(Rob wants this on the list anyways, and he hasn't CC:-ed it. I want it on the list for multiple reasons. (I gave him permission to cc it in a reply email I intend to forward to the list))
"the main reason to eschew programming in closed environments is that you can't embarrass people in public." - Linus Torvalds ------- Forwarded Message ------- From: Rob Landley <r...@landley.net> Date: On Thursday, May 2nd, 2024 at 13:48 Subject: Re: Dude. To: Oliver Webb <aquahobby...@proton.me> > On 5/1/24 14:57, Oliver Webb wrote: > > > This is not a apology email, > > > I didn't expect one. You still don't understand why I stepped back from > interacting with you, and as far as I can tell never will. You attributed it > to > malice instead. > > > I still stand by everything I said, > > > I honestly haven't read most of it in weeks. I was waiting for you to pause > before tackling the backlog, and you never did. You could have forked the > project and pursued your own vision, you could have checked out busybox > instead, > but you didn't. But even that last email you posted to the list said you were > keep going to "post patches "into the void" forever unless I did something to > stop it. And that was after you declared I "wasn't rational". > > "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different > results." > - Rita Mae Brown (maybe? attribution's all over the place: > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/ ) > > I unsubscribed you because it wasn't fair to the list's other subscribers, > making them read the kind of abuse your last message was full of. > > This is a parasocial relationship. I've never met you. I am annoyed at you the > same way I was annoyed at the squirrel in the attic that kept chewing through > the air conditioning wires. If you mature into a net useful developer, even if > it's not for this project, that's GREAT. But you are not uniquely > irreplaceable. If you go away again 17 years into toybox development somehow I > expect to find it within myself to carry on without you. > > You never asked "am I helping". You started with that as a bedrock assumption > and when you didn't get the response you expected you pushed harder. Just you, > shouting into "the void", louder and louder. > > > and the repeated belittlement and derision directed at not just > > me, but the people I work with has been beyond insulting. > > > I have no idea who "aquahobbyist"'s co-workers are. > > > I'd be shocked > > > That's on you. > > > if I'm not in your spam filter at this point. > > > shrug You never were, I just stopped devoting time to your posts because the > signal to noise ratio was terrible (my responses were fairly consistently "no, > because..." "no, because..." "no, because...") and you never seemed to care > that > responding to you was work for me. You kept making more work for me and > assuming > that was free. > > Sigh, I should edit and post my blog entries faster. In the April 23 entry I > referred to you as a "screaming interrupt", and that the standard way to deal > with those is squelch it and deal with the work in large batches later. > Doesn't > mean I'm unaware of the issue, and probably need to look into the underlying > problem at some point (why is it screaming?), but not right now. > > I just checked how many emails you were "to or cc:" on in my outbox since the > start of February, and there are 53 of them. You are, quite literally, angry I > didn't feel I owed you more of a response than that. There's precedent for > this > sort of thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning from > https://wondermark.com/c/1062/ isn't quite what's going on here, but there's > an > element of it from my perspective). > > We disagreed on the value of your contributions. I never said they were > worthless, but that the signal to noise ratio was not great, and "don't ask > questions post errors" gets old. The failure mode of Cunningham's Law is after > you cry wolf enough, you get ignored. It's been described as "exploiting human > nature by using toxicity in your favor" (at > https://medium.com/voix-magazine/cunninghams-law-does-it-actually-work-771e488a2f06 > ). > > Yes, you prioritized your replies over others for a while (and then switched > to > "coming to a decision" without me on github when I stopped interacting on the > mailing list, representing yourself as a decision maker on the project to > others > there, yes I saw I just didn't react). > > I have other things competing with your constant demands for my attention. > > I've been behind on everything since moving from texas to minneapolis in > february, and speaking at my first in-person conference since the pandemic > earlier this month. You may have noticed my "every 3 months" release schedule > from the FAQ went 8 1/2 months between 0.8.10 and 0.8.11. I have been trying > for > over 4 months to close all my open windows so I can reboot my laptop and put > the > 16 gig memory back in: haven't managed it yet. > > I have a backlog of todo patches in my main toybox directory: > > $ ls -l *.patch | wc > 145 1305 10732 > > The oldest 8 of which are from 2019. I've glanced at them all, but and applied > the easy ones already. Those are the ones that had significant design work > involved. The oldest is "0001-README-switch-to-markdown.patch" which I set up > a > test environment for at the time > (https://landley.net/notes-2019.html#17-10-2019) but it's bit-rotted because > github's css is a moving target and "rewrite the documentation with > presentation > markup" requires aesthetic judgement and mkroot/README didn't even exist yet > and > in any case resolving: > > landley@driftwood:~/toybox/toybox$ ls -l www/faq > -rw-rw-r-- 1 landley landley 110714 Apr 3 2017 www/busyfaq-anno.txt > -rw-rw-r-- 1 landley landley 45198 Nov 13 2019 www/busyfaq.html > -rwxrwxr-x 1 landley landley 5664 Mar 4 2017 www/faq2.html > -rwxrwxr-x 1 landley landley 9105 Mar 4 2017 www/faq-gpl.html > -rw-r--r-- 1 landley landley 52790 Mar 31 02:43 www/faq.html > -rw-r--r-- 1 landley landley 13814 Apr 9 2020 www/faq-nommu.todo > -rw-rw-r-- 1 landley landley 8794 Nov 10 2022 www/tofaq.txt > > Is a higher personal priority for me. Plus code.html is out of date, and > roadmap.html needs redoing, and I keep MEANING to do all those videos... > > I do not have a shortage of work. I was behind on everything and not going > fast > enough before_you. (Heck, the oldest open github issue in toybox is from 2018. > If I didn't think there was anything to address there, I could close it. > There's > 234 closed ones and only 78 open.) Github issues and pull requests come in all > the time, stuff comes in on the mailing list, you are not the only person > privately emailing me, when I tackle todo items they tend to spin off MORE > todo > items... > > I was starting every single day spending multiple hours replying to your > emails > to try to politely explain crisis du jour (or why your failure to understand > the > existing utf8 code was not technically a crisis), and getting very little else > done. (I have already spent more than an hour replying to this email, and I'm > not done yet.) Interacting with you at that frequency was not helping the > project. So I focused on other things for a bit. > > "There was a day when I looked up and realized that I had become someone who > professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering > fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more." - Neil Gaiman > (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OwRUyZMKwI about 9 minutes) > > > But yes Rob, I sent another subscribe request. > > > I didn't add you to the block list. The same way > > I've been doing minimal > > > system bootstrapping (The main reason I didn't wanna be banned was > > because I've been trying to run gcc under mkroot and a response to > > http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2024-April/030334.html > > would've been helpful. > > > Hadn't seen it. It got, quite literally, lost in the noise. > > (If all of your messages are important, none of them are important. Responding > to me falling behind by increasing your rate of output was... certainly a > decision.) > > > Shrug guess I'm gonna have to wait for > > someone else to ask) and the technical rants you go on are nice to > > read so I still want to be updated with info (Don't worry Rob, I'm > > probably not gonna send you patches anymore with what you've done). > > > I'm impressed by the implied scold. "Think about what you've done". I haven't > got that level of passive aggressive phrasing skill. (My grandmother did. > That's > probably why I respond to it negatively.) > > I never asked you to send me patches. > > "When people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are > almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and > how > to fix it, they are almost always wrong." > - Neil Gaiman. (Specifically > https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/22573969110/for-all-the-people-who-ask-me-for-writing > ) > > I only apply half the patches I'm sent even from the Google guys (who Elliott > has all personally vetted because they literally work for him in a payroll > sense). Heck, sometimes I don't apply elliott's patches. Usually I fix things > in a slightly different way, after evaluating the underlying issue the patch > represents. > > The result of the work I was putting in interacting with you wasn't improving > the project, it was educating you personally. Often when I do a long writeup > it > goes in the blog and can be referenced later, or can turn into a FAQ entry. > The > fact somebody didn't already understand it implies that existing docs aren't > through, clear, or well-indexed enough and something can be done to improve > them. > > But "this API is unusable, clearly it should be like this instead" ignoring > the > fact that there are 9 instances of it being used in the current code which you > could have looked at to see how it was used? And I had to point that out to > you? > That's on you, dude. That's about teaching you, personally, to be a better > developer. Nothing to do with the project. > > I don't mind "the comment explaining this isn't in the header, the comment is > right before the function body", but when that's in response to a message > calling it "defective" in the title, and it's part of a sustained pattern that > does not get better over multiple months? > > You kept sending me a new issue daily, most of which weren't significant, if I > evaluated it and said 'no that is not a significant problem I am interested in > addressing' that kept turning into multi-hour discussions back and forth > where I > had to prove something to your satisfaction or you'd get mad. > > You have always, consistently, treated me like customer service who is not > responding quickly enough to serve you, and I didn't feel obligated to play > that > role longer than a couple months. It stopped being worth my time. > > > Bye bye, have fun doing what you do with the people that are > > payed to work with you > > > A line like that honestly does NOT read as passive aggressive to you? > > The only person "paid to work with me" is Elliott, and it's really the other > way > around there. He's paid to work on android, he's the one who chose to use my > open source project in android. > > Elliott is the "Android Base OS maintainer". He maintained the toolbox > package, > which he decided to use toybox to replace in 2015, as he described on a > podcast > a year or two after the fact at > http://androidbackstage.blogspot.com/2016/07/episode-53-adb-on-adb.html > > Elliott also maintains Bionic, and he maintained Dalvik before the Oracle > lawsuit that forced them to switch over to Oracle's Java runtime, and he still > maintains the android java libraries. But mostly, he's the guy who has the > final > say on Android's non-gui plumbing. Some things other people work on but he > reviews it all and has the final say, like android's init system, and the > "zygote" plumbing. There's a dedicated kernel team, and a dedicated testing > team, that sort of cross-report to him. (Dotted line?) And a whole BUNCH of > AOSP > build plumbing he has a lot of meetings about. (He sometimes laments that he's > mostly a manager, and submits patches to toybox he does in evening and weekend > time to keep his hand in coding.) Sadly he does NOT maintain the NDK, that's a > different team, which is why unifying the toolchains is such a pain... > > No, I don't treat you the same way I treat Elliott. I have great respect for > Elliott, and I do drop what I'm doing and address issues he brings me as a > higher priority than what I was already doing, but you and him are not in the > same position. And it's not just his position at Google: he's been on the > toybox > list since 2015 and he's LEARNED stuff while he was here. I respect his > technical judgement, and if I got hit by a bus he'd be the obvious new > maintainer. He has never taken me disagreeing with him on something and > wanting > to do it a different way (or after something else) as a personal attack. When > he > wants to continue an issue it looks like "that doesn't solve X, which is a > problem for Y, and I think I have more information about it because Z". > > We mostly interact on the same mailing list as everyone else. I only ever > visited the Googleplex once (in something like 2009, I interviewed for a job > working on ChromeOS and they tried to make me an SRE, the process dragged on > for > 7 months before I got on with my life), long before I was trying to put toybox > into android (Tim Bird of Sony got me started down that path in 2011, and of > course there was a Cloud of Drama from people who weren't even involved, > https://lwn.net/Articles/478308/). I met Elliott in person once years later > (we > had lunch when I was in San Jose for the Embedded Linux Conference, which is > also how I'd met Tim Bird back in 2006 by the way: he founded that conference > and ran it for years, it used to be called the Consumer Electronic Linux Forum > before the Linux Foundation acquired it). All of that was multiple years > before > anybody paid me to work on toybox: it was a hobby. > > (Full disclosure, I got a "Google Open Source Award" twice, which came with a > $200 gift card. I managed to enable and spend the first one, bought a Japanese > language course at the University of Milwaukee in 2018. The second expired > unused because I could never get "payoneer" to work right. So I couldn't say > "Google's never given me a dime" after 2016. Although I stopped saying it > anyway > after Elliott bought me lunch that one time...) > > I started toybox as a hobby, and kept at it for 15 years (on and off) as an > unpaid hobby. In 2011 Tim Bird got me thinking about using it to improve > Android, and I asked Google's then head of open source Chris Dibona if Android > might be interested in toybox in 2013 and got turned down: > > https://twitter.com/cdibona/status/342314738660810752 > > But I kept working on it, and different people merged toybox a few years > later, > but the first time Google gave me money so I could spend time on toybox as > anything like a dayjob was 2022, 7 years later. And I strongly suspect THAT > was > mostly because I was so clearly burned out by the pandemic they got worried > I'd > quit otherwise. And this year they came up with 1/3 as much as last year > because > of "budget cuts" relating to the layoffs. (They said I should work half the > year > elsewhere, since I've been a contractor for decades, but I'm trying to sell my > house and reduce expenses so I haven't really looked into that. The job market > is kind of terrible right now anyway, and my wife just got her doctorate and > is > job hunting which will most likely involve a move, so it's all sort of up in > the > air at the moment. Lease on the current place ends in August, who knows what > happens then...) > > Rob > > P.S. I would happily cc: this message to the list if you didn't mind the parts > of your private email being published. I did spend 3 hours writing it. (Ok, > there was some filling up the dishwasher and so on in there, but I have not > yet > done anything else on my laptop this morning. Check email, see this, and now > it's afternoon already and I'm still responding to the first email. No design > issues resolved, no documentation written, no code debugged, no new tests, no > additional real world user use case data evaluated... just me telling you > about > ancient history and well-known tropes in private email, which I do not expect > to > make you a better developer because you're just going to get angry again and > not > treat it as a learning experience because the problem is clearly me.) _______________________________________________ Toybox mailing list Toybox@lists.landley.net http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net
