On 2017-04-13, Gilles wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Apr 2017 11:53:27 +0200, Stefan Bodewig wrote:
>> On 2017-04-12, Gilles wrote:

>>> [Reminder: a big part of "Commons RNG" was developed inside CM and
>>> most PMC people did not even know about it (although I was opening
>>> JIRA issues all along.  Hence creating a "git" repository is not
>>> futile if it can raise awareness.]

>> By now you've probably learned that people won't look at JIRA issues
>> raised for components they don't work on. At least I don't :-)

> A priori, I don't have any problem with an individual taking that
> stance. [I do it too, because a day is only 24 hours long.]

> But then, one is not entitled to claim a say about the issues which
> he let pass...

I don't recall ever claiming anything like this.

Not sure what you are trying to say here. It could be that you are
trying to attack me but I hope you are not. Email is a difficult beast,
in particular emails written in a foreign language (German is my native
language and I don't think English is yours, either, there is lot of
room for misunderstandings).

>> I prefer the "small steps" approach taken with RNG and NUMBERS.

> That's what I've been advocating all along.

Fine, then we all seem to be on the same page. Let's move on.

>> I read you expect the PMC to do something, but unfortunately I don't
>> understand what it is that you want the PMC to do. Maybe we are are
>> interpreting the role of the PMC differently.

>> In what way has the integrity of the Commons project been endangered?
>> I've seen people fork the code of MATH - which is fine by our license
>> - and move to work in a different environment - which is their choice
>> and I'm not willing to judge them.

> And I think that the PMC has been wrong in passively accepting the
> "surprise" fork.

Oops, I thought you were talking about the PMC harming MATH right now,
after all you started the thread based on the report for the past
quarter, not years ago. I'm sorry I misunderstood you.

> Because it came from _inside_ the community, the PMC would have
> been right to demand that a reasonable attempt be made at exposing
> the reasons, and at trying to fix issues while preserving the
> community.

> I was hurt by the fork, and the way it happened.  And I was hurt that
> the PMC did not see anything wrong in "community fellows" keeping me
> in the dark for five months, to work alone on a doomed project, while
> they were sneakily setting up an alternative environment.

I understand the action hurt you. Absolutely.

On the road that led to people starting their fork somewhere else there
have been lots of heated arguments. It looked like bad flame-wars that
happen in other communities as well and yes, the PMC should probably
have tried to stop them and remind people to treat each other with
respect. We didn't and I think this has been acknowledged in the past. I
don't have the links ready but I know several PMC members have said so
already.  We try to learn from it.

We don't need to tell the board that we are still trying to do better
with each report, though. :-)

To be frank my recollection of said arguments is not one where one side
was the reasonable voice and victim of attacks while the other side was
wielding flame-throwers. We should have called out *all* of you.

As to the action of forking itself, I still don't see anything the PMC
should have done about it. We should have interfered before it
happened. That doesn't mean I'm convinced that we could have been
successfull back then.

>> I've seen you sticking around to work on MATH and keeping the parts
>> alive that you care deeply about and finding new contributors that
>> share those goal - which is great.

> Or stupid...

No more stupid than most of us working on any other component in their
spare time.

>> The PMC has not been standing in the way of RNG or NUMBERS, maybe
>> discussions have been taking longer than you'd have wanted.

> Yes that's one of the things that prevent "do-ocracy": someone
> willing to do the work is stalled by (non-technical) arguments
> from someone not intending to back them with actual work (same
> reference):

That's the price of consensus. You don't get to choose who needs to
agree with you, you have to convince all people who show up. This takes
time and drains energy. Yes, a dictator style development approach can
move a lot faster. This is a drawback of consensus based development
that we have accepted, or else we'd all by playing with our github repos
on our own.

Stefan

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