Hello, Am Samstag, 4. Juli 2020, 20:25:56 CEST schrieb Gerald Pfeifer:
On Fri 2020-07-03, Christian Boltz wrote:
Am Freitag, 3. Juli 2020, 08:20:26 CEST schrieb Carsten Hoyer:
The best for OpenSUSE would be to move on from the unprofessional infighting and baseless accusations, to continue working with the professional board we already have
Well, that's your opinion of the current board and the events during the last months.
Sadly it doesn't match what happened
Here you label what someone else wrote as an opinion while putting your own perception and opinion as an absolute, Christian.
Right, I should have added something like "Let me explain my point of view". Sorry for missing this! This mail of course also includes statements from my point of view ;-)
It is natural for us humans to have different perspectives. Hence, for example, the phrase "the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
There have been many, many mails on this list in the last months for people to form their own opinions. Repeatedly stating the same, all the more invoking an air of uncertainty and doubt, hardly helps.
Part of that uncertainity and doubt might be that I had to "anonymize" some things to protect the involved people (which are not necessarily board members). Of course that also makes these things harder to understand. Gerald, let me propose something that is hopefully fair for everybody, and doesn't cause damage to the involved people: If you've seen something in my mails that looks questionable or wrong (or you simply don't get the context), ask me off-list, and if it turns out that I was indeed wrong, write a reply on the mailinglist stating so (ideally without revealing the details that could cause damage to other people - and I'll grant you an exception if something could damage me). Actually I'll even offer to write that mail myself and apologize if such a case exists. This doesn't mean that I want you to stop from responding in public, I just see it as an additional way to clarify some things.
I'll refrain from commenting on most such claims that you put in this one e-mail alone. It is unlikely that would converge. There are two I cannot help respond to, though:
and I don't think that for example shouting down and kicking out a newly elected board member - and even shouting down any attempt to explain the claimed offense
You keep repeating this statement which does *not* match what I have observed: There was one meeting where someone (not on the current board) voiced their felt pain towards Sarah. Neither in that case, nor in any other I was present at, did anyone shout at anyone else.
I know that you see it that way, but at least Sarah and I (and a family member who accidently heard it) see it as shouting. Anyway - even if we agree on calling it a "loud speech" (it was clearly not the "normal tone" of that person), it doesn't make things better. Independent of that, the only way I can describe the _content_ of that, well, loud speech, is that it was a wild mix of accusations, and at least some of them were wrong. Several others were more on a "bad idea" level, but far from being a code of conduct violation. In hindsight, it feels like throwing lots of mud at Sarah, aiming for "something will stick". Since you only responded to one half of my sentense, I'll assume that you don't object that Sarah wasn't given any serious chance to explain the claimed offense during that meeting. Also, nobody even considered that Sarah could be right. I can in no way imagine how all this could be seen as fair or diplomatic. And yes, the person who did that "loud speech" in the handover meeting is no longer in the board because his term ended. <speculation mode="thin ice">The more I think about it - and I know I never asked - I wonder if his, well, loud speech came as a surprise to the other board members or if it was something that was planned behind my and Sarah's back. Having it planned would at least be the perfect plot: The person throwing mud (yes, my summary) had to leave anyway, so he had nothing to loose. And the other board members were "just" silent (well, mostly), so that nobody can blame them.</speculation> (To make it very clear: this paragraph is pure speculation, and I'm not even sure if I want to know if my speculation is correct or if I watched too many bad movies.) Even if my speculation is wrong (actually I'd prefer that!) and that "loud speech" was the action of a single person without telling the others before - it's obvious that the other board members thought that much of the mud was really sticking. They didn't object to anything he said, nobody tried to stop him (at least you apologized for not stopping him some days later), supported some points, instantly rejected Sarah's reply attempts (in the rare cases when there was a second to attempt a reply), and "funnily" someone even supported a detail that - while not too important - was for sure wrong. One thing isn't speculation: After these things became public (and IIRC after Pierre called for the non-confidence vote), someone on this mailinglist asked if not "just" the person who did this to Sarah could step down. That was an obvious idea - but was of course impossible to do. In the end, most board members decided to kick out Sarah. This time for sure excluding me as a board member (with somewhat good intentions knowing that I'm a good friend of Sarah, and not wanting to make it too hard for me as long as possible - but still behind my back) and then invited me to a meeting where I was shocked with the already-taken decision. In that meeting it felt like nobody cared about my opinion or any attempt to explain why Sarah did what she did. But back to the loud speech, and then fast-forward to the next regular board meeting after Sarah was kicked out. I'm sure you and the other board members remember when (and how) I told you that I seriously consider to resign in protest. Basically I voiced my felt pain towards the board members (you might recognize that I use your wording here ;-) about what had happened. I'm quite sure that I used my "normal" voice (maybe with a slightly sad untertone) - and I'm very sure that I didn't speak louder than usual (not even to mention shouting) or attack anyone - while of course explaining why I consider to resign. I also gave all board members the chance to respond to what I said, and we had a long conversation (as surprising as it might sound - we even laughed a bit during that). Finally I slept over my decision (with the other board members' feedback in mind) instead of deciding in a hurry. (And no, that doesn't mean that I claim to be an angel ;-) Obviously I'm describing my own actions here, therefore the above might be biased. Please speak up if you see something in a different way. [As we all know, my final decision a few days later was to resign. I even dropped the words "in protest" from my resignation mail - not because it wasn't in protest (it clearly was), but because I hoped that dropping these two words would limit the fallout and avoid damage for openSUSE and all involved people - including the remaining board.] Now compare that to what was done to Sarah, and you'll see that a) there are sane and insane ways to tell someone that you think he/she/ they made serious mistakes b) even if you think that what happened in the handover meeting wasn't shouting, it was far from "normal" behaviour in both tone and content. I could even argue that what happened to Sarah was that someone claimed she violated the code of conduct, and he did that in a way that also violated the code of conduct :-( Fast forward again, I could simply continue - but I probably don't need to repeat that the remaining board decided to publish that and why Sarah was forced to resign (and therefore broke the promise not to reveal that - and yes, I know that Sarah gave some vague pointers in that direction) or later, just to pick another example, additional (diplomatically spoken) questionable mails by some board members with the intention to damage Sarah even more (how does that match our code of conduct?) The last "highlight" was a statement from a board member that people who feel discriminated should ask the board for support. Of course this sounds very positive - but also cynical for a few people. If you don't remember my mail about that from about one week ago: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2020-06/msg00049.html
There's also a point I agree with you: having such an issue pending over months is indeed a serious problem. Without intending to blame anyone [2] - it took too long until the voting started.
[2] I can imagine that this wasn't easy for the election officials, and while I don't know much of what was going on, I know a few (non-public) bits that indicate that there were (also?) reasons outside of the election officials that caused some delay.
This is a nebulous statement (which maybe refers to the one week delay for the election officials to get the list of members, which we have addressed procedurally going forward, or maybe to something else).
Please put yourself in the shoes of others reading such a statement, who do not have background: What do you want to relay, what (or who) do you want to imply (or implicate), what do you want to trigger?
Good point. I'll explain the intention of this statement - basically it's three things in one: a) most important: I don't want to point fingers at or blame the election officials because of the long time it took until the vote started. This is the first time we have a non-confidence vote (luckily we never needed one before - and I hope we'll never need one again!), so it's more than understandable that it took a while to come up with a good way how to do the vote. b) nevertheless, it would have been better for everybody (independent on which "side" you are) if the vote would have been earlier and the topic would long be solved in one way or another. (Again: not intended as blaming.) c) there was also some delay completely unrelated to the election officials - and yes, I was referring to the delay for getting the list of members. I didn't know that it was one week, and I'm a bit surprised that <most likely guess> it took so long until someone in the board remembered that I am one of the persons who can (and of course did) provide the list. </most likely guess> And even this isn't meant as blaming. For full transparency, and in case someone wonders what "addressed procedurally going forward" means - one of the election officials and Gerald got permissions on connect.o.o so that they can download the members list themself. Does this make the statement less nebulous? Regards, Christian Boltz -- Python: backtrace-driven development [found on http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/#!/progorn/py/] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org