Dear Gavin, Le lundi 04 février 2019 à 09:28:41-0700, Gavin Howard a écrit : > I am not a contributor, so take what I say with a grain of salt. > > I was planning on becoming a contributor to Debian recently and joined > the mailing list in preparation for doing so. And then I saw > everything that was happening. > > It made me nervous that people could be accused and removed without > any public process, opportunity to collect evidence, opportunity to > face their accuser, presumption of innocence, and other basic human > rights guaranteed, at least, by the US Constitution. (I don't know > about the Debian constitution.)
Using references to legal arguments to determine how a private group should work and behave is not really a relevant thing. Debian has normative texts it chose as a project and none of these is entitled to the notion of "fair trial" or whatever like this. Regarding the lack of public process, I can understand how you see it as a good thing to hold "public trials", but others could say that such a "public trial" could undermine their professionnal career and their public image. Debian chose one way regarding publicity, you're free to think about alternatives. That being said, don't try to involve Human Rights or any State of Law justice notion in this as this is mostly irrelevant to the subject. I'm pretty sure you know plenty groups where the same kind of thing holds. Especially in the US. > Also, when I saw someone who appeared to be in a position of > leadership asking for evidence of wrongdoing *after* making a decision > to ban someone, that was...chilling, as though there was a vendetta > that was fulfilled and that the leader was looking for justification > of such a vendetta. The fact that some people can do mistakes sometimes isn't either a hard piece of news or something sufficient to form any judgement, especially when they retracted themselves with apologies (after being called out by members of the project, including at least two DAM). Ironically, there are two persons on this list who asked for evidences of "misbehaviours" of other people, one who retracted, and whom you pointed a finger at, and one other, who is actually the original poster of the current thread, who offered a 500£ bounty for such "evidences" and who didn't retract a thing. No one having banned anyone asked for any more evidence on this list or another. You probably made a mistake while reading these far too long threads. > For myself, I do not have great social skills and cannot read subtle, > between-the-lines, subtle messages, especially through the medium of > email. I could see a future where, if I joined Debian, I might make an > innocent mistake and not realize it until I was removed from the > project. That does not sound fun. Do you really think that among more than a thousand people, nobody except the two recently expelled developers made an innocent mistake? Do you actually think that regarding the one whom I replied to, he's on any "innocent mistake" path? I really suggest that you take some time to think about it again. > So, no thank you. And best of luck to everyone. I'm sorry if the current situation discouraged you to contribute to the project. I'm especially sorry if by the previous email I sent, I contributed to this feeling. Yet I'll respect your choice, that you are free to overturn anytime if you feel the wish to give help and input to the project. I hope you find happiness and fun in your future projects/work. Best regards, -- Pierre-Elliott Bécue GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528 F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2 It's far easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
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