[oi-dev] oi_151a9 roadmap & planning

[Bayard Bell]

On 19 Feb 2014, at 12:26, Joerg Schilling wrote:

> Alasdair Lumsden <alasdairrr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 12:42:53 +0100
>>> From: Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de
>> <snip>
>>> 
>>> Well it would be great if some people at Illumos would not try to dictate
>>> things but signal that there is an interest for a collaboration.
>> 
>> illumos is collaborative. In the past year there has been around 50 contributors all working on the code:
> 
> It may be that this is your personal impression, but this is not usable for a 
> general statement.
> 
> From my experiences Illumos is non-collaborative and non-trustworthy. 
> 
> This however is something that could be easily changed. Illumos would just 
> need to give a sign that there is a will for collaboration.

This is tiresome and unreasonable, Joerg.

It's been pointed out that your definition of collaboration is that your contribution not be evaluated by the same process that applies to anyone else attempting to contribute, and your complaint is that, before this process was established, you felt work you offered for contribution wasn't accepted. When this point is raised, you don't address it head-on, your responses are stuck on an impasse you hit with Garrett in 2010 rather than dealing with the community and contribution process as it's actually functioned for the last three years. Garrett isn't the illumos community, and I, like everyone else in the community, have no reason to take a position on what happened between the two of you four years ago or see that as relevant to what's happened since Garrett shepherded illumos to a collaborative community with collective technical direction. You may not like hearing this, but what you consider dispositive is generally not taken as relevant. If that's something you can't get past, that's a matter of your choice rather than ongoing problems with the illumos community.

On top of that, over the course of several years numerous people in the community have given you feedback about shortcomings in your own responses to offered contributions to help you offer feedback that is constructive for those contributors and the community, and you've shown no interest in taking or addressing that feedback. The observed pattern is that you object to contributions without offering a clear problem definition that can process a better solution either immediately or as a later change.

Call it open source liberalism as a community value: people don't want to be told simply that what they've got isn't sufficient as a contribution, they want to be given a clear definition of what needs to be resolved so that they receive criticism they can address, and your feedback is often disregarded because you articulate criticism that is simply negative. I don't see that you fundamentally appreciate that otherwise valid criticism that has only negative expression is not satisfactory in community collaboration and may therefore be set aside.

You haven't taken any of this feedback, which I take to be offered in the hope and expectation that collaboration is possible, on board. I'm not trying to say that the illumos community is perfect, but you've been repeatedly unwilling to demonstrate that you're willing to self-scrutinise and compromise on the question of collaboration, even as you loudly complain about others, which itself becomes a further obstacle. If you're surprised that the result is that you therefore lack credibility, that's ultimately your problem and deficit. When you add to that claims that "the community" isn't trustworthy, that's offensive, and that's the point at which I feel compelled to write a public response like this one.

It's not that anyone doubts your fundamental ability as an engineer, but anyone who wants to be part of a community has to expect to participate by the standing conventions of that community. I've taken you seriously enough to read back through mail archives to look at the interactions you've had with the community over the years, and what I see is that there are serious problems on your end that you do not acknowledge.

There are certainly communities whose product I like and use but whose process I don't care to engage, and I'm able to reconcile myself to that. If you don't want to work by other people's rules, the result may be unfortunate, but it's not fundamentally a question of other's willingness or integrity. I'd certainly be happier if you'd begin to deal with this. I should add that, as long as your responses continue the pattern I describe, I have no intention of or interest in responding.

Kind regards,
Bayard