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  • From: Hamish Greig <hgreig AT bigpond.net.au>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Hamish, please note.
  • Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 17:23:52 +1000

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On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:11, Seth Alan Woolley wrote:
> 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.

I am sincerely asking for my name and details to be removed from
files being distributed by a group of people whose ideals and ethics
differ considerably from mine.
Schabell is not the point of all of this, he and I are not on opposing sides
of some debate. There is no decision to support either him or me to be made,
and the idea is silly. The decision of whether anyone should be exiled from
the project is not being asked by me. I know nothing of any recent decisions
or who is maintaining what sections and there is no personal animosity at
play here, nor do I refute any good actions achieved by anyone in the past or
present. I am well aware of everything achieved by relatively few people
since the split from sorcerer, and am grateful to all of them for all the
good work.
It is just unfortunate that Schabell is such a convenient example to use.
Not for all the mistakes I previously mentioned, not for the lack of
leadership, not for getting in over his head and creating instability in a
core product, but for refusing to be accountable for anything, for being
unable to learn from mistakes and for not being honest about problems and
commitments in an "open" environment.
Yes smgl is run by volunteers and all efforts are appreciated, but that
"volunteer work" doesn't mean substandard work should be accepted or that the
progress should be "one step forwards, two steps backwards" or that people
should consider volunteering for jobs they have no intention/ability to
perform properly. Standards are needed.
I wanted to take some action to implement them in the short term but due to
lack of support I ended up leaving instead. I should have safeguarded myself
then before I left, but I didn't think it would be necessary because I
understood when I left that the new leadership would make people accountable
and that the other problems had been recognised, would be discussed and
eventually solved.

The point is the same problems that happened before are still happening.
If you do agree that the same problems are still cropping up then please
remove my name and details.

If you don't agree then I have an answer to my request. And now I have
explained it, I won't need worry my request was misunderstood.

Hamish


>
> 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



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