Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On May  7, 2018, "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 05/07/2018 12:45 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> I did get a (private) nod from our most senior maintainer, and no
>> objections.

> Let me be clear here. You had many objections. Including those from
> me as a GNU project maintainer.

I think I understand why you might think so, but I really did not.

You wrote:

  Until we reach some kind of consensus the joke will not go back into
  the glibc manual according to the current community consensus rules.

but we *did* reach consensus, under the present rules, about my proposal
to restore the initial state, therefore the condition that limited your
objection above was met.

> You cannot go back in time to a past discussions, claim there wasn't
> consensus, and revert the patches.

I don't really have to go back in time.  There never was consensus.
There was one objection there all the way from the beginning, that
everyone else seems to have been blind to (for the lack of a better
explanation).  Here, let me quote it for you:

  @c Put in by rms.  Don't remove.

Consensus my rmS! :-)  (forgive the pun, couldn't help)

(FWIW, there was also an objection by Ondřej Bílka, but I can't tell
whether he meant it or was just kidding, and I don't see any
confirmation that the objection was not serious)

> After that point you are responsible for arguing the other position.

See other emails I posted today with explanations of why that is a bug
that needs fixing, and how we can fix it.  Can you really not believe I
could honestly believe people had agreed with restoring a fair baseline
for the discussion to proceed undistorted, even if that would raise
their nominal but likely trivial burden of overcoming objections?

> You ignored consensus.

That's a very serious accusation.  I guess I can't object to that
because I've accused the opposite position of cheating, but, really...
It seems to me like you all ignored the consensus rules as well.  And
also denied having contributed to what I actually took as consensus.

Looking back, that's not surprising, considering the highly emotional
positions and underlying topic.  If we can't agree on the ground issue
because of all the heat, we will hardly be able to reach consensus on
whether there was any consensus :-/ That's... not good, if you'll pardon
the understatement.

> You ignored objections from your fellow GNU project maintainers.

I really didn't.  I totally understood the stated positions in response
to RMS to be about the topic that's still open to debate, that bears
hardly any relationship with the starting conditions for the debate.

> In the end you did what you wanted,

Guilty as charged, but I have peace of mind of having strictly followed
all of the stated rules, as much as others might disagree or disbelieve
me.

> You didn't summarize any of the positions of the various parties.

There weren't any to summarize.  I just proposed to restore the initial
condition so that the discussion could proceed without the distortion,
RMS emailed me in private, and that was all.  No responses whatsoever.

  Oh, but I wrote elsewhere and you should have guessed!

  Well, sorry, please be clear that you're responding to my proposal,
  and not to something else, next time.

> You didn't try to build consensus.

How could I imagine there'd be any controversy about that?  It was so
obviously fair and reasonable!  I shouldn't have assumed everyone else
was trying to cheat, should I?  Please try to see that from my POV;
denying RMS the chance to object (again) before checking the patch in,
then refusing to back it out, then insisting that *he* now had the
burden of overcoming objections.  It's obviously a twisted situation.
It's obvious (to me) that the rules were never meant to offer such
trivial exploits to reverse the burden.  (See my other post that
elaborates on why, with advice on how to improve that)

> You checked the joke back in by yourself, without any commit message
> review, for your own reasons.

I don't see that phrased as accusations against e.g. Zack, but AFAICT he
also checked in the removal of the joke by himself (except he
disregarded RMS's comments from consensus assessment), without comment
message review, for reasons of his own.  The only problem I see with
that is disregarding a relevant opinion or two when assessing consensus,
but what do I know?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer