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Re: [PATCH] Revert Abortion joke removal.


On Tue, 2018-05-08 at 15:14 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On May  8, 2018, Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org> wrote:
> 
> > I don't claim that it's not unequal, I claim that it doesn't matter
> > for the outcome.
> 
> Thanks for acknowledging the difference.  IMHO, your assumption that it
> doesn't matter does not follow from the rules.  The logic derived from
> the application leads to very significant differences.  Why would so
> many supporters of the removal be making such a fuss about restoring the
> initial conditions for the debate to play out under them otherwise?

Siddhesh already answered that.  There is still consensus to remove the
"joke", your reversal of the patch does not increase consensus in any
way, and you invoke the superpowers claim.
Bottom line: you ignored the community's consensus.

> > we have never had the case of someone stating that their word
> > overrules any consensus.
> 
> But sustained objections have been disregarded, as recently as last
> week.  There's this "consensus is not unanimity" motto, but it's not
> part of the rules, and it's applied quite arbitrarily.

Compare the numbers (eg, developers who have spoken out).  Do you really
want to say that 1-2 trumps 12 (RMS is not a developer)?

> >>> and (2) there are repeated calls to authority in the absence of actual
> >>> merit in the opposition.
> 
> >> On both sides, I must say.
> 
> > You can't be serious about this now,
> 
> I am.  There are non-withdrawn objections on the record to the patch
> before it was installed, that imply it should never have gone in, but
> fixing that mistake has faced ferocious criticism.  How's that not
> authoritarian?

Look at the numbers.  These show consensus in the community.  If you
want to claim that as authoritarian, you're wrong.  It's a majority
decision, but it's not based on giving a specific part of the developers
more power than others.

> Selective application of the rules, undocumented
> exceptions as work arounds when it's convenient... Challenges face
> ferocious mob attacks and attempts to silencing, on top of the initial
> censorship.

Alex, this is toxic behavior.  These are all wrong accusations, and you
have no proof for them.  It is not a "ferocious mob attack" if many
people disagree with you.  And the accusation of "silencing" is
ridiculous.

Count your messages in this thread and compare them to the number of
messages sent by others.

> The excuse for all that seems to be that "he didn't let us
> have unfetteret authority and absolute power over the project"

Oh, you mean it's a problem if the community would like to follow it's
own rules, so being consensus-based and community-driven?  Is that
something you don't want?  Do you feel you should perhaps have more
authority over the people doing the work?  How nice of you!

You won't get support for more authority though.  You can wish you'd
have it, but I don't think it will happen.  So just accept that, please.

> > or are you referring to the threat of a fork as being an equally
> > powerful authority to that of RMS?  In that case that is your first
> > admission of the community actually having some credibility, so I
> > guess, thank you?
> 
> I didn't mean that, so your uncertain gratitute is indeed misplaced.

See, you don't like slightly snarky comments either.  That should be
enough reason for you to stop doing that yourself repeatedly.

> However, we all realize there is such a community power, though I won't
> equate the community threatening to exercise that power right now with
> the entire community of glibc contributors and developers.  Part of that
> power is that of mobilizing a mob (redundant much? :-) to overthrow a
> leader.  None of that is unheard of.

There's no "mob".  The notion of there being a leader exists only in
your world view.  Look at how we collaborated in glibc community in the
past years: it was all about community process, not about a leader.  And
it worked really well, we got stuff done, we had a good atmosphere to
work in.  That's the reality, at least for the developers doing the
work.  If you try to enforce your worldview, developers are free to
collaborate under a different umbrella, and will do so at a certain
level of annoyance.

> However, what we have now is a balance in place.  There is a de jure
> authority, that has appointed maintainers and can occasionally request
> inserts or removes to be made in the interest of the project as a whole.
> That power is kept in check by the community collective power to fork.

So, where's the balance in this model of yours?  What the community does
right now is keeping RMS in check, and apparently you're not happy with
the outcome.

> Now, what some seem to wish for is unchecked, absolute power for the
> community, which, given the selective application of the non-unanimity
> motto,

Unsubstantiated claim.

> means absolute power for a few leaders, who could then deviate
> from GNU however much they like.

First of all, they can do so anyway.  You said it yourself, forking is
always an option.

Second, you're wrong in your assessment that a few leaders would then
hold more power than others.  To make a fork feasible, you still need to
convince a majority of developers to work on the new fork.  Which means
that a successful fork is indeed a majority vote.  That's where the
balance of power comes from, not from adding in some arbitrary source of
authority.  There is no absolute power (remember, that's how copyleft
works...).

> > I do not see any merit in that silly joke so disagreeing with him and
> > asking him for a justification or a modification does not constitute
> > an insult.
> 
> Consider "I do not see any merit in your silly argument so disagreeing
> with you and asking you for a justification or a modification does not
> constitute an insult.  I'll just strike your argument out of the records
> and proceed."
> 
> Do you consider that nice, polite, professoinal behavior, really?

Nobody striked any arguments out of the record.  It's all on this
mailing list.

Second, while Siddhesh has used the word "silly" here, he hasn't
previously.  So, scratch that too if you want this to be correct
statement.  This leads to:

"I do not see any merit in that "joke" so disagreeing with him and
asking him for a justification or a modification does not constitute
an insult."

And that is *not* an insult.  Please accept that, Alex.

> > Also, please stop trying to defend RMS, I'm sure he is capable of
> > doing that for himself.
> 
> Wow, really?  If we weren't all on the same side, I might almost mistake
> that as "don't help him, you're making it harder for us to beat him up!"

Toxic behavior, again.  You imply that Siddhesh would think about
beating someone up.  Don't do that on this mailing list.

Second, you also cited only parts of Siddhesh's statement, thus
distorting what he said.  This second sentence really belongs to the
first you cited, and without it you change the meaning:
[Siddhesh:] "In the process you're making assumptions about his 
behaviour that don't necessarily reflect well on him and may not even be
true." 

> Do you realize suppression of dissent and isolation of opponents are
> features of authoritarian regimes?

Toxic behavior again.  You imply that this is what happens here, which
is obviously not the case.


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