[opensuse-project] Reflection on the last weeks - Lessons learned from the board
Dear Community, many of you have witnessed discussions and allegations of different kinds on this mailing list, some very offensive and disrespectful towards the community and the values that bond it together. In order to not add further discussions, to not nurture the chaos already present, and aiming to have a fair and unbiased vote on the "motion of no confidence", as a board we agreed to not comment on individual emails during the period of the poll. Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started. Sarah Julia Kriesch, former member of this board, has repeatedly moved heavy accusations against some members of this community during her first term on the board 2017-2019. In each case these accusations were unfounded after in-depth considerations. The measure taken after the first incident was a formal warning in alignment with the openSUSE Community Guiding Principles. [1] The second time lead to a vote on her removal from the board, where she maintained her seat after a narrow vote. Unfortunately Sarah's behavior has continued and the board received complaints, despite repeated efforts by several members of the community to carefully explain and council Sarah on her behavior and its implications on others. To handle the situation with minimal impact on the parties involved a moderate solution was sought: Sarah was offered the opportunity to step down instead of being removed and the complete background being disclosed. Even though "mutual confidentiality" was agreed between all parties, Sarah decided to violate this agreement that same evening and also started making false accusations about her stepping down. All this, together with some base speculation, then led to the motion of no confidence and what followed. We would like to assure you that with every action the board has undertaken, the well-being of all involved parties has been a main priority. As a community, and on the board, we spent a huge amount of time on this topic in the last half year and we have learned some lessons. Two of these are to 1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and 2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost. [1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles
Le 03/08/2020 à 06:49, Simon Lees a écrit :
Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started.
I hope it wont start again a flame war (not sure!!) I had question on your post I finally removed not to myself give wood to the fire
1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and
2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost.
IMHO, this is not enough. We should think of some sort of "arbitration system", to work when the board itself is involved. This is made obvious by the fact that the membership team was asked to act as such (and not that happy to this) I'm absolutely sure than working to *prevent* future problems is much better than again commenting on previous ones on a basis, this arbitration group could be made of *all* former elected board members accepting the task, plus a number to discuss of previous board chairmans, to give a voice to SUSE, giving the fact they may/may not still be SUSE employees jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 8/3/20 4:13 PM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
Le 03/08/2020 à 06:49, Simon Lees a écrit :
Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started.
I hope it wont start again a flame war (not sure!!)
I had question on your post I finally removed not to myself give wood to the fire
1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and
2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost.
IMHO, this is not enough.
We should think of some sort of "arbitration system", to work when the board itself is involved.
This is made obvious by the fact that the membership team was asked to act as such (and not that happy to this)
I'm absolutely sure than working to *prevent* future problems is much better than again commenting on previous ones
on a basis, this arbitration group could be made of *all* former elected board members accepting the task, plus a number to discuss of previous board chairmans, to give a voice to SUSE, giving the fact they may/may not still be SUSE employees
I think *all* former elected members accepting the task is probably two many, especially if you look 20-30 years into the future. Creating a group of 3-4 people that have been on the board within the last 5 years might be a better solution. The only downside to such an arrangement is that the community can't remove those people if they believe they handled the situation incorrectly. Having said that if someone proposes a nicely written amendment to https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules i'd certainly support putting it to a vote of members for adoption at the end of the year. If no one else puts together something then I probably will but it would be great to see these kind of proposals coming from the community rather then just the board. Cheers -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Le 03/08/2020 à 08:59, Simon Lees a écrit :
I think *all* former elected members accepting the task is probably two many, especially if you look 20-30 years into the future.
I have no idea of the number of previous board members still members and accepting the task :-) it was only a way to launch a constructive discussion. Richard is right to say this group can't be elected on purpose The only downside to such an arrangement is
that the community can't remove those people if they believe they handled the situation incorrectly.
this is on purpose: this group have to be untouchable (think it have to work on problems with the board!) I see this as a conciliation/arbitration group, not a decision one. If any major act should be held, a community vote could be necessary (as the recent board removal vote). this group advice could be called by a small subset of the members, neither too large (could never be called) nor too small (not to be called by an individual): 10 members? any members could launch a ballot that would have to be signed by 10 members for the arbitration to start? (10 given here randomly, advice needed, could be 10% of members) Having said that if someone proposes
a nicely written amendment to https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules
My english is probably not that good to be able to do so, but I'm pretty sure the discussion will go to a result many option can be seen: random choice among ancient board members (if there are many), or among members for a given length of time (at least 5 years??) I don't know if everybody here knows that in the last days the members of membership officials where asked to act like this, but the online meeting we had didn't prove us to like the role, partly because this "team" have no legitimacy do do so, being only co-opted to check the value of membership applications (fact, not opinions). everybody is invited to give it's opinion on the subject :-)) jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 08:43 +0200, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
IMHO, this is not enough.
We should think of some sort of "arbitration system", to work when the board itself is involved.
This is made obvious by the fact that the membership team was asked to act as such (and not that happy to this)
I'm absolutely sure than working to *prevent* future problems is much better than again commenting on previous ones
on a basis, this arbitration group could be made of *all* former elected board members accepting the task, plus a number to discuss of previous board chairmans, to give a voice to SUSE, giving the fact they may/may not still be SUSE employees
jdd
As a former elected Board Member and a former Chairman I want the record to show that I would not volunteer to involve myself in this way. Dealing with the past issue outlined by Simon was traumatic enough an experience for me. As I thought I made clear in my resignation announcement [1], I do not forsee a day where I will voluntarily handle such matters again, even if it would be of help for the community. Sorry, [1] https://rootco.de/2019-08-19-leaving-the-char/ -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Phone +4991174053-361 SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 10:19:35 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 08:43 +0200, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
IMHO, this is not enough. We should think of some sort of "arbitration system", to work when the board itself is involved. This is made obvious by the fact that the membership team was asked to act as such (and not that happy to this) I'm absolutely sure than working to *prevent* future problems is much better than again commenting on previous ones on a basis, this arbitration group could be made of *all* former elected board members accepting the task, plus a number to discuss of previous board chairmans, to give a voice to SUSE, giving the fact they may/may not still be SUSE employees jdd
As a former elected Board Member and a former Chairman I want the record to show that I would not volunteer to involve myself in this way. Dealing with the past issue outlined by Simon was traumatic enough an experience for me. As I thought I made clear in my resignation announcement [1], I do not forsee a day where I will voluntarily handle such matters again, even if it would be of help for the community. Sorry, [1] https://rootco.de/2019-08-19-leaving-the-char/
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time. -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/ Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:42 +0200, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time.
Putting my own objections aside which are primarily based on my experience and exhaustion at the nonsense you need to deal with in such a position and trying to look at this rationally. It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body? That body is bound to have some disagreements, and as history has proven even popular people can behave in a manner unbecoming when elected to a responsible role, so we have to consider the need for conflict resolution of that new body. So do we need an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected conflict resolution body for our elected Board? Or do we just accept that people are fallable and Simon's suggestion is probably the best option. After all, we're a project that prides itself on being relatively lightweight when it comes to its organisational structure, adding layers upon layers is probably not the right lesson to have learnt from this saga. -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Phone +4991174053-361 SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:00:17 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:42 +0200, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time.
Putting my own objections aside which are primarily based on my experience and exhaustion at the nonsense you need to deal with in such a position and trying to look at this rationally. It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body?
Every body supposed to solve conflicts must be independent on all possible sides (well, as much as possible...). This is why every modern constitution has judiciary as independent unit.
That body is bound to have some disagreements, and as history has proven even popular people can behave in a manner unbecoming when elected to a responsible role, so we have to consider the need for conflict resolution of that new body. So do we need an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected conflict resolution body for our elected Board?
In case of openSUSE, there are not many options: 1) Somehow selected by Board/from past Board members, etc. - too linked to the Board? 2) Elected by members - too much effort for hopefully as rare activity as possible? 3) Arbitrary selected by SUSE (as main openSUSE contributor) or so - perhaps too directive? Such separate body could be helpful as: 1) It separates explanation and final decision of (any) conflicting situation from executive/management done by Board. 2) There is some final instance and clear process how to deal with conflicts, especially when Board is somehow involved.
Or do we just accept that people are fallable and Simon's suggestion is probably the best option.
I don't say Simon's proposals are bad, U just think more clear rules and procedures might (I emphasize *might*) be helpful. Or let's ask in different way: Do we have better proposal how to solve conflicts when the Board is involved?
After all, we're a project that prides itself on being relatively lightweight when it comes to its organisational structure, adding layers upon layers is probably not the right lesson to have learnt from this saga.
Good point, but on the other hand, in such case relative small number of people do a lot of unrelated tasks, and might be also tasks they'd rather avoid, which has plenty of drawbacks... Of course, I don't insist on such body, but I think it's good proposal to discuss as the discussion should reveal more about ideas people have about governing of the project. What they consider important and what they do not. -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/ Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/
On 8/3/20 7:03 PM, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:00:17 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:42 +0200, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time.
Putting my own objections aside which are primarily based on my experience and exhaustion at the nonsense you need to deal with in such a position and trying to look at this rationally. It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body?
Every body supposed to solve conflicts must be independent on all possible sides (well, as much as possible...). This is why every modern constitution has judiciary as independent unit.
In the time when I have been on the board, other then this case any conflict has generally been between 2 of the 6 members, in these cases the remaining members of the board have been able to deal with the issue, likewise if the issue involves a member of the board and others not on the board generally that member will step aside as the issue is handled. So it only really needs to be for a very small number of cases. Certainly yes larger organizations and government agencies etc have an independent body but who appoints those people? Could it maybe make sense for the board to appoint people at the start of each new term to handle any issues that arise presuming there are no ongoing conflicts? That should be independent enough and saves a vote for a committee that likely will not do anything. If you can find some examples of projects our size that have such provisions in there constitutions I would certainly be interested in learning from them. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:48:03 CEST, Simon Lees napsal(a):
On 8/3/20 7:03 PM, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:00:17 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:42 +0200, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time.
Putting my own objections aside which are primarily based on my experience and exhaustion at the nonsense you need to deal with in such a position and trying to look at this rationally. It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body?
Every body supposed to solve conflicts must be independent on all possible sides (well, as much as possible...). This is why every modern constitution has judiciary as independent unit.
In the time when I have been on the board, other then this case any conflict has generally been between 2 of the 6 members, in these cases the remaining members of the board have been able to deal with the issue, likewise if the issue involves a member of the board and others not on the board generally that member will step aside as the issue is handled. So it only really needs to be for a very small number of cases. Certainly yes larger organizations and government agencies etc have an independent body but who appoints those people? Could it maybe make sense for the board to appoint people at the start of each new term to handle any issues that arise presuming there are no ongoing conflicts? That should be independent enough and saves a vote for a committee that likely will not do anything. If you can find some examples of projects our size that have such provisions in there constitutions I would certainly be interested in learning from them.
And how big is openSUSE? :-) I really don't know. We have some 500+ members, right? What about number of contributors? Is it +/- same number, or do these two groups significantly differ? Might be bit outlying, but our https://www.skaut.cz/english/ (over 12 000 volunteers) has conciliation board with 5 members, it is voted by plenary assembly, otherwise completely separated from any other governance bodies, and it has defined remits. Probably too detailed for openSUSE, but it works well, it's respected last instance. I wonder if/how such things are solved in another major distros, or in projects like LibreOffice, Mozilla, KDE, ...? -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/ Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/
On 8/3/20 7:43 PM, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:48:03 CEST, Simon Lees napsal(a):
On 8/3/20 7:03 PM, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
Dne pondělí 3. srpna 2020 11:00:17 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):
On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:42 +0200, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
I fully understand Your point, but still I think jdd's proposal has good base. I think we do need some "conciliation" board or so made from old and honorable community members, ehm. :-) Not necessarily from past Board members, IMHO separate voting would be better, so that there is no link with the Board (and no possible conflict of (emotional, ...) interests or so). I suppose there should be not much work for such group (ehm...), so there could be just ~3 people voted for longer time.
Putting my own objections aside which are primarily based on my experience and exhaustion at the nonsense you need to deal with in such a position and trying to look at this rationally. It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body?
Every body supposed to solve conflicts must be independent on all possible sides (well, as much as possible...). This is why every modern constitution has judiciary as independent unit.
In the time when I have been on the board, other then this case any conflict has generally been between 2 of the 6 members, in these cases the remaining members of the board have been able to deal with the issue, likewise if the issue involves a member of the board and others not on the board generally that member will step aside as the issue is handled. So it only really needs to be for a very small number of cases. Certainly yes larger organizations and government agencies etc have an independent body but who appoints those people? Could it maybe make sense for the board to appoint people at the start of each new term to handle any issues that arise presuming there are no ongoing conflicts? That should be independent enough and saves a vote for a committee that likely will not do anything. If you can find some examples of projects our size that have such provisions in there constitutions I would certainly be interested in learning from them.
And how big is openSUSE? :-) I really don't know. We have some 500+ members, right? What about number of contributors? Is it +/- same number, or do these two groups significantly differ?
It really depends on how you count a contributor, I would count it as 500 contributors who have strong interest in how the project is run, beyond that we have many many more contributors who contribute on a much smaller scale, maybe pushing an occasional package or change, occasionally helping with a support question etc. On the other end of the scale we have some significant contributors who are less interested in project governance or that have always been happy enough that they haven't taken the step to become members (Although the name vote did get some of them to join). There are also some SUSE employee's who just contribute to openSUSE because its a part of there job and they need to to get there stuff in the next SUSE release (Although the vast majority of SUSE people contributing to openSUSE are very passionate about openSUSE).
Might be bit outlying, but our https://www.skaut.cz/english/ (over 12 000 volunteers) has conciliation board with 5 members, it is voted by plenary assembly, otherwise completely separated from any other governance bodies, and it has defined remits. Probably too detailed for openSUSE, but it works well, it's respected last instance. I wonder if/how such things are solved in another major distros, or in projects like LibreOffice, Mozilla, KDE, ...?
One of the board's primary roles infact possibly its largest roll is to be openSUSE's "conciliation board" so really the issue we are addressing here is how does a project handle a conflict within a "conciliation board" that involves a significant enough proportion of that board that any remaining members don't feel they can resolve the conflict. If the project has other appointed boards and structures this can be slightly easier because you could just nominate one of them. In the openSUSE case the board isn't responsible for creating technical policy etc, however if two parties wish to create conflicting technical policies then it becomes the openSUSE Boards role to help mediate and resolve such a conflict. So if there was to be a second group responsible for conflict resolutions i'm not quite sure where you'd draw the line, the existing board could also then end up with 80% less work. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Am Montag, 3. August 2020, 11:00:17 CEST schrieb Richard Brown:
It seems to me you are suggesting an elected body to act as a conflict resolution body for our elected Board which acts as a conflict resolution body?
In general, the board deals with all kind of conflicts. However, in the rare case when the board as such or individuals from the board are affected, this should obviously not be handled by the board, but by an independent 3rd party. Now we need to fill '3rd party' with life - that can be one of the existing bodies (membership|election-officials), maybe in a group of 3 from the beforementioned, or a complete different entity, which could be elected or nominated. (Personally I would consider 3 as an ideal number of individuals in this entity) As written in https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2020-08/msg00011.html suggestions from the project are most welcome. Yes, we are all learning as things 'happen', and require answers to unasked questions so far. Cheers Axel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Simon, On 03/08/2020 08:49, Simon Lees wrote:
2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost.
I totally agree with the above. If there is not enough transparency on the reasons that lead to certain decisions then the community is left to speculate; which IMHO is very unhealthy for the project. Regards, Ish Sookun -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, On 8/3/20 12:49 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
Dear Community,
many of you have witnessed discussions and allegations of different kinds on this mailing list, some very offensive and disrespectful towards the community and the values that bond it together.
In order to not add further discussions, to not nurture the chaos already present, and aiming to have a fair and unbiased vote on the "motion of no confidence", as a board we agreed to not comment on individual emails during the period of the poll.
Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started.
It is sad to see that there is no intention to let what has turned into a "he said - she said" episode go and let it rest in the past. Inevitably what ever follows is a representation of a certain point of view. I am not questioning attempts made to be objective. Never the less, this opens the door for continuation of the "he said - she said" argumentation we have had to endure in lengthy e-mail threads and that have torn on the very substance of the community. Even worse this is rekindled by the board. Starting now I will not consider myself a member of the openSUSE project anymore. Therefore I feel no longer bound by the Guiding Principals and the Code of conduct. So first, I will follow James and am asking that my membership in openSUSE be revoked. With this out of the way. YOU HAVE TO LEARN TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET BYGONES BE BYGONES! Later, Robert
Sarah Julia Kriesch, former member of this board, has repeatedly moved heavy accusations against some members of this community during her first term on the board 2017-2019. In each case these accusations were unfounded after in-depth considerations. The measure taken after the first incident was a formal warning in alignment with the openSUSE Community Guiding Principles. [1] The second time lead to a vote on her removal from the board, where she maintained her seat after a narrow vote.
Unfortunately Sarah's behavior has continued and the board received complaints, despite repeated efforts by several members of the community to carefully explain and council Sarah on her behavior and its implications on others.
To handle the situation with minimal impact on the parties involved a moderate solution was sought: Sarah was offered the opportunity to step down instead of being removed and the complete background being disclosed.
Even though "mutual confidentiality" was agreed between all parties, Sarah decided to violate this agreement that same evening and also started making false accusations about her stepping down. All this, together with some base speculation, then led to the motion of no confidence and what followed.
We would like to assure you that with every action the board has undertaken, the well-being of all involved parties has been a main priority.
As a community, and on the board, we spent a huge amount of time on this topic in the last half year and we have learned some lessons. Two of these are to
1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and
2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost.
Hello, Am Montag, 3. August 2020, 14:49:12 CEST schrieb Robert Schweikert:
On 8/3/20 12:49 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
many of you have witnessed discussions and allegations of different kinds on this mailing list, some very offensive and disrespectful towards the community and the values that bond it together.
In order to not add further discussions, to not nurture the chaos already present, and aiming to have a fair and unbiased vote on the "motion of no confidence", as a board we agreed to not comment on individual emails during the period of the poll.
Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started.
It is sad to see that there is no intention to let what has turned into a "he said - she said" episode go and let it rest in the past. Inevitably what ever follows is a representation of a certain point of view. I am not questioning attempts made to be objective. Never the less, this opens the door for continuation of the "he said - she said" argumentation we have had to endure in lengthy e-mail threads and that have torn on the very substance of the community.
Even worse this is rekindled by the board.
Indeed :-( - I had hoped that this topic is done, and I'm quite sure that many people had a similar hope.
Starting now I will not consider myself a member of the openSUSE project anymore. Therefore I feel no longer bound by the Guiding Principals and the Code of conduct.
So first, I will follow James and am asking that my membership in openSUSE be revoked.
I'm sad to hear this :-( We are a do-o-cracy even when it comes to this. If you really want to revoke your membership (please don't!), go to https://connect.opensuse.org/pg/groups/111 and click "Leave group".
With this out of the way.
YOU HAVE TO LEARN TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET BYGONES BE BYGONES!
I couldn't agree more - and IMHO your statement is fully covered by the code of conduct and the guiding principles, so please don't take that as the reason to revoke your membership. With the end of the non-confidence vote (independent on the result), my intention was to let this painful episode become history by no longer talking about it. I'd even love to forget what happened, but I know my /dev/brain too good - sadly forgetting all this won't happen. Nevertheless, I hope that time will heal the wounds. I'm as disappointed as you that the board decided to bring this up again, and unfortunately the board mail contains things I can't leave uncommented. Sorry for that, and I seriously hope that it will be the last mail I have to write on this topic. 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
Hello, Am Montag, 3. August 2020, 06:49:30 CEST schrieb Simon Lees:
many of you have witnessed discussions and allegations of different kinds on this mailing list, some very offensive and disrespectful towards the community and the values that bond it together.
In order to not add further discussions, to not nurture the chaos already present, and aiming to have a fair and unbiased vote on the "motion of no confidence", as a board we agreed to not comment on individual emails during the period of the poll.
Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started.
OK, let me translate this: Now that the board has survived the non-confidence vote with a black eye [1], it can continue the repeated attacks and badmouthing on Sarah. I admit that this translation contains a bit of sarcasm ;-) but it's much closer to the truth than several statements in this board mail. And I seriously wonder how the board's behaviour is compatible with our code of conduct. My plan (after the non-confidence vote ended, independent of the result) was to let the painful events of the last months become history so that the wounds can start to heal, but the board mail contains statements that I _have to_ comment :-(
Sarah Julia Kriesch, former member of this board, has repeatedly moved heavy accusations against some members of this community during her first term on the board 2017-2019. In each case these accusations were unfounded after in-depth considerations. The measure taken after the first incident was a formal warning in alignment with the openSUSE Community Guiding Principles. [1] The second time lead to a vote on her removal from the board, where she maintained her seat after a narrow vote.
This is your point of view, and you manged to leave out everything that would speak for Sarah. Both the formal warning and the vote on her removal were the result of (or revenge for?) something she did that was maybe not very friendly, but clearly allowed by the board rules - which makes the actions taken at least questionable. Back then, the only reason why I didn't heavily object against the formal warning was that it was "just a warning". In the meantime, I realized I was an idiot for not objecting. And to pick another example - those accusations (as you call it) were _not_ unfounded. But of course you don't know that because in the handover meeting, Sarah wasn't even given a chance to explain what she had written :-( Oh, and that "poor" community member you see as the victim turned out to be what he called me in one of his last board meetings.
Unfortunately Sarah's behavior has continued and the board received complaints, despite repeated efforts by several members of the community to carefully explain and council Sarah on her behavior and its implications on others.
The only somewhat recent complaint I've seen was the shouting down (or "loud speech", even if I still think it was shouting) in the handover meeting by a single person. And that was a wild mix of accusations with a "something will stick" goal, including things that were plain wrong, and others that maybe were "not the best idea", but clearly not a code of conduct violation - and therefore also weren't valid reasons to remove Sarah from the board. [Another paragraph removed to avoid adding more fuel to the fire.]
To handle the situation with minimal impact on the parties involved a moderate solution was sought: Sarah was offered the opportunity to step down instead of being removed and the complete background being disclosed.
Even though "mutual confidentiality" was agreed between all parties, Sarah decided to violate this agreement that same evening and also started making false accusations about her stepping down.
I remember some vague pointers in the german telegram group after she was asked about the reasons, and she stopped after a reminder. Yes, technically you can call it a violation of the agreement, but given the emotional situation, her behaviour was more than understandable. Of course, after the board had the "great" idea to disclose more details (therefore violating the agreement in an even worse way) after my resignation[2] and some questions from the community, some more details from Sarah's and my point of view became public. Maybe some things were opinionated or a bit biased, but I don't remember anything from Sarah or me that would qualify as false accusations.
We would like to assure you that with every action the board has undertaken, the well-being of all involved parties has been a main priority.
Oh well. That's the best joke I've read today - but I can't laugh about it :-(
As a community, and on the board, we spent a huge amount of time on this topic in the last half year and we have learned some lessons. Two of these are to
1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and
Wow, there's indeed one paragraph in this mail I can agree with. However, I also miss a point saying "finally stop the attacks on Sarah, and adjust the tone towards her to a sane level". Looks like you still have some lessons to learn... :-( Regards, Christian Boltz [1] Just to give you an idea how black that eye is - compare the result of the name vote we had about a year ago with the result of the non-confidence vote. (Spoiler: The current board is clearly less popular than our name "openSUSE".) [2] I'm still sure that resigning in protest was the right thing to do, and the board (and also some individual board members) have _repeatedly_ confirmed this :-( --
Does this suggest to remove this feature completely? If you want a browser that doesn't malfunction and crash, yes. Better: the whole networking code should be removed, so we wont get any cookies over the network [>> Markus Fischer, > Boris Zbarsky and Zs. G. in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430006]
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participants (8)
-
Axel Braun -
Christian Boltz -
Ish Sookun -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Richard Brown -
Robert Schweikert -
Simon Lees -
Vojtěch Zeisek