[DNG] Things to think about
Before last Wednesday's Devuan meet. I collected a few thoughts that I hoped might be useful. What wishful thinking . . . 1. Personal attacks are rarely constructive. "Say it forget it, write it regret it." 2. It's not about you. It's about Devuan. Please get out of your own way. 3. Never, ever lie to your users. 4. Unilateral decisions have no place in a collaborative environment 5. Internal communication is a good thing. "Surprises" erode trust. Maybe I have a short memory but I have always described Devuan as a unique environment where collaborative work not personal agendas was the the focus. Well, that idealism certainly came crashing back to the reality that humans are indeed grossly flawed, unreliable and sunk in delusion. Those of us with more even temperament are exhausted from the stupidity of the drama and disheartened by the lack of constructive solutions and leadership. Maybe this will sort out. Maybe it won't. Maybe the magic and joy will return. Maybe it won't. It is not easy to repair a broken toy once it is in pieces. Humans are such slow learners . . . golinux ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] [devuan-dev] Of confidence and support and the future of Devuan.
On 2019年4月23日 11:24:39 JST, Rick Moen wrote: >Dan, it is _not_ time for you to leave. Please stay. > >I've seen only the public portions of these text-format interactions, >but think I'm seen enough data to assess the basic situation. Although >I'm a friendly outsider to Devuan Project governance, I've seen many >similar destructive spirals in open source projects over many decades: >It starts with well-intended individual actions taken without adequate >consultation, which cause reactions from other parties who feel taken >by >surprise. When those reactions are in e-mail, or (slightly worse) in >e-mail with a large audience such as on mailing lists, then a >communication anti-pattern tends to take hold that drives the parties >into confrontation, frustration, and perception of harm that could have >been resolved if the parties had switched to more-interactive, >more-personal, and less public means of communication -- such as voice >telephone or Internet video conferencing. > >As to Denis/Jaromil's comments about the ci.devuan.org failure, yes, he >spoke sharply to you about some of your initial steps, but, if you >review what he said, the main points were that (1) better consultation >should have occurred throughout and (2) he asked you to wait before >taking additional action. IMO, if you set aside for a moment the tinge >of personal accusation you're perceiving in what he wrote, you will see >that those are reasonable comments from a project-management >perspective. > >Back when I was manager of a department of system administrators, I >told my employees that I'd shield them from problems visited onto our >department from other parts of the firm and help their professional >development, and in return I asked and expected two things: (1) >Do their assigned share of our work, but equally important, (2) make >sure I was never blindsided about anything they did, i.e., if there >was bad news in which they were involved, I expected to hear it from >them first and immediately, not later or from anyone else. > >Devuan Project of course differs in being less-hierarchical not to >mention volunteer, but good and timely communication is every bit as >important if not more so, and the antipatterns I've seen lately appear >to _all_ involve failure to do timely consultation, and then reliance >on >known-problematic _asynchronous_ communication methods such as e-mail / >mailing lists that are inadequate to the situation and tend to worsen >interpersonal conflict, avoidably. > >Devuan has suffered enough loss, and I wish everyone would please >de-escalate and to understand that e-mail is not the right solution for >all communication needs, especially where there is risk of >contentiousness and hard feelings. > >And you belong here, and would be greatly missed. > > >-- >Cheers, "I am not a vegetarian because I love >animals; >Rick MoenI am a vegetarian because I hate >plants." >r...@linuxmafia.com-- A. Whitney >Brown >McQ! (4x80) >___ >Dng mailing list >Dng@lists.dyne.org >https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Hi, I second what Rick Moen said. Centurion_Dan, please stay. And guys, relax please. If you don t, the situation won t defuse. Yoroshiku!___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] [devuan-dev] Of confidence and support and the future of Devuan.
On 04/22/2019 10:24 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Dan, it is _not_ time for you to leave. Please stay. I've seen only the public portions of these text-format interactions, but think I'm seen enough data to assess the basic situation. Although I'm a friendly outsider to Devuan Project governance, I've seen many similar destructive spirals in open source projects over many decades: It starts with well-intended individual actions taken without adequate consultation, which cause reactions from other parties who feel taken by surprise. When those reactions are in e-mail, or (slightly worse) in e-mail with a large audience such as on mailing lists, then a communication anti-pattern tends to take hold that drives the parties into confrontation, frustration, and perception of harm that could have been resolved if the parties had switched to more-interactive, more-personal, and less public means of communication -- such as voice telephone or Internet video conferencing. As to Denis/Jaromil's comments about the ci.devuan.org failure, yes, he spoke sharply to you about some of your initial steps, but, if you review what he said, the main points were that (1) better consultation should have occurred throughout and (2) he asked you to wait before taking additional action. IMO, if you set aside for a moment the tinge of personal accusation you're perceiving in what he wrote, you will see that those are reasonable comments from a project-management perspective. Back when I was manager of a department of system administrators, I told my employees that I'd shield them from problems visited onto our department from other parts of the firm and help their professional development, and in return I asked and expected two things: (1) Do their assigned share of our work, but equally important, (2) make sure I was never blindsided about anything they did, i.e., if there was bad news in which they were involved, I expected to hear it from them first and immediately, not later or from anyone else. Devuan Project of course differs in being less-hierarchical not to mention volunteer, but good and timely communication is every bit as important if not more so, and the antipatterns I've seen lately appear to _all_ involve failure to do timely consultation, and then reliance on known-problematic _asynchronous_ communication methods such as e-mail / mailing lists that are inadequate to the situation and tend to worsen interpersonal conflict, avoidably. Devuan has suffered enough loss, and I wish everyone would please de-escalate and to understand that e-mail is not the right solution for all communication needs, especially where there is risk of contentiousness and hard feelings. And you belong here, and would be greatly missed. +1 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] [devuan-dev] Of confidence and support and the future of Devuan.
Dan, it is _not_ time for you to leave. Please stay. I've seen only the public portions of these text-format interactions, but think I'm seen enough data to assess the basic situation. Although I'm a friendly outsider to Devuan Project governance, I've seen many similar destructive spirals in open source projects over many decades: It starts with well-intended individual actions taken without adequate consultation, which cause reactions from other parties who feel taken by surprise. When those reactions are in e-mail, or (slightly worse) in e-mail with a large audience such as on mailing lists, then a communication anti-pattern tends to take hold that drives the parties into confrontation, frustration, and perception of harm that could have been resolved if the parties had switched to more-interactive, more-personal, and less public means of communication -- such as voice telephone or Internet video conferencing. As to Denis/Jaromil's comments about the ci.devuan.org failure, yes, he spoke sharply to you about some of your initial steps, but, if you review what he said, the main points were that (1) better consultation should have occurred throughout and (2) he asked you to wait before taking additional action. IMO, if you set aside for a moment the tinge of personal accusation you're perceiving in what he wrote, you will see that those are reasonable comments from a project-management perspective. Back when I was manager of a department of system administrators, I told my employees that I'd shield them from problems visited onto our department from other parts of the firm and help their professional development, and in return I asked and expected two things: (1) Do their assigned share of our work, but equally important, (2) make sure I was never blindsided about anything they did, i.e., if there was bad news in which they were involved, I expected to hear it from them first and immediately, not later or from anyone else. Devuan Project of course differs in being less-hierarchical not to mention volunteer, but good and timely communication is every bit as important if not more so, and the antipatterns I've seen lately appear to _all_ involve failure to do timely consultation, and then reliance on known-problematic _asynchronous_ communication methods such as e-mail / mailing lists that are inadequate to the situation and tend to worsen interpersonal conflict, avoidably. Devuan has suffered enough loss, and I wish everyone would please de-escalate and to understand that e-mail is not the right solution for all communication needs, especially where there is risk of contentiousness and hard feelings. And you belong here, and would be greatly missed. -- Cheers, "I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; Rick MoenI am a vegetarian because I hate plants." r...@linuxmafia.com-- A. Whitney Brown McQ! (4x80) ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Of confidence and support and the future of Devuan.
Dear friends, fellow users and contributors to Devuan. I have come to a point of personal crisis with regards to my involvement in Devuan. I have given a great deal of time to bringing Devuan to where it is today. Of late have my efforts have been largely in the background in maintaining the build system as well as advocacy, and helping to maintain some packages, and working towards adding support for the ppc64el architecture particularly for the new TalosII hardware. Recent events such as the fallout from the April 1 joke, which I perceived it as a threat to Devuans image particularly with respect to the appearance of security, and my poorly expression of those concerns led me to be at odds with some of my fellow contributors and caretakers. In particular I contributed to making another valued member, and a fellow valuable contributor to Devuan, feel that he could no longer find joy in contributing to Devuan any further resulting in his leaving our community. I have apologised for this and continue to regret not having found a better mechanism for expressing my concerns in a more constructive way. The latest issue at hand and the one precipitating this personal crisis is with respect to the failure of ci.devuan.org. In this matter I took actions that although were done in good faith and with all due care, resulted in exacerbating an already broken server by trying to reboot it an action which failed and left the server broken and inaccessible. I rebooted under the assumption that the person that hosts that server for us would reasonably be available to attend to it if it in the unlikely event it failed to boot. I was wrong and should have checked he was available first. I am now at the point where given this latest assault on my character and contributions by Jaromil, that I must honestly question whether I continue to be useful to this community and Devuan as a distribution. It is now up to you to decide whether or not I should be holding such a venerable positions as caretaker, infrastructure maintainer and developer, and package maintainer of many Devuan packages remains justifiable and acceptable to this community. My reason for bringing this to the attention of the broad community is because Jaromil, one of my fellow caretakers has repeatedly taken extreme exception to my actions and communications to the extent where he has: - called for my stepping down as caretaker at least 3 times. - implied that I am incompetent in my administration of the devuan infrastructure I have been co-maintaining for the last 3 or 4 years, in particular the build system and until recently the packaging systems. - claimed that I act with impunity and entirely disregard the need for consultation on major decisions. - threatened me in private emails to wage war against me and destroy my reputation in this community and by implication the broader ICT, linux and open source communities within which I operate and make my living. and many other things. Therefore, I feel that unless the broad community of users and developers of Devuan continue to have and express confidence in my abilities to continue to be a caretaker and valued contributor to Devuan, that I must indeed step down as caretaker and cease contributing to this project as per Jaromils repeatedly expressed desires. I am extremely sad at having reached this point and recognize that this communication will itself further erode confidence in Devuan as a distribution. I do not want this, but I can no longer continue in the face of such extreme opposition to my efforts to contribute to what I believe is a fine and necessary project that I have come to rely on for my business and am deeply invested in. Devuan belongs to the community and that community must always hold the power to decide who it will entrust as it's leaders and contributors. Should you the community decide it is time for me to leave, I will do my best to take the time to hand over properly my responsibilities and share my deep knowledge to those chosen by you the community to replace me in an orderly fashion and then fade quietly away. Warm regards, Centurion_Dan. -- Daniel Reurich Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd. 021 797 722 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Of confidence and support and the future of Devuan.
Dear friends, fellow users and contributors to Devuan. I have come to a point of personal crisis with regards to my involvement in Devuan. I have given a great deal of time to bringing Devuan to where it is today. Of late have my efforts have been largely in the background in maintaining the build system as well as advocacy, and helping to maintain some packages, and working towards adding support for the ppc64el architecture particularly for the new TalosII hardware. Recent events such as the fallout from the April 1 joke, which I perceived it as a threat to Devuans image particularly with respect to the appearance of security, and my poorly expression of those concerns led me to be at odds with some of my fellow contributors and caretakers. In particular I contributed to making another valued member, and a fellow valuable contributor to Devuan, feel that he could no longer find joy in contributing to Devuan any further resulting in his leaving our community. I have apologised for this and continue to regret not having found a better mechanism for expressing my concerns in a more constructive way. The latest issue at hand and the one precipitating this personal crisis is with respect to the failure of ci.devuan.org. In this matter I took actions that although were done in good faith and with all due care, resulted in exacerbating an already broken server by trying to reboot it an action which failed and left the server broken and inaccessible. I rebooted under the assumption that the person that hosts that server for us would reasonably be available to attend to it if it in the unlikely event it failed to boot. I was wrong and should have checked he was available first. I am now at the point where given this latest assault on my character and contributions by Jaromil, that I must honestly question whether I continue to be useful to this community and Devuan as a distribution. It is now up to you to decide whether or not I should be holding such a venerable positions as caretaker, infrastructure maintainer and developer, and package maintainer of many Devuan packages remains justifiable and acceptable to this community. My reason for bringing this to the attention of the broad community is because Jaromil, one of my fellow caretakers has repeatedly taken extreme exception to my actions and communications to the extent where he has: - called for my stepping down as caretaker at least 3 times. - implied that I am incompetent in my administration of the devuan infrastructure I have been co-maintaining for the last 3 or 4 years, in particular the build system and until recently the packaging systems. - claimed that I act with impunity and entirely disregard the need for consultation on major decisions. - threatened me in private emails to wage war against me and destroy my reputation in this community and by implication the broader ICT, linux and open source communities within which I operate and make my living. and many other things. Therefore, I feel that unless the broad community of users and developers of Devuan continue to have and express confidence in my abilities to continue to be a caretaker and valued contributor to Devuan, that I must indeed step down as caretaker and cease contributing to this project as per Jaromils repeatedly expressed desires. I am extremely sad at having reached this point and recognize that this communication will itself further erode confidence in Devuan as a distribution. I do not want this, but I can no longer continue in the face of such extreme opposition to my efforts to contribute to what I believe is a fine and necessary project that I have come to rely on for my business and am deeply invested in. Devuan belongs to the community and that community must always hold the power to decide who it will entrust as it's leaders and contributors. Should you the community decide it is time for me to leave, I will do my best to take the time to hand over properly my responsibilities and share my deep knowledge to those chosen by you the community to replace me in an orderly fashion and then fade quietly away. Warm regards, Centurion_Dan. -- Daniel Reurich Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd. 021 797 722 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Way forward
On 2019-04-22 01:18, Andrew McGlashan wrote: If I was to lose faith in Devuan, which I'm now invested in, then I would consider the following, especially ahead of Debian (unless I wished to return with systemd). https://mxlinux.org/ FYI . . . this thread is rather interesting: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=696745#p696745 I assume that AntiX would continue on its current track. golinux ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
