please, let avoid misunderstandings

please, let avoid misunderstandings

[zimoun]

Dear Léo,
Dear Guix,

My name pops up here so let me expose *my* feelings.

I am truly sad by the situation.  From my eyes, such escalation and such
wordings means we––as a community––collectively failed somewhere.
Instead of speaking, we have to individually introspect and ask what
each of us should have done differently.  A friendly environment where
we peacefully discuss is spanned by a proactive whole community on a
daily basis.

Let me say again to you Léo that I appreciate your valuable work,
especially about security.  And I am convinced that your enthusiasm is a
really good thing for Guix.  It makes me sad that you leave.

Attentive observer probably has noticed that I stopped my interactions
with Guix proper ~one month ago.  Indeed, because I have been strongly
irritated.  Léo, your behaviour over all the month of March is the only
reason that I went away; the lack of actions or messages by the whole
community simply reinforced my decision to take away.

The decision to suspend your, Léo, commit access is not mine and if five
long-standing people, who are responsible, among many others, to keep
the friendly environment we all praise, if they take such decision, then
at best your only answer should be: apology then introspect to look for
what was wrong.  For transparency, my contribution here had been to show
using our interactions on March what I identified as a pattern: the one
we are seeing here again.

Léo, you said: «They also wanted to go», it is false.  For instance I am
still roaming on #guix-hpc, I provided feedback about the POWER9 blog
post, I am going to partly write the blog entry for GuixHPC about v1.3,
I am in touch with Timothy about the recent addition of disarchive,
etc. and it makes me torn to not have taken my part in helping for v1.3
since I have pleaded for releasing more often.

For what it is worth, I silently stopped because I wanted to avoid a
fight that Guix does not deserve.  I am still in the same mindset and my
intent here is to avoid unpleasant dispute for all and restore smooth
discussions, and even move on.

Again for transparency, here the list, for what it is worth, to whom I
privately said I take away for some time:

  guix-maintainers Wed, 31 Mar 2021 13:21:52 +0200
  Ricardo          Fri, 02 Apr 2021 14:11:44 +0200
  Leo (F)          Fri, 02 Apr 2021 17:11:30 +0200
  Mark             Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:05:16 +0200
  Chris (M)        Tue, 06 Apr 2021 18:10:45 +0200
  Julien           Fri, 16 Apr 2021 14:21:46 +0200
  Andreas          Tue, 20 Apr 2021 14:04:03 +0200
  Raghav           Sat, 24 Apr 2021 12:10:51 +0200
  Pjotr            Mon, 26 Apr 2021 23:48:13 +0200
  Arun and Pierre  Thu, 29 Apr 2021 18:29:49 +0200
  Leo (P)          Thu, 29 Apr 2021 18:55:16 +0200

I still think that informing only people with who I had ongoing work was
the best move.  Being publicly silent about my decision to take away
avoided to add again fuel to the fire and let the door open for peaceful
collaborations beyond my exasperation against Léo.  Then, I should
always reconsider my position and be back months later once or if I
would have been realigned.

I am again hurt that you, Léo, use the same «harassed» word when it
carries a strong meaning.  Why do you not take in count my own feelings
when I explicitly expressed to you that such word hurts me?  Without
saying that the CoC had publicly been pointed to you.  You are
generating *exactly* what you are advocating against: «I do not feel
welcome to acknowledge criticism when it is not written in a friendly
manner (because it generates confrontation), and also I can disagree
with criticism».  Please keep your house in order.

Just to put numbers about «felt harassed» by me.  For only the month of
March, I sent ~300 emails/patch to various Guix lists.  Moreover, part
of (old) bugs squashing month, I closed more than 30 old bugs on
December, and I do not know how many since I have started my attempt to
reduce as much as I can the Bug Tracker load.  For what it is worth,
from my experience, it is much easier to fix as early as possible
instead of dig later and unknot.

Considering this frame, my complaints had never been about the
contributions (patch) but always about pushed mistakes avoidable by
review.  Léo, it appears to me that the net of our argument is expressed
by you here [1] and I cannot say how strongly I oppose this opinion from
a committer.  Do not take me wrong, I think I have a track record to
underline how I try to welcome people and provide constructive feedback
where the aim is to try as much as possible to reach high quality.

1: <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-04/msg00466.html>

Here, I will not provide more references because now we moved on and I
consider all is behind.  Interested reader can still open the archives.

However, if someone witnessed from me something wrong, please point me
such, privately or even publicly.  I take seriously what a welcoming
place means.  I have already re-read, more than once, *all* my
interactions with Guix over the month of March.  If I failed somewhere,
I need help to understand.

I apology for my 2 badly-worded messages to Léo; somehow expressing my
exasperation:

        I will not comment because I am bored by all that.

        Last, you have been prompted to commit a major update and
        disable the test-suite for zstd, and I am still waiting that you
        are prompt again to fix it; especially when a proposal fix is
        done here:
<http://issues.guix.gnu.org/47257#15>

        Ahah, I am happy to know it.  I hope it is because a
        “miscommunication» and not because you do not carefully read or
        because maybe you only see through the tiny lens of known
        security vulnerabilities.  From my opinion, your point of view
        to tackle the issue is wrong.  That’s said.
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-03/msg00608.html>


Last, I would like to mention that I do not have commit rights.  For
what it is worth, I authored more than 500 commits and I also provided
feedback to various patches.  Commit access should not be considered as
an end but it is a boring responsibility for guarding the standards, as
the manual says «If you get commit access, please make sure to follow
the policy below»; i.e., by English definition of “responsibility for”:
if you accept responsibility for something, then you agree that you are
the one to blame for it; almost a tautology. ;-) That’s why we have a
documented process asking for review via guix-patches: to share such
responsibility.  Do not take me wrong, mistake happens and that’s fine,
though I am not able to be indulgent to repetitive mistakes when the way
to avoid them is explicitly mentioned and straightforward.  From my
eyes, I still had been constructive and friendly.  If not, again, I need
help to understand.


I wish to all of you the very best. Léo, I strongly hope you will
reconsider your mindset and be back soon; as I said, from my side, I
consider our incident is far behind us, and your energy and enthusiasm
are worthwhile.  Léo, I hope we will get the chance to meet at the next
Guix Days or around a random event in the Parisian area.

Personally, I am still staying away from Guix proper because I felt hurt
by the fact that the whole community did nothing for two months to
prevent such escalations.  I am happy with what I did with Guix and,
once my house in order, I hope to be able to again take my part of the
collective work.

All the best,
simon

PS: A special thanks to Maxim and Leo for driving the release. :-)

Re: please, let avoid misunderstandings

[zimoun]

On Sun, 02 May 2021 at 12:37, zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, I am still staying away from Guix proper because I felt hurt
> by the fact that the whole community did nothing for two months to
> prevent such escalations.

I apology for this wording.  I do not mean that individuals had not
tried to privately reach out Léo in order to prevent such escalations.
I do mean that I have been disappointed by the public messages over the
month of March.

Re: please, let avoid misunderstandings

[Pjotr Prins]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your heroic explanation. I think it also tells us something
about the grief some of the maintainers went through. This is a good
point to close the threads. All points have been made and it is
necessary not to burden the people too much who do the real work. As
in talk is cheap... We all treasure everyone who contributes to GNU
Guix and it does amaze me how many here are really mature individuals.

Even so, we would benefit from an in-person Guix day again :).

Ryan here is the only one who has made a concrete suggestion with a
double sign-off of patches for contributors. That sounds like a bit of
overhead we may not need (yet). But it may be that Guix is growing
fast and we need to add a layer of maintainers - Linux kernel style.
Or we split off the packages from core development - Nix style. Or we
lean more heavily on channels (I would favour that). Or we wait until
the next flare up. You know, shit happens - we can live with that.

The one thing I would like to avoid is that we become more hesitant of
offering commit access. The project is most agile when flat. I think
we should be easy, but be clear what is given easily can be taken away
(easily).  And may take it away quicker, also for people who do not
contribute for a long time. If it is dynamic it will be less hurtful.

Pj.