On Tuesday 18 January 2011 16:12:10 Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Jos Poortvliet - 14:13 15.01.11 wrote:
On Saturday 15 January 2011 00:36:14 Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Pascal Bleser - 1:24 14.01.11 wrote:
...
Now, there have been a few points that have been (rightfully) raised by a few people (I'm paraphrasing here ;)): 1) Who said the board has the right to revoke someone's membership ? 2) Isn't it harsh? Wasn't there a better way to deal with it? 3) The timing is very suspicious. 4) It all happened behind closed doors, you should have made it publicly, in a
transparent manner (as transparency and openness is also part of the Guiding Principles).
5) Who and/or how to prevent abuse from the board ? 6) Removing the membership would have been enough, why remove the person from
the project altogether ?
...
6) Unfortunately, only removing the membership status wouldn't have changed anything in this case, as the disruptive and poisonous behaviour was not seen exclusively in situations where membership plays a role. The Board members were (and still are) convinced that we had to remove the person from the project altogether to resolve this issue.
Just speaking generally about the process...
Even though that behaviour wasn't tied with having membership status, I would still consider removing membership as a way how to escalate things without going to extremes. I know there were some discussions, some attempts to sort things out, but still.
If I am speeding and I get caught and police man will talk to me, I'll be nice for while, but I'll slip to speeding again. After getting ticket, it will take me more time to slip to speeding again. If they took away my licence for few months, I'll start being really careful about speeding...
Yes, you should be. Because if you continue to speed, they will take your driving license - at least here in NL... Which is what was done here too.
Well, the point I was trying to make is that taking away membership although not directly preventing from something similar to happen again, might be motivating enough (more motivating than talking).
That is actually a good point. I'll keep it in mind but I think you should bring this up once we're a bit further in the Foundation discussion. Such a thing might not belong in the bylaws directly but having a written-down procedure on how to deal with things like this in the future would be good. And after a few warnings, taking away membership would be a step in between a full block out of openSUSE infrastructure. What's done is done but we should learn for the future and try to do better!