Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>]

Hamish,

What do you want to gain?  What would you like us to gain?  Let's not
talk of removal, destruction and anger just yet.  As much as you gave us
in the past, you need to give us some reasonable leg to stand on before
we excommunicate somebody.  He's on the z-rejected grimoire now. 
There's absolutely nothing critical in there to mess up, and most of the
serverish people won't even feel the need to download the z-rejected
grimoire.  I know I only have z-rejected on one box, my devel box that
uses perforce.

Earlier, I sympathized with your views.  You're making it really damned
difficult to be both sane and on your side at once.

You two have personal differences, please resolve them civilly.  Eric
Schabell has apparently taken the high road and not responded to your
attack on his merit.  As much as anybody thinks the attacks are
completely true or completely false, his work, and yours, are out in the
open for all to see.  We don't need a manifesto to see that.  By
lowering yourself to character assassination, you don't reflect well
upon your own character.

You point out a fact that the users may have seen, that there were some
broken "stable" sorcery releases.  There may have been some other
problems, but they are for the most part inconsequential in the greater
scheme of things and we all make mistakes.  That a complete volunteer
has chosen to take the risk when nobody else has volunteered themselves
for the task exhonorates any charge you could level upon Eric in regards
to sorcery.  The minute there's some competition for the role and
there's a risk of lost opportunity cost, then you might have a point,
but in this case, economics finds it difficult to find merit in your
argument.

May I remind you that your own ISO work was predicated upon the lost
opportunity cost argument, that you could do it better, and Eric and the
iso team in existence stepped aside to allow you the opportunity. 
Though it took pressure, _they reacted in your favor_.  Did you expect
the waters to part when you announced to Eric in private your
dissatisfactions?  In Human Resources departments, they keep complaints
of employees and volunteers secret for a reason.  Even in the Green
Party of Oregon, the only meetings that are allowed to be secret by our
Constitution are employee evaluation meetings (although all decisions
and minutes are to be made public after the meeting, debate is allowed
to be kept secret). Combined with seniority, which you requested a break
from, these are two of the _tenets_ of employee rights that workers all
across the world have struggled for.  That you took your complaints to
the court of public opinion got you what you wanted, but you lost some
ethical cache' in the process.

Yes, after the stable is not stable problems, Andrew Stitt stepped up to
develop a Quality Assurance framework for sorcery.  This is the natural
evolution of a project when it encounters a problem.  I may also note
that before those incidences sorcery was replete with bugginess and that
there were substantial improvements upon the sorcery codebase in his
time as project leader.  Whether he was directly responsible or not, he
took the leadership role and all negative responsibility that comes with
it.  Certainly positive gains are due credit to him if he took the risk.

After all, Eric stepped up and helped organize the project and was voted
in as project leader.  His merit is clear, prima facie.  Now that the
standards are a bit higher from the old sorcerer days, perhaps his
leadership is antiquated and we need a different style of leadership,
one more focussed and time-consuming?  That's evolution for you, if
that's the case.  We've got new leadership for you and more and more
people are volunteering, our IRC chat room is gaining more and more
members.  We _are_ growing.  The evolution is working.

Eric may have said some things to you in private that were politically
disasterous.  His life got busier, he's got a child now, and he's a
human being just like you and me.  He stepped down into regular guruship
for a variety of reasons, but whatever the reasons, you've pretty much
got everything you ever wanted sans his excommunication.  Can we mature
a little bit more and put out the cauldron fire in the Source Mage
Valley intended for Eric?  Nobody's been ostracized yet, and I see no
reason to ostracize anybody at this point.  If you continue on this
quest to completely remove a major past contributor without any other
specific reasons or demand but spite and revenge, I'm going to have to
ask you to take your problems to binding arbitration, an action which I
would fully support.

Respectfully,

Seth

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
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