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a little more due process

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Simon Michael

a little more due process

Recently an op got irritated enough with keithy to ban him from the
#squeak IRC channel, without much warning or community discussion.
Unfortunately I believe such a unilateral ban creates "bad karma" that
damages #squeak and Squeak in non-obvious ways.

There are less harmful alternatives (eg: a more deliberate ban;
training ourselves not to feed rants; or just accepting that #squeak
may become unusable for an hour or two now and then). So, I feel this
particular ban should end or at least be ratified by discussion/vote
here on the list.

Ken G. Brown

Re: a little more due process

At 7:09 AM -0800 2/16/10, Simon Michael apparently wrote:
>Recently an op got irritated enough with keithy to ban him from the #squeak IRC channel, without much warning or community discussion. Unfortunately I believe such a unilateral ban creates "bad karma" that damages #squeak and Squeak in non-obvious ways.
>
>There are less harmful alternatives (eg: a more deliberate ban; training ourselves not to feed rants; or just accepting that #squeak may become unusable for an hour or two now and then). So, I feel this particular ban should end or at least be ratified by discussion/vote here on the list.

I agree with you, and feel the ban was totally unjustified and unwarranted. This banner in my opinion should immediately have his banning capabilities removed, he obviously cannot be trusted with the powers.

Ken G. Brown

Ken Causey-3

Re: a little more due process

On Tue, 2010-02-16 at 11:43 -0700, Ken G. Brown wrote:

> At 7:09 AM -0800 2/16/10, Simon Michael apparently wrote:
> >Recently an op got irritated enough with keithy to ban him from the
> #squeak IRC channel, without much warning or community discussion.
> Unfortunately I believe such a unilateral ban creates "bad karma" that
> damages #squeak and Squeak in non-obvious ways.
> >
> >There are less harmful alternatives (eg: a more deliberate ban;
> training ourselves not to feed rants; or just accepting that #squeak
> may become unusable for an hour or two now and then). So, I feel this
> particular ban should end or at least be ratified by discussion/vote
> here on the list.
>
> I agree with you, and feel the ban was totally unjustified and
> unwarranted. This banner in my opinion should immediately have his
> banning capabilities removed, he obviously cannot be trusted with the
> powers.
>
> Ken G. Brown

Maybe, maybe not (unjustified). I have now lifted the ban. I suggest
anyone interested in this make their own judgment:

http://tunes.org/~nef/logs/squeak/10.02.14

Ken

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keith1y

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Ken G. Brown

Recently an op got irritated enough with keithy to ban him from the #squeak IRC channel, without much warning or community discussion. Unfortunately I believe such a unilateral ban creates "bad karma" that damages #squeak and Squeak in non-obvious ways.

There are less harmful alternatives (eg: a more deliberate ban; training ourselves not to feed rants; or just accepting that #squeak may become unusable for an hour or two now and then). So, I feel this particular ban should end or at least be ratified by discussion/vote here on the list.

I agree with you, and feel the ban was totally unjustified and unwarranted. This banner in my opinion should immediately have his banning capabilities removed, he obviously cannot be trusted with the powers.

Ken G. Brown

Hi Ken,

I have always followed the adage "Go where you are celebrated, not where you are tolerated".

I am ONLY here in squeak-dev because cuis does not have its own mailing list, I wish it did.

Squeak as a social community doesn't just have bad karma, but its "leaders" are setting out to generate it because they have totally forgotten where we/they were planning to go in the first place.

It might be useful to clearly re-iterate a previously stated goal of the old squeak release team, and the board:

The goal of having a minimal kernel images upon which you can build and test derived images of your choice.

This goal was so that forks merely become a "build of technical preference", on a minimal starting point (eventually "spoon") rather than politically charged splinter groups such as Pharo. This goal would have enabled us to avoid panicking and getting scared of falling behind pharo, but to facilitate exchange of ideas between all forks such that pharo becomes a positive part of the squeak story rather than an isolated disaffected group.

Perhaps you as the community should be asking what if anything the board have done towards this goal.

As for me, you can find me in #cuis on irc.feenode.com if you want to.

Keith

Igor Stasenko

Re: a little more due process

On 16 February 2010 21:55, keith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Ken,
> I have always followed the adage "Go where you are celebrated, not where you
> are tolerated".
> I am ONLY here in squeak-dev because cuis does not have its own mailing
> list, I wish it did.
> Squeak as a social community doesn't just have bad karma, but its "leaders"
> are setting out to generate it because they have totally forgotten where
> we/they were planning to go in the first place.
> It might be useful to clearly re-iterate a previously stated goal of the old
> squeak release team, and the board:
> The goal of having a minimal kernel images upon which you can build and test
> derived images of your choice.
> This goal was so that forks merely become a "build of technical preference",
> on a minimal starting point (eventually "spoon") rather than politically
> charged splinter groups such as Pharo. This goal would have enabled us to
> avoid panicking and getting scared of falling behind pharo, but to
> facilitate exchange of ideas between all forks such that pharo becomes a
> positive part of the squeak story rather than an isolated disaffected group.
> Perhaps you as the community should be asking what if anything the board
> have done towards this goal.

I did some contributions to both trunk and Pharo :)
They're small and insignificant. But i'm not telling people what they
should do and not fighting over a years
about direction they choosing.
You could battle with them all the time, but the fact is, that there
is a progress. And it doesn't really matter that you thinking it
'wrong'.
Progress is good, everything else is just blabbering noise.
Please, understand that it is very slow process to hop on to new
quality level (minimal image, modular design). It takes years and
years.. and can't be decided politically. People should realize what
they gaining and what they losing and why they need it. Only then when
we get a critical mass, we can move. But not now.

P.S. If you wait long enough, you'll see how corpses of your enemies
drifting down the river. (Chinese lore).

> As for me, you can find me in #cuis on irc.feenode.com if you want to.
> Keith
>

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

keith1y

Re: a little more due process

I did some contributions to both trunk and Pharo :)
They're small and insignificant. But i'm not telling people what they
should do

The board needs terms of reference, that is all I am saying. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

and not fighting over a years
about direction they choosing.

You could battle with them all the time, but the fact is, that there
is a progress. And it doesn't really matter that you thinking it
'wrong'.

Progress in the wrong direction is not progress.

Having a community in which the release team is not working in irc, members of board that cant be bothered with even the simplest communication and discussion, is not progress.

Progress is good, everything else is just blabbering noise.
Please, understand that it is very slow process to hop on to new
quality level (minimal image, modular design).It takes years and

years.. and can't be decided politically.

You are telling me? I thought it was decided politically?

I put 3 years into THIS goal with the board's approval, and you scuppered me without a second thought because you were too impatient to even email me to ask how far away a release would be, and now you tell ME to be patient!!!!

People should realize what
they gaining and what they losing and why they need it.

I am sure people would love to know what they are gaining and loosing, however this would require communication, and due process where the board compared actual options and proposals, and made recommendations. They could even set up healthy competition between proposals. This is not the world of the current squeak SOB.

Only then when
we get a critical mass, we can move. But not now.

You sure have critical mass, but I am not sure it is the "critical" you wanted.

P.S. If you wait long enough, you'll see how corpses of your enemies
drifting down the river. (Chinese lore).

Why does anyone have enemies, we are an open source project for goodness sake. We have this apparent view where the board thinks it can run the community by invoking charismatic dictatorship, over actual planning, talking and enabling amongst mutual participants within the community.

This mess is a mess of the board's making, no one else's, and it happened because of lack of "due process".

Keith

Bert Freudenberg

Re: a little more due process

On 16.02.2010, at 21:41, keith wrote:

> The board needs terms of reference, that is all I am saying. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

You're not the only one, and it's good you found supporters. But you are clearly in the minority. We discussed this on the list, and the outcome was that most people are fine with how the oversight board operates:

http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/meeting-report-for-12162009/

Re-iterating the point does not make it more relevant.

> Having a community in which the release team is not working in irc, members of board that cant be bothered with even the simplest communication and discussion, is not progress.

IRC is clearly deemed to be a medium inferior to the mailing list in this community. Forcing your ideas on us of what the development process should be hasn't worked before, and is unlikely to work in the future. You do have great ideas, it's just unfortunate they sometimes are not aligned with what the community at large wants.

> This mess is a mess of the board's making, no one else's, and it happened because of lack of "due process".

The "messy" trunk process was indeed established to allow contribution without much explicit coordination. It may not be what you like, but it seems to suit this community well. And that's what matters in the end, IMHO.

- Bert -

Edgar J. De Cleene

Re: a little more due process

On 2/16/10 7:51 PM, "Bert Freudenberg" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> You're not the only one, and it's good you found supporters. But you are
> clearly in the minority. We discussed this on the list, and the outcome was
> that most people are fine with how the oversight board operates:

I don't see any mails about elections for 2010 Board.

Again I said like to run for 2010 Board.

Edgar

keith1y

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg

IRC is clearly deemed to be a medium inferior to the mailing list in this community. Forcing your ideas on us of what the development process should be hasn't worked before, and is unlikely to work in the future.

I did not force anyone, I wrote a proposal and you subscribed to it.

You are the ones who forced things by instituting the trunk process which is unusable.

You do have great ideas, it's just unfortunate they sometimes are not aligned with what the community at large wants.

The community at large will now get what it is given. Yet another fork subscribing to the push model, where you push your changes into the forks that only you are interested in.

The pull model, is now becoming available for Cuis2, where you can subscribe to what you want or need, and publish changes to your image in a form that others can pull if they want to.

This mess is a mess of the board's making, no one else's, and it happened because of lack of "due process".

The "messy" trunk process was indeed established to allow contribution without much explicit coordination. It may not be what you like, but it seems to suit this community well. And that's what matters in the end, IMHO.

Why can no one distinguish between a technical point and a philosophical point. The mess I referred to is the political mess.

We established the philosophical basis of the old 3.11 project as being that of valuing and harnessing everyone's contributions, we did this in response to the pharo team's approach, which only accepts perfect contributions that make it past the 2 maintainers.

The board overturned this, by not valuing everyone contributions. You decided to only value contributions that can be integrated into trunk "now", not contributions that need a bit of work, contributions that will mature over time, or contributions of a revolutionary nature which might break things if they are not quite perfect. (Morphic 3.0 Rio etc)

The trunk process is now the same as the pharo process, something we knew we didn't want. It has a single point maintainer, and my contributions are not acceptable, and they are not technically usable. My contributions will not be good enough to add to trunk as they are they need a place to gestate, and be worked upon by a group before they would be ready.

Technically speaking trunk is not messy enough, because you cant do things like replacing Morphic, or refactoring the sources changes mechanism in trunk. You would have to do it offline, and when it is perfect it could be integrated, but achieving the integration is tricky because trunk is a moving target.

Sure Andreas is superhuman and can do amazing stuff in trunk that works perfectly and doesn't ever break anything, but I cant, I need to work offline and integrate things when they are ready. Trunk is too controlled and focused to enable that, you are imposing a monolithic development model on my that I can't work with.

If I recall the community actually wanted a minimal kernel image with which they can build what they want.

Keith

Edgar J. De Cleene

Re: a little more due process

Re: [squeak-dev] a little more due process

On 2/16/10 8:28 PM, "keith" <[hidden email]> wrote:

>If I recall the community actually wanted a minimal kernel image with which they can build what they want.

I working on this for years.
I recently take the hard decision (for me) of abandon Minimal.
Minimal is 7.3 mb only and could do any 3.7 to 3.10 and even Trunk with no Closures code.

But Trunk works and is where the show is, like it or not.

If Minimal wish take new thinks of Trunk, grows and grows.
I start SL3 , is what I dream in Ralph times, start with 3.10 and “political issues” avoid me do in 3.11.
SL3 is trunk unloaded and I plan to put into all my wild things .
Because I plan test how grow to normal Trunk , to Seaside + Pier, to Etoys 4.0, to FunSqueak.
But all paths have obstacles and we need discover and found how “all the problems can be treated as challenges” (stealing old far away phrase).

Cuis is original SqueakLight well done.
Unloaded Trunk is SqueakLightII well done.

Maybe Squeak 5 become SL3 well done ?.

Take many failures and long time to us , mere humans , people realize our crazy ideas of today.

But fighting and blaming is not the way.

Edgar

keith1y

Re: a little more due process

But fighting and blaming is not the way.

Edgar

Well perhaps if you get elected to the board, you can change things then.

In case you were not aware, some current board members believe that this is a dictatorship and that this is how things are supposed to be run. The sooner such board members are removed, the better, you have my vote.

Keith

Andreas.Raab

Re: a little more due process

keith wrote:
> In case you were not aware, some current board members believe that this
> is a dictatorship and that this is how things are supposed to be run.

With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual
evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a
dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract
your false accusation?

Thanks,
- Andreas

Miguel Cobá

Re: a little more due process

El mar, 16-02-2010 a las 15:26 -0800, Andreas Raab escribió:
> keith wrote:
> > In case you were not aware, some current board members believe that this
> > is a dictatorship and that this is how things are supposed to be run.
>
> With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual
> evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a
> dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract
> your false accusation?

Maybe is this:

16:58:07 <RandalSchwartz> at some point, it's a dictatorship. perhaps
you never liked that.

from:

http://tunes.org/~nef/logs/squeak/10.02.14

Of course the context is important but the text is there.

>
> Thanks,
> - Andreas
>

--
Miguel Cobá
http://miguel.leugim.com.mx

keith1y

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Andreas.Raab

With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract your false accusation?

Thanks,
- Andreas

Your wish is my command. You may have been puzzled as to why I have been so vocal, I am only reacting against this kind of dictatorship talk.

Randal also blatantly said that "the end justifies the means".

16:57:33 <keithy> the whole point was to be philosophically inclusive
16:57:38 <keithy> otherwise squeak is dead
16:57:46 <keithy> trunk is not inclusive
16:58:07 <RandalSchwartz> at some point, it's a dictatorship.  perhaps you never liked that.
16:58:07 <keithy> trunk is one fork
16:58:21 <keithy> it is not a dictatorship
16:58:25 <RandalSchwartz> the official fork, yes
16:58:30 <RandalSchwartz> what we call "Squeak"

best regards

Keith

Ken G. Brown

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Andreas.Raab

At 3:26 PM -0800 2/16/10, Andreas Raab apparently wrote:
>keith wrote:
>>In case you were not aware, some current board members believe that this is a dictatorship and that this is how things are supposed to be run.
>
>With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract your false accusation?
>
>Thanks,
> - Andreas

>From yesterday's #squeak:

RandalSchwartz: at some point, it's a dictatorship. perhaps you never liked that.

As Ken Causey has said,

At 1:09 PM -0600 2/16/10, Ken Causey apparently wrote:
>I suggest
>anyone interested in this make their own judgment:
>
>http://tunes.org/~nef/logs/squeak/10.02.14

Ken G. Brown

Igor Stasenko

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Miguel Cobá

Star Wars Episode VIII.

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Randal L. Schwartz

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by Miguel Cobá

>>>>> "Miguel" == Miguel Enrique Cobá Martinez <[hidden email]> writes:

Miguel> 16:58:07 <RandalSchwartz> at some point, it's a dictatorship. perhaps
Miguel> you never liked that.

With the key context there being "at some point".

As in, "the buck stops here".

There can be endless discussion on subjects in squeak-dev, but if there's
no resolution, it's up to the board to *choose*. That's why you elect
a board... to *govern*.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

Randal L. Schwartz

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by keith1y

>>>>> "keith" == keith <[hidden email]> writes:

keith> Randal also blatantly said that "the end justifies the means".

I don't belive that universally, so this must be a point you extracted
from a particular context.

There *are* situations where the outcome trumps the process. There are other
situations where any outcome is permitted as long as the process is within
bounds. It's important to know which game you're playing though.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

Andreas.Raab

Re: a little more due process

In reply to this post by keith1y

keith wrote:
>> With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual
>> evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a
>> dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract
>> your false accusation?
>
> Your wish is my command. You may have been puzzled as to why I have been
> so vocal, I am only reacting against this kind of dictatorship talk.

Is that all you got? A single quote from a single discussion on IRC? If
anything it goes to show that my dislike of IRC is well justified. The
inability to make a complete argument combined with public logs makes
sure that if you actually engage in discussion you're going to say
certain things that should be off-records; except they're not because
it's in the logs.

I *very* much doubt that Randal meant this sentence as a "It's a
dictatorship, damnit, get used to it!" but rather as a casual
observation to get a point across as one would in a casual conversation.
I would disagree even with that but I have no doubt that Randal used a
bit of rhetoric to emphasize the point that a decision must be made
somewhere at times, and that he's willing to take this responsibility
(which I agree with but that's a very long shot from calling it a
dictatorship). Misinterpreting him in the way you're doing is basically
assuming bad faith on Randal's behalf.

I don't use IRC precisely for the reason that it's not a medium to make
a concise argument; it's a discussion medium where thoughts flow freely
and the written argument shouldn't be recorded any more than when you
have a verbal conversation over lunch.

Cheers,
- Andreas

>
> Randal also blatantly said that "the end justifies the means".
>
> 16:57:33 <keithy> the whole point was to be philosophically inclusive
> 16:57:38 <keithy> otherwise squeak is dead
> 16:57:46 <keithy> trunk is not inclusive
> 16:58:07 <RandalSchwartz> at some point, it's a dictatorship. perhaps you never liked that.
> 16:58:07 <keithy> trunk is one fork
> 16:58:21 <keithy> it is not a dictatorship
> 16:58:25 <RandalSchwartz> the official fork, yes
> 16:58:30 <RandalSchwartz> what we call "Squeak"
>
>
> best regards
>
> Keith
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>

Ken G. Brown

Re: a little more due process

At 4:17 PM -0800 2/16/10, Andreas Raab apparently wrote:
>keith wrote:
>>>With such an outrageous claim, can I ask you to either provide actual evidence (quotes, logs, etc) which board members believe this to be a dictatorship or, if you are unable to provide said evidence, retract your false accusation?
>>
>>Your wish is my command. You may have been puzzled as to why I have been so vocal, I am only reacting against this kind of dictatorship talk.
>
>Is that all you got? A single quote from a single discussion on IRC? If anything it goes to show that my dislike of IRC is well justified. The inability to make a complete argument combined with public logs makes sure that if you actually engage in discussion you're going to say certain things that should be off-records; except they're not because it's in the logs.
>
>I *very* much doubt that Randal meant this sentence as a "It's a dictatorship, damnit, get used to it!"

>From several conversations I've seen over time, I very much believe this is exactly the way he meant it.

Ken G. Brown

>but rather as a casual observation to get a point across as one would in a casual conversation. I would disagree even with that but I have no doubt that Randal used a bit of rhetoric to emphasize the point that a decision must be made somewhere at times, and that he's willing to take this responsibility (which I agree with but that's a very long shot from calling it a dictatorship). Misinterpreting him in the way you're doing is basically assuming bad faith on Randal's behalf.
>
>I don't use IRC precisely for the reason that it's not a medium to make a concise argument; it's a discussion medium where thoughts flow freely and the written argument shouldn't be recorded any more than when you have a verbal conversation over lunch.
>
>Cheers,
> - Andreas
>
>>
>>Randal also blatantly said that "the end justifies the means".
>>
>>16:57:33 <keithy> the whole point was to be philosophically inclusive
>>16:57:38 <keithy> otherwise squeak is dead
>>16:57:46 <keithy> trunk is not inclusive
>>16:58:07 <RandalSchwartz> at some point, it's a dictatorship. perhaps you never liked that.
>>16:58:07 <keithy> trunk is one fork
>>16:58:21 <keithy> it is not a dictatorship
>>16:58:25 <RandalSchwartz> the official fork, yes
>>16:58:30 <RandalSchwartz> what we call "Squeak"
>>
>>
>>best regards
>>
>>Keith
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------