Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>]

Quoting Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>:
> On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 05:23:52PM +1000, Hamish Greig wrote:
> > 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. 
> 
> If I get the go-ahead, I can do this.  Frankly, I didn't know what
> sandalle's response would be, and I expected your request to be granted.

My problem with this is we'd be changing accreditation in our past without a
good reason (such as finding out that there was purgery or plagiarism and
fixing that). If you feel you cannot be associated with us anymore then that 
is
as it will be and has been since you left, but (IMO) we're not about to change
what someone did in the past.

<snip>
> > 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.
> 
> No animosity?  Animosity is characterized by punitive action according
> to the American Heritage Dictionary.  You want us to punish him so as to
> have him held "accountable".  The other characterization of animosity is
> resentment.  It's clear that you resent it by your wanting us to remove
> your name from anything associated with not only him but with us.
> 
> Your actions demonstrate: "Animosity often triggers bitter resentment or
> punitive action" It's acting and quacking like animosity from my view. 
> Skinnerist Behaviorism would conclude you are in fact feeling animosity.

While people may not agree with each other in public, name calling and 
degrading
another person is not acceptable behaviour in my books, which is what was 
done.
While you may not like Schabell (or what he has done), he did not degenerate 
to
denegrating you in public.

> > 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. 
> 
> If it is your contention that it has gone one step forward, two steps
> back, the facts are quite different from my view.  If we would be better
> without Eric due to lost opportunity cost, that's quite different from
> one step forward, two back that you throw around.  People also aren't
> volunteering for jobs they have no intention to perform properly.  When
> there is no other person for the role, it is better to have somebody
> with little time contributing little than to have nobody there. 
> Standards are used.  They are listed in the guru manuals and the APIs
> now.  As far as standards are applied to how much work people commit, the
> vast majority of contributors have under a hundred commits and most have
> under ten.  True, with active developers with a title, it is a different
> story, but we rarely have bum commits, and especially now, they are
> protected by our improved QA processes.  We welcome contributions from
> all people.  The merit of their contributions decide whether or not they
> are accepted, and after a while, they gain direct access.  Combined with
> the changelist emails, the quality of the commits are pretty easy to
> check.  Your issue that the leader wasn't tracking these processes is
> noteworthy, however it's fixed.  Problems that are now fixed are
> problems you are going to hold against us?  What do you think we are,
> perfect and don't make any mistakes?

I am here because I enjoy working on SMGL and with our users (yes, you too ;))
and developers. Yes, we run into problems, ce la vie, but we work to fix them
and move on, not to drum on what went on in the past after it's been fixed.

> Do you think nobody listened to you?  Did we need to chime back in and
> say how correct you are?  Is the actual improvement not good enough?  Do
> we mill about problems instead of fixing them?  You can't fix problems
> through public humiliation; you do it through calm reasoning in as safe
> an environment as possible.

As far as I see, the problem has been fixed. The Leads watch the commits from
all teams and we work together in implementing new functionality. If you had
been paying attention Sorcery and the Grimoire have come quite far together 
and
are being cleaned up thanks to Andrew and Arwed and their respective teams.

<snip>
> > 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.
> 
> Are they?  To the extent that it affects stable branches?  Is there
> something I missed?  The QA processes are much improved from my vantage
> point.

What is now happening that happened before? Our teams are working together, 
more
developers are joining us, Sorcery is stable and having new features added, 
the
Grimoire is having new spells added and bugs fixed, and ib has even been seen
to give good advice.

What is wrong with this?
<snip>

-sandalle

-- 
Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us PGP: 0xA8EFDD61  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/

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