not consider
>> them to outweigh the need to avoid permanency.  Even writing "possible
>> CoC violation" could hurt someone twenty years down the line.
>
> Ack. I have no strong opinion on this detail and trust your judgement to
> find a possibility that would satisfy concerns of transparency while
> being respectful to privacy.

I've added a note to the wiki page about this.

-- 
Sean Whitton


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On demotions to DM status.

[Charles Plessy]

Hi all,

last month I expressed concerns related to the idea of demoting DDs to
DM status.  I quote them at the end of the message for convenience.

Later, there has been a discussion on the theme that technical
excellence should not be a reason for tolerating misbehaviours
(https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2018/12/msg00066.html).

Thinking about this, it came to me that demotions to DM status are also
problematic in that sense, because they are justified by the existence
of a tangible techical technical contribution, that the DM status shows
that it is still welcome.

Debian is nearly as sensitive to the behaviour of DMs and DDs, as they
interact with the same group of people, with similar regularity
(activity level is not a good predictor of who is DD and who is DM), and
will often face similar frictions (email misunderstanding, race
conditions and commit rights, conflict of interest when two packages
interact in a way that creates extra work that everybody is reluctant to
do, etc).  To some extent, the claim that DMs are not members of Debian,
while factual, is already questionnable when thinking about membership
under other perspectives, such as the collective responsibility of
keeping Debian's environment and reputation as excellent as possible.

Thus, in addition to the concerns that I quote below, I would like to
add think that demotions to DM status are also questionnable because
they seem to imply that repeated disrespect to our Code of Conduct will
have different consequence depending on how we value the person's
technical contribution.

I understand the difficulty of managing the fallout of the expulsions
and I am not pushing for a fast answer, but I hope that it can be
eventualy addressed by the DAMs, DPL and AH team.

Have a nice day,

Charles

On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 05:35:38PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> But concerning the demotion to Debian Maintainer (DM) status, I think
> that it is sending a wrong message to the community, that DMs do not
> need to hold the same standards of behaviour as Debian Developers
> (DDs) do.
> 
> Moreover, when the DM status was proposed in 2007, it was not thought
> as a way of punishment for DDs.  Even if one of a thousand DM has this
> status because of demotion, I think that this completely changes the
> balance on how this status serves our project.  Instead of being a
> positive way towards joining more formally, it becomes an inferior
> status.
> 
> Whether DD -> DM demotions will happen again and are going to become a
> new tool for solving social conflicts is an important decision that
> needs an open discussion where conesnsus is being sought.



-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Akano, Uruma, Okinawa, Japan

Re: On having and using a Code of Conduct

[Matthew Vernon]

Jonathan Wiltshire  writes:

> On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 11:26:01AM +, Matthew Vernon wrote:
>> Ben Hutchings  writes:
>> 
>> > On Thu, 2019-01-03 at 11:26 -0700, Eldon Koyle wrote:
>> >>   5. There doesn't appear to be an appeals process (contact DAM?)
>> > [...]
>> >
>> > There is, since any decision by the DPL or a delegate can be overridden
>> > by General Resolution.
>> 
>> This isn't really an appeals process in the usual sense, though - more a
>> Big Red Button. DAM might like to consider letting the DPL be a point of
>> review/appeal?
>
> Appeals to the DPL wouldn't be compatible with the current version of our
> constitution.

That is sort-of orthogonal to whether they'd be a good idea or not :)

Yes, I see that the constitution specifically prohibits the DPL from
withdrawing the delegation of a particular decision and from over-ruling
delegates. Presumably DAM could say "we will voluntarily refer appeals
to the DPL for their opinion and do as the DPL says", but that might be
too much of subverting the intent of the constitution. I'm not sure we
really want to have people delegated just to review DAM appeals...

Matthew

-- 
"At least you know where you are with Microsoft."
"True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle."
http://www.debian.org

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Ian Jackson]

Anthony Towns writes ("Re: Censorship in Debian"):
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 10:47:05AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > People seem to feel they're unreasonably put-upon by having to think about
> > what they're saying *at all*, but this is absurd.  Everyone else in the
> > world is doing this all the time.
> 
> There are times when you don't have to think about what you're saying
> before you say it; that situation is often called being "among friends",
> or "in a safe space", or "able to let your guard down".
> 
> I think it's probably news to a lot of people that Debian isn't that
> sort of a situation today.

Yes.  I think you have put your finger on it.

For a significant minority of Debian's contributors - including me -
Debian definitely used to be a place where we didn't have to think
about what we were saying.


The effects of that unbridled expression on other (potential) members
of the community was not something we thought about much.  But, at
least speaking for myself:

I have been hearing from a lot of people whose participation I care
about - often, people who already have lots of shit to deal with in
wider society.  Those people are saying that it would really help them
to have spaces like Debian have a nicer atmosphere, so that there is
less risk of being harshly criticised and where having a thick skin,
and plenty of emotional resilience, is not so necessary.

So I have been (haltingly) trying to improve my own behaviour.  Yes,
that's work.  Being pleasant to people whose ideas I consider
seriously wrong does not come naturally to me.  Sometimes, I fail.
But now that I and others in Debian are making this effort, I can see
the benefits - on both small and large scale.


But it's not enough for just those of us who have been convinced of
the value of this change, to try to make that change personally and to
help each other.

Unfortunately in a community of thousands there will inevitably be
some people who will continue to do what is harmful, but easy and
convenient and fun for themselves, and who will - at least initially
- reject suggestions that they too may need to think hard about how
their behaviour affects others people (and particular, how it affects
people who are not like themselves).

It is indeed natural for people to resent it, when previously they
could do what they liked, but now they are being being asked to
think about and moderate what they say and do,

So without some kind of consequences, unfortunate behaviour will
continue.  It is in fact very natural human behaviour to push
boundaries like that.  Even very agreeable people will sometimes
misbehave to the point of being mildly told off.

Very competently toxic people will calculate precisely what they can
get away with: they will ride roughshod over weak victims or in
situations with less visibility; when challenged by an authority who
can impose consequences, they will lie and obfuscate and distract as
much as they can get away with.  They will turn the dispute about
their personal bad behaviour into a big poltical fight so as to
increase the cost of enforcing the rules against them.  And if that
fails they will do precisely as much as is needed to avoid further
punishment.


Maybe even such a person could provide a net positive contribution,
but only by the community maintaining a constant threat of punishment.
(At least for many years, until perhaps their personal growth changes
the situation.)  That is exhausting for the moderators who are
responsible for policing the offender.

Particularly, patterns of lying, selective compliance, and so on, make
that job very hard, especially if the moderators are subject to
oversight by a body of largely naive and detached people who are
unfamiliar with how toxic people operate generally, and who cannot
fully and properly analyse every reported incident.

Perhaps it is better for the world as a whole for such a person to be
given the very serious shock of being permanently ejected.  That will
teach them that trying to constantly play the exact line (of getting
away with things) does carry a serious risk of serious consequence.
Maybe the next community they get involved with will find them a more
positive influence, and easier to deal with.  And at least the
community they were ejected from is spared the work of educating
(and fighting) the unwilling.


Ian.

-- 
Ian JacksonThese opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.

Re: Expulsions Policy

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday, January 05, 2019 06:48:31 PM Russell Stuart wrote:
> On Fri, 2019-01-04 at 23:56 -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > No.  That's not how Debian works. This is a volunteer effort, not a 
> > bureaucracy.  Delegates are delegated certain authorities and it's up
> > to them to decide how to exercise them.  If the larger DD community
> > sufficiently disagrees, they can raise a GR on the matter (but please
> > wait until we hear from them as a team and only if you are really,
> > really certain - overriding a DPL delegate is a major thing).
> 
> I was waiting for someone to say "but ... Debian's different".  No,
> it's not.

Sure it is.  Every organization has it's own culture and approach to how it 
organized and managed.  Debian's is very different than others I am/have been 
involved in.  That doesn't make it better or worse, just it is what it is.

Some of the Debian approaches to organization are unusual.  They aren't the 
weirdest I've seen.  IETF working group hums to measure the strength of 
consensus on an issue probably rate that assessment from me.

I've only been involved with the project for a little over a decade, so I'm 
new and still learning.  

> For a start I am genuinely puzzled by you saying Debian doesn't have a
> bureaucracy.  To me it seems Debian has a much larger bureaucracy than
> most 1000 people organisations I've deal with.  We have lots of cogs
> like the DAM grinding away in the background (so many in fact I'm sure
> I don't know them all), court like entities like the TC, more written
> rules than I've seen in most large organisations.

It's less a bureaucracy than a distribution of power in my opinion.  The DPL 
has huge authority to determine how responsibilities and authorities are 
distributed within Debian (delegations), but almost no direct authority to do 
any of those things.

> That aside, "That's not how Debian works" sounds like the height of
> hubris to me.  Getting groups of unfamiliar people with different
> backgrounds and values together to work towards a common interest is
> something we have been working for centuries.  In fact finding better
> ways to do that is probably what has propelled Western society to its
> current pre-eminent position - governments, democracies, corporations,
> trusts, charities, churches, the number of ways we do it is mind
> boggling.  Underneath all of them lies some common elements, which you
> can pick up for free where I live from most government offices by
> asking for "model rules" or "model constitution".  I gather Debian did
> not do that, because if they did they would have got their first
> expulsion process and we would all know what it is.

Don't confuse me describing how Debian works today with claiming that how it 
works today is ideal.  You may not like how it works, but it is what it is.  
In any case, I'm pretty sure no local government office I can go visit has 
detailed instructions on how to run a distributed world-wide technical 
development project of 1,000 people.

I have written such documents.  I have cajoled people into doing things in 
better ways (fun fact, in my experience people have a really hard time 
understanding how rough consensus based decision making works and an even 
harder time understanding why they might ever want to be involved with it).

> Yet here you come along claiming Debian has found a better way, which
> apparently is appoint people while providing no written guidance on
> what they are expected to do, but we fix that having a GR if they
> displease us.  No, just no, it is not a better way.

I claimed no such thing.  I placed no value judgment on it at all.  Once 
again, like it or not, Debian has certain ways of doing things that are well 
established.  They can probably all be improved.  Can they be improved enough 
to be worth a few hundred messages on -project?  I don't know, it's an open 
question.

> Besides your wrong.  In most things Debian does we have do have
> policies, reams of them in fact.  Policies saying how people join, how
> they retire, how they resolve technical differences.  This expulsion
> thing is not the norm - it's an aberration.  Most GR's are about
> changing our policies as we learn, not telling teams they have done
> something bad.

I think we have a lot more process than we have policy.  For example, for FTP 
Team package reviews for licensing the only real policy is the DFSG (technical 
parts of the reviews are driven by Debian Policy).  It's pretty short and 
compact.  There's a FAQ and some other information that documents helpful 
things, but the DFSG, Debian Policy, and the DPL delegation are what drive how 
the team operates.  It's not a lot, really.

> > I think you don't have much experience with these kinds of things if
> > you believe that.
> 
> I don't know what "things" you are referring to, but if it is working
> in large community groups like "Debian" you are again wrong.

I was referring to trying to get several people who are

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Christian Kastner]

On 05.01.19 02:20, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Another action: people treating you poorly in ways over which they 
> have personal discretion, such as refusing to work with you, calling 
> you rude names, attacking you in public, and so forth, because of 
> what you say or publish.  We'll call that action Dandelion.
> 
> Yet another action: people who were previously echoing your words or
>  republishing your writing, potentially to a much larger audience, 
> stop doing that because they disagree with your words in some way, 
> but your original (possibly much more limited) publication venue is 
> unaffected. We'll call that action Daisy.

The term "people" here is a bit confusing, so just to clarify: in
Dandelion, it refers to individuals acting on their own behalf.

In Daisy, if people-as-individuals who were previously echoing your
words stop doing so, then it's just another case of Dandelion to me.

In Daisy, it people-acting-on-behalf-of-the-community stop doing so,
then that's an official action to me.

> Debian is clearly not doing, nor is capable of doing, Clover.  A 
> whole lot of Dandelion happens all the time, and is probably 
> unavoidable. One could argue that Debian is sort of officially doing 
> Dandelion at the moment; personally, I don't think it is, but it's 
> not 100% obvious> Debian clearly did Daisy.  We can all agree on 
> that.

I believe so.

> There's no point in arguing about Clover, because that's not 
> happening. The primary argument we're having is over when Daisy is 
> and isn't appropriate.

Exactly!

> I don't think changing the labels changes the core disagreement, 
> which is that some people want to have a far higher bar for Daisy 
> than other people.

I think labeling it properly (as you did with Clover, Dandelion, Daisy)
is necessary for the debate on where to set the bar for the community.

I don't see how an agreement could be reached otherwise. Do flowers have
blossoms? Are these blossoms yellow or white? You can only answer those
questions when you know whether you are discussing Clovers, Dandelions,
or Daisies.

Was it an official action? If yes, then (I believe) we should have rules
and procedures for this. If it wasn't an official action, then we're
back at Dandelion, people-as-individuals.

-- 
Christian Kastner

Re: Expulsions Policy

[Russell Stuart]

On Fri, 2019-01-04 at 23:56 -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> No.  That's not how Debian works. This is a volunteer effort, not a 
> bureaucracy.  Delegates are delegated certain authorities and it's up
> to them to decide how to exercise them.  If the larger DD community
> sufficiently disagrees, they can raise a GR on the matter (but please
> wait until we hear from them as a team and only if you are really,
> really certain - overriding a DPL delegate is a major thing).

I was waiting for someone to say "but ... Debian's different".  No,
it's not.

For a start I am genuinely puzzled by you saying Debian doesn't have a
bureaucracy.  To me it seems Debian has a much larger bureaucracy than
most 1000 people organisations I've deal with.  We have lots of cogs
like the DAM grinding away in the background (so many in fact I'm sure
I don't know them all), court like entities like the TC, more written
rules than I've seen in most large organisations.

That aside, "That's not how Debian works" sounds like the height of
hubris to me.  Getting groups of unfamiliar people with different
backgrounds and values together to work towards a common interest is
something we have been working for centuries.  In fact finding better
ways to do that is probably what has propelled Western society to its
current pre-eminent position - governments, democracies, corporations,
trusts, charities, churches, the number of ways we do it is mind
boggling.  Underneath all of them lies some common elements, which you
can pick up for free where I live from most government offices by
asking for "model rules" or "model constitution".  I gather Debian did
not do that, because if they did they would have got their first
expulsion process and we would all know what it is.

Yet here you come along claiming Debian has found a better way, which
apparently is appoint people while providing no written guidance on
what they are expected to do, but we fix that having a GR if they
displease us.  No, just no, it is not a better way.

Besides your wrong.  In most things Debian does we have do have
policies, reams of them in fact.  Policies saying how people join, how
they retire, how they resolve technical differences.  This expulsion
thing is not the norm - it's an aberration.  Most GR's are about
changing our policies as we learn, not telling teams they have done
something bad.

> I think you don't have much experience with these kinds of things if
> you believe that.

I don't know what "things" you are referring to, but if it is working
in large community groups like "Debian" you are again wrong.

> On the FTP Team (of which I'm a non-delegated Assistant) it can take
> weeks to get agreement on text to send out on an issue.  The email I
> sent relatively recently to d-d-a regarding the team's view on
> listing individual copyright holders in debian/copyright was
> literally months in the making.

You are comparing the workload of the FTP team which has to deal with
many issues a year to workload of imposed by an expulsion process when
has been used only a few times in Debian's history.  I trust you see
the obvious problem.

Obvious problem aside, we apparently think it is necessary to insist
the Technical Committee provide similar a justification on the cases
they decide upon each year, yet you are apparently are think asking the
people who expel members to do the same thing is imposing an
unreasonable workload.  Is how we deal with each other so unimportant?

It probably isn't, because that effort you say is so unreasonable - the
the DAM actually do it.  Did see read the their private email to the
person concerned - that would be it.  This thing you are focusing on,
the written justification wasn't the change I was asking for as they
mostly do it now.  I was asking for something entirely different -
transparency.

> Taking care to make sure an email speaks for the team as a whole and
> is correct is hard and takes time.

Indeed, damned hard.  Can you imagine then how hard it must be for the
DAM to speak and act for the whole project?   Yet we ask three people
to do just that.  They had not formal training for it (unless they come
from a HR background - I don't know), we give them little guidance,
almost no feedback until incidents like this occur because you can't
provide feedback without a little transparency, and then you pop up and
say don't worry - we don't have clear standards we expect you to uphold
- Debian doesn't work like that.  We will just GR you if you get it
wrong.

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Re: Censorship in Debian

[Christian Kastner]

On 05.01.19 01:57, Eldon Koyle wrote
> Whether that form of censorship is good or bad or rights-infringing 
> is a separate argument.

Thank you, that's exactly the point I was trying to make.

I'm not even arguing whether this specific action was good or bad or
rights-infringing.

--
Christian Kastner

Re: Censorship in Debian

[Christian Kastner]

On 04.01.19 23:44, Philip Hands wrote:
> Christian Kastner  writes:
> 
>> We agree on this: Debian's is a (very!) limited form of government.
>> However, I argue that censorship is within these limits.
> 
> Debian doesn't even have enough legal existence to open a bank account,
> let alone apply even the lightest form of coercion to someone.

Eldon addressed this in another reply.

> How is that anything like a government?

How is one member removing another member from a platform _on behalf of
the Project_ not an aspect of government?

That action fits every definition of government that I could find.

> There is no territory or jurisdiction into which one can stumble by
> mistake and find oneself suddenly within the zone of influence of
> Debian.

The DPL has numerous powers to which I, as long as I am part of this
community, could be bound. The CTTE has jurisdiction and the power to
override technical decisions in my contributions to this community.

> The only real sanction that can be exercised in the name of the project
> is the removal of a previously granted privilege.
I don't share your assumption that this is a privilege and not a right
(according to the definitions I found), but regardless: exercising _in
the name of th project_, as you say, makes it an official action of the
community.

--
Christian Kastner