André Batista <[email protected]> writes: > IMO, we are in between two dangerous paths:
yes, i agree. the withdrawal of this gcd has made this community more acrimonious to itself than i would have thought possible just a few months ago. tensions are really, really high, and it's easy to do or say something we'll later regret in this environment. now, more than ever, we need to remember what we stand for above all. things like mutual respect for each other as human beings. right now, more than ever, we need to walk the walk. to me, that means accepting this withdrawal and trying to move forward while maintaining basic respect for the dignity of everyone. i hate it that this failed, too, and i think it hurts more because, against seemingly impossible odds, it actually looked like it was going to pass. and having that snatched away is painful. i wasn't even involved as anything but an observer, so i can only pretend to imagine the grief felt by people who were heavily involved, and had to sacrifice so much of their own vision to try and thread this needle. > The first is to throw minority right of disapproval under the bus > when it's mostly needed. Notice that this right is a stepping stone > of the consensus process, so invalidating someones disapproval > should be a last resort measure in a truly exceptional situation. > Otherwise the consensus process itself would be thrown away. agreed, but actually i'd go further: if we're talking about removing someone's voice, then we have hit a fundamental breach of trust, and at that point we need to talk about removing the member. if the member still has enough trust to be a member, then their voice should always be heard, without exception. > OTOH, if we take the route of assuming trust and good faith of > everyone regardless of any evidence to the contrary and accepting > arbitrary disapprovals from people who don't show any sign of trying > to build consensus, then we are opening our community to be abused > at will. We welcome new team members without much fuzz, so anyone > willing to disturb guix has a clear easy path to do so. i think we need a process to remove people. i have no idea what that looks like. trust is not something that can be quantified. i can't imagine a rule that says “when you have hit this lower limit of trust, you're out” with any mechanism. but every group has the right to exclude people. freedom of association is a fundamental right. i'm worried that without a process, instead we'll just take to harassing people (obviously or not) to get rid of them. it would also remove ambiguity. i'd hate to be gabber right now and be unable to tell legitimate criticism from motivated criticism. i would feel under attack. that's not how we should be treating each other. so if we need to separate ways, then we should be able to do that without attacks, as amicably as possible. so i think we need to seriously consider what that looks like. > Christine's comment on the evil bit rfc comes to mind. Someone > willing to abuse the community will not put a disclaimer that > they are doing it, they will mask it as legitimate traffic. the evil bit is a criticism in an antagonistic system. consensus is the opposite of that. here, we expect that if we say "use the evil bit when being malicious", then people will do that, because consensus starts with trust. > To me (and I believe to others as well), it's become clear their > abuse of the process. i certainly hear what you're saying, but the process demands things of us, as well. namely that we assume good faith. i am perhaps going to be too blunt here, but i know of no other way to say this: in my heart of hearts, i also feel like gabber has violated the process. here's the thing, though: i don't know that. i *can't* know that. but the process demands that i at least pretend, to the best of my ability, that it was done in good faith. that's my responsibility to this project and that's a good thing. because i might very well be wrong, or misunderstanding something, or they might be confused, and so on. i often am, especially when tensions are high. i *want* to be mad at someone and make it their fault, but i've also been on the receiving end of that my whole life, and it's no way to treat people. i come from a big family. we've had some real hard fights over the years over things that seemed impossible to recover from. in some cases it's taken years, in one case it's never going to happen. but the best shot we have is taking a step back, taking a long, sober breath, and thinking about what we'd leave behind if we ostracized someone. gabber, i'm sorry you're going through this. i'm sorry that i have to speak against you. i hope we can get through this. i mean it when i say i can't know what's in your head, and that i hope i'm wrong about my feelings. -bjc
