Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Hamish Greig <hgreig AT bigpond.net.au>]

For simplicity I am responding to Seth's and Sandalle's comments in the one 
email, and not in point form.
You all are reading too much into my own feelings and motivations.
As I said originally, it is hard to understand why I would want to have my 
name and details removed from grimoire files, so I gave examples of problems 
I had encountered, that it appeared had not been addressed. 
The content of the examples was factual and schabell's name featuring so 
prominently was unavoidable, there were other people I could have mentioned, 
but only one person embodied so many of the problems. Not mentioning 
specifics like names would have turned an unusual request based on facts into 
just another vague witch hunt. Mentioning specifics was never about 
discrediting anybody or humilating them, it was intended only as an aid to 
avoid abstraction of the problems, give them real-time relevance and maybe 
even a case to study. Sometimes, in order to objectively discuss problems you 
need to look past the perpetrator(s) and find the real problem behind them. 
It is easy to label "so-and-so"  as an incompetent or a moron and dismiss the 
problem as specific to their own failings but it is better to move past the 
person to the actual problem and then find a solution for it. Ignore that 
many problems involve the same people and look at the facts. 

But because I am repeatedly accused of personally attacking schabell, I am 
not 
going to  go through the whole thing in detail all over again. You can 
interpret the facts however you want, but there are problems I still see in 
evidence, the people involved are inconsequential.
Inadequate testing of changes before perforce submission is still causing 
problems. Anyone who hasn't learnt to test their work thoroughly needs to 
have their direct access rights removed until they can prove they have learnt 
from their mistakes and are testing their work. Worst case, a poor bugfix in 
the core spell "ncurses" could turn away just as many new users as 9 
problematic sorcery releases. Best case, an experienced developer will have 
to spend time correcting problems on a remote login box when bash or ssh stop 
functioning properly
Not receiving perforce notices for the entire project has already lead to 
communication problems and breakdowns, all developers need to receive those 
notices, to be aware of project activity and ensure compatibility between 
efforts and stop conflicting submissions. I know the new leads all receive 
them, but not everyone else does and that is an accident waiting to happen
Open, honest discussion of problems is needed (in the style of the social 
contract). Everyone volunteered needs to be willing to discuss their work 
objectively. Problems need to be discussed openly, not swept under the 
carpet. Everyone makes mistakes, how they are dealt with is the key issue. 
Being able to take it on the chin, to say "oops, that was a bit silly. Sorry, 
I'll fix that" or even "Sorry my mistake, but I'm flat out with (*?!) , can 
anyone else fix this for me ?" is a common-sense requirement for volunteering 
to work in open source (read public domain). Refusing to talk about one's 
work, refusing to rationally or logically explain the process of arriving at 
a decision (passion is allowed, even wanted,silence or ranting is not) is the 
opposite of the open source environment. You can liken it to the old 
Cathedral and Bazaar argument if you want. 

I have said it many times before, what the project decides to do about these, 
and other (related) problems is not my decision. I do not advocate any 
specific action (punitive or otherwise), I have mentioned some possibilites, 
even some extreme possibilites, but that was mostly just laying foundations 
to get a real discussion started, and to have some solutions worked out and 
recorded. Many of you already know that had it been my sole decision, when I 
found out about the perforce notice problem, given the recent problem with 
the 1.0 release, the recent instability and other recent communication 
problems, I would have issued a formal news statement thanking Eric Schabell 
for all his efforts on behalf of SMGL, but due to some internal disagreements 
he was no longer an active smgl developer, and then remove all his privileges 
and access rights. Just because that was my preferred action doesn't mean I 
am now full of resentment and anger towards schabell or any other person or 
developer.
I left for many reasons, but one was because it felt dishonest to sweep the 
problems under the carpet and try to start fresh, when many of those problems 
hadn't been accepted by the people involved and my continuing support of the 
project felt like some clandestine conspiracy to protect (high profile or 
not) people from being accountable for their own problems. I had already 
overlooked too many things and continuing to do so was too big a compromise 
for me to make.
I understood most of the problems had been recognised by new management and 
senior developers though and would not be allowed to continue, so I left 
thinking that the necessary changes would be made.

I don't know what the majority is doing in SMGL now, but I do know that 
everything I have mentioned is still relevant if you look into it. So all I 
want now is for my name and details to be removed from the files  that smgl 
is distributing with the grimoire, sorcery and the iso. I am happy to assign 
the rights for those works to SMGL or to any specific developer. 

I originally added some facts to supprt my request, ignoring the possibility 
it would appear to be a personal attack, because to the best of my knowledge 
those facts had not been made public (in the spirit of the social contract) 
and they are important to the request but that seems to have been 
misunderstood, so I apologise for dragging this simple request out like it 
has been.

Hamish