Hi Jonathan,
thank you for offering to serve the Debian project for another year as project leader.
To my knowledge, it does not happen often, that a Debian member gets
excluded from the project.
Half a year later, would you mind sharing a comment on my exclusion? Would you be open to have a (public?) call with me and maybe also people from the project (e.g. community team)?
There have been conflicts in the last years that separated even families. Also the Debian project has been affected. These conflicts should be healed.
All the best, Thomas Koch
Soren Stoutner <soren@stoutner.com> hat am 15.03.2023 19:07 EET geschrieben:
I would be interested in hearing the details of what happened.
Half a year later, would you mind sharing a comment on my exclusion?
Would you be open to have a (public?) call with me and maybe also people
from the project (e.g. community team)?
There have been conflicts in the last years that separated even
families. Also the Debian project has been affected. These conflicts
should be healed.
Soren Stoutner <soren@stoutner.com> hat am 15.03.2023 19:07 EET geschrieben:
I would be interested in hearing the details of what happened.
There you go:
https://blog.koch.ro/posts/2023-03-15-debian-exclusion.html
BTW, I think that in this particular instance it did "directly impact
the operation of Debian itself" because pandemic-related restrictions
(e.g., vaccines, travel distruptions, etc.) became something that
impacted Debian events and operations.
Thomas,
Thank you for this post. I found it an informative read.
My personal opinion is that Debian is not the proper venue for discussions that do not have a strong nexus to development of Debian itself. As such, I don’t feel that any of the emails or posts you wrote were appropriate for sending to Debian’s email lists or posting on Debian websites except for the
email questions about how Debian can best handle the increasing difficulty caused by laws that prohibit the free-flow of contributions and software between countries (your email of 3 April 2022).
However much I might agree with the factual content of the other emails and posts, I don’t think it serves Debian well to get involved in controversial topics unless they directly impact the operation of Debian itself (for example, laws related to copyright or patents).
Yet, would someone posting about the earth being flat, the moon
landings
being faked, or aliens being kept in various secret government
facilities around the world have been so swiftly removed from the
project?
On 16803 March 1977, Roberto C. Snchez wrote:
Yet, would someone posting about the earth being flat, the moon landings being faked, or aliens being kept in various secret government
facilities around the world have been so swiftly removed from the
project?
Hardly swiftly. And not to a single event. The timeline in the DAM post
he published lists it nicely, about 2 years and multiple warnings in.
And yes, if someone manages to go that way with another conspiracy
theory that directly affects people like this one did, I do believe the outcome will be the same. The ones you list above are on the comedy side
of things. :)
Can we have a clear statement of what "directly affects people"?
Why don't you ask me about the people in my life who have been harmed
by and who I've lost to communist and/or socialist tyranny?
On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 07:53:22AM -0400, Roberto C. Snchez wrote:
Can we have a clear statement of what "directly affects people"?
for those having lost people due to covid, hearing someone say
it's a hoax, is definitly painful. and this affects Debian directly:
so far we know about one dead DM (yes, Debian Maintainer) and personally I know several suffering from long covid.
surprise: you're not invisble when you close your eyes.
Or those who where injured or killed by COVID-19 vaccines?
I'm afraid that you miss the point. I specifically chose flat
earth,
& co., as a contrast. My position is that we are all adults,
capable
of deciding for ourselves and that, absent some behavior that is a
clear violation of the Code of Conduct and/or mailing list rules
(e.g., harassment), simply uttering something that some people do
not
like does not form cause for removing someone, or even for issuing
any sort of warning. Else, why bother having a Code of Conduct and mailing list rules?
On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 07:53:22AM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
Can we have a clear statement of what "directly affects people"?
for those having lost people due to covid, hearing someone say
it's a hoax, is definitly painful. and this affects Debian directly:
so far we know about one dead DM (yes, Debian Maintainer) and personally I know several suffering from long covid.
surprise: you're not invisble when you close your eyes.
--
cheers,
Holger
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
⠈⠳⣄
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Covid is like the flu.
Can we please cut the unscientific bullshit from Debian lists?
On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:29:12PM +0000, Holger Levsen wrote:
On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 07:53:22AM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:Why don't you ask me about the people in my life who have been harmed by
Can we have a clear statement of what "directly affects people"?
for those having lost people due to covid, hearing someone say
it's a hoax, is definitly painful. and this affects Debian directly:
so far we know about one dead DM (yes, Debian Maintainer) and personally I >> know several suffering from long covid.
surprise: you're not invisble when you close your eyes.
and who I've lost to communist and/or socialist tyranny?
We clearly have a politically biased process when it comes to what behaviors/words/thoughts are being policed. I'm not even asking for an unbiased treatment of everyone (though that would be ideal). What I am asking for is that we have a clear statement of the bias that exists so
that people who are concerned about being affected these policies have
an opportunity to know beforehand.
And yes, if someone manages to go that way with another conspiracyYou, on the other hand, seem to take the position that DAM (or some
theory that directly affects people like this one did, I do believe
the
outcome will be the same. The ones you list above are on the comedy
side
of things. :)
other authority) gets to determine what "directly affects people" and
then act in response to that determination. In effect, you seem to be advocating for the practice of "thought policing". Or do I
misunderstand what your position is?
Can we have a clear statement of what "directly affects people"?
That way members of our community can have an opportunity to determine
if
what they are about to say/write might be considered problematic under
that criterion?
I'm afraid that you miss the point. I specifically chose flat earth, &
co., as a contrast. My position is that we are all adults, capable of deciding for ourselves and that, absent some behavior that is a clear violation of the Code of Conduct and/or mailing list rules (e.g., harassment), simply uttering something that some people do not like does
not form cause for removing someone, or even for issuing any sort of
warning. Else, why bother having a Code of Conduct and mailing list
rules?
This seems to come from a point of view that any "wrong thing one may
write leads to an exclusion". And that's just so wrong, that even trying
to define something here is impossible - and also wrong.
Roberto> I'm afraid that you miss the point. I specifically chose"Roberto" == Roberto C Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> writes:
It was disruptive, and disruptive of Debian's mission.
This was true even before DAM acted.
Even before any action was taken, people were not ignoring Thomas's
messages.
Thomas's messages were disrupting our mailing lists in a way that is in
my mind inconsistent with our mailing list rules.
On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 12:00:55PM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
Thomas,Yet, would someone posting about the earth being flat, the moon landings being faked, or aliens being kept in various secret government
Thank you for this post. I found it an informative read.
My personal opinion is that Debian is not the proper venue for discussions >> that do not have a strong nexus to development of Debian itself. As such, I
don’t feel that any of the emails or posts you wrote were appropriate for >> sending to Debian’s email lists or posting on Debian websites except for the
email questions about how Debian can best handle the increasing difficulty >> caused by laws that prohibit the free-flow of contributions and software
between countries (your email of 3 April 2022).
However much I might agree with the factual content of the other emails and >> posts, I don’t think it serves Debian well to get involved in controversial
topics unless they directly impact the operation of Debian itself (for
example, laws related to copyright or patents).
facilities around the world have been so swiftly removed from the
project?
Roberto C. Snchez <roberto@debian.org> writes:
I'm afraid that you miss the point. I specifically chose flat earth, & co., as a contrast. My position is that we are all adults, capable of deciding for ourselves and that, absent some behavior that is a clear violation of the Code of Conduct and/or mailing list rules (e.g., harassment), simply uttering something that some people do not like does not form cause for removing someone, or even for issuing any sort of warning. Else, why bother having a Code of Conduct and mailing list
rules?
Let me propose an alternate way of thinking about this, which I think is a bit more accurate description of what happens in practice.
1. Someone has something they feel passionately about but which is not
very related to the work of Debian. One can argue some connection (we
are people living in the world -- there will always be some
connection), but it's not obviously directly relevant to our work.
They start using project resources (mailing lists, etc.) to talk about
this topic.
2. Those discussions upset other people in the project. Often this is
because they directly disagree, sometimes it's just because they don't
want to talk about that topic here. The former is usually what creates
the initial reaction, of course, and the latter is more of a fallback
position among the vocal people, but I suspect is a more common initial
position among the quieter people who just want to do Debian work.
3. We reach some sort of rough consensus as a community that this
discussion is disruptive and we don't want to have it here. This is
the critical point: for many previous controversial discussions, we
*didn't* reach this consensus for one reason or another. Perhaps
there's ongoing disagreement over whether this topic is directly
relevant to Debian or not. But sometimes we reach a pretty
overwhelming consensus (by this I mean nearly everyone speaking up is
arguing in that direction) that regardless of the merits of the
argument we don't want to talk about it on project resources.
4. The person who feels passionately about this thinks that consensus is
wrong and keeps talking about it anyway.
5. Eventually DAM gets involved, judges the consensus about declaring this
off-topic, and asks the person to stop.
6. The person refuses to stop because this topic is of overwhelming
importance to them and for some reason they feel like they have to
discuss it in Debian.
7. Eventually, DAM takes action to force them to stop. At this point, I
would argue that it doesn't make sense for them to continue as members
of the project because they're pretty clearly unwilling to respect a
boundary the project is trying to draw (step 3). That's a fairly
irreconcilable difference and it's better for everyone to go their
separate ways.
I think this is a pretty typical process for just about any community
space where people interact. I've seen versions of this play out in just about every community I've been involved in. Usually things stop at step
2 because discussing something when other people are upset at the
discussion isn't very fun and usually people don't like to keep doing it. Very often the process stops at step 3 because no sufficiently strong consensus emerges. Hopefully the rest of the time the process stops at
step 5. Very rarely it runs through the whole list.
If this is a reasonably accurate model, I think it makes it somewhat
obvious that you can't have a list of banned topics written down in
advance because steps 2 and 3 are really important (and step 3 can change over time!). The point isn't that there is a specific set of off-topic topics. The point is that if you talk about something that makes other community members actively upset (step 2) *and* they can build a project consensus that we want to shut down this specific topic here (step 3),
then the rest of the process potentially comes into play.
Nearly all controversial topics in Debian do not get past step 3. We have endless recurring topics that run up to step 3 every year or so, and never progress any farther.
At least in my opinion, having watched this specific incident from the
start, we passed point 3 fairly clearly with a rather remarkable consensus
by Debian standards (not unanimity, but a pretty strong consensus). I realize other people may disagree, and that perhaps part of your point in getting involved in this discussion is to register your disagreement with
the conclusion that we reached a step 3 consensus. But I do think we did.
This process is *inherently subjective*, because it depends on the people
in the community and what upsets them and what topics they form a step 3 consensus about. It's not a question of absolute right or wrong or any generalizable universal moral judgment. It's a question of self-policing
and a community's ability to declare what they do and don't want the community discussion space to be used for. And yes, that inherently
requires someone with power in the community to make a judgment call about whether step 3 was truly satisfied, and that judgment call is often going
to be controversial, and we as a community should guard against making it prematurely or too easily, and there may be ongoing disagreements over whether that happened.
But I don't think the process *as such* is inherently unfair; in fact, I think it would be hard to have a community of humans that didn't have some sort of process similar to this. Not everything is going to be talked
about everywhere all the time; people are occasionally going to say "hey, please don't talk about this here," and I think that's a reasonable thing
to want. And there's really no way to build a comprehensive list of such topics in advance.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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