Clayton writes:

I attended a conference in California last year and Josh Berkus was a presenter. He talked for an hour on this very subject.... his presentation is here:

http://www.powerpostgresql.com/download/TFCKUpload/25.pdf

I'm aware of the google presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/oscon2007/os-fitzpatrick-sussman Where they say that at one point you need to make a stand against them. Thanks for that link.

He makes a clear point about "Poisonous People" that all open source communities should pay attention to.... To effectively _destroy_ your community.... quoting.... ======= Maximize the damage they can do! 1. Argue with them at length 2. Denounce them venomously 3. Ban them 4. Argue with them in other projects 5. Allow them back into your project 6. GOTO 1 ======= It seems that we as the openSUSE community are following these steps exactly. That is _not_ a good thing.

We're at number 3 and did not allow him back in the project. He come back under disguise - took a shortcute ;-) Read again what I wrote: In the meantime, we would like to remind others on the mailing lists to stop responding to his emails. I agree, we have to stop at number 1 and discourage him instead of encouraging.

Something to think about. Do we take steps to eliminate dissenting opinions? Or do we allow it? Do we label someone as poisonous to the community and ban them? What if the point they are making, although maybe poorly stated, is a valid one?

We're not speaking about his points about KDE4, we're speaking about his violation of our rules in the past.

This is a critical point in this community's evolution... and whatever action that is taken, it MUST be taken with full knowledge of the long term effects.

Let's followup on the project mailing list, reply-to is set, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126