Dmitry Smirnov <only...@debian.org> writes: > Suppose Debian is to receive a similar letter of aggression, e.g. "We > IBM and Mozilla Foundation think that your duly elected project leader > is unworthy."
I would read the letter with great interest to try to understand why they felt that way, and probably also talk to people outside of Debian as well as people inside of Debian, people I trusted to be honest with me, to see if they had similar feelings or concerns that they weren't raising because they didn't think it would do any good, or were intimidated out of raising, or otherwise didn't feel safe to raise. At the end of the process, I might decide that I disagreed with some or all of the letter or that the complaints were spurious or ill-founded, but (particularly if signed by organizations that I knew were unlikely to do such a thing lightly) it would be worth spending some time thinking and analyzing and trying to understand and seeing if I had some blind spot, and what would have led to them taking such a step. > Wouldn't the only reasonable response to that be "mind your own > business"? No, for some reason I don't feel the need to react to sincere external criticism from serious organizations with knee-jerk hostility or dismissiveness. Even if, after a thoughtful analysis, I completely disagreed with every point of the substance of such a letter, the most productive way to deal with such a letter is to calmly explain why it did not seem valid and then go on with what one was going to do anyway. It's also a good opportunity to ensure that one's governance processes are open, transparent, and functional, because there's always a possibility that I could disagree completely with such a letter *and be completely wrong*, and there needs to be a usable path for one's opinion to be outvoted. > Note that if we start discussing response and putting it out for GR then > we are DoS'ed successfully. Responding to serious concerns about the governance of a public benefit project (which I would count Debian as, although we're not formally incorporated as such) is part of the work of that project and is a moral and ethical obligation on the project. That doesn't mean *everyone* in the project has any obligation to be involved, but it does mean that it's a role the project should fill and take seriously. Debian is, of course, a volunteer project. Therefore, if it's not something you find interesting or useful, you're free (and encouraged!) to ignore that process and let those of us who are willing to do the work do it. PS: I would not consider such a letter to be "aggression against the project" in any meaningful way, and thus also don't agree with the subject line of this thread. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
