4 ms·

Why do you consider it a power grab sooner than, say, people acting in good faith who really believe in their stated values?

meowface 7y ago
It can be both. Many power grabs and coups are performed by people with a good faith belief that they're right and the current administration is wrong or dangerous.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Yet I feel like "power grab" is a loaded description that implies such a "grab" is unjustified and that the grabber is primarily interested in power for power's sake, not for otherwise justifiable, altruistic, or benevolent reasons.
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    Because it is a bad thing regardless who does it. If the supposed good guys were actually as good as they thought they were, they would simply aim to do whatever jobs need doing with as much integrity as they posess. They wouldn't be grabbing power, for any reason. There is no "enlightened" reason to grab power. If you don't like how someone else runs something, it's not your only option to try to take it over from them. You can also simply not join that club and not care what it does or how it does it. An organization like OSI isn't like a geographical country where you are forced to be in it, and so there is some legitimate excuse for actively vying for control over it and it's policies.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      The whole idea of merit and meritocracy is that power and influence (and perhaps control, if applicable) should be allocated fairly and transparently, via processes that reliably correlate with good decision-making. Notably, a stridently authoritarian leadership style calling for bans on "evil" and "unethical" software use (as featured in the so-called "Ethical Software Definition") does not correlate with such; but to be fair, neither does the use of obnoxious name-calling like "toxic loony". To me, the latter just feels sad! So, I'd say I can see "both sides" in this, so to speak.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      It's weird for open source because the ousted party can usually take the tree and fork. A prominent example of this is OpenBSD, which started with Theo being ousted from NetBSD. In many ways that fork is now more influential than the original. My initial reaction was to compare your sentiment to nation states and consider it in its extreme to be a justification for despotic behavior, though your comment tries to rule that out. After further consideration I think the OpenBSD example is more illustrative and a more constructive reply. Outside of licensing wars which sometimes happen, there is not always a need to be the "original" fork.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        > My initial reaction was to compare your sentiment to nation states and consider it in its extreme to be a justification for despotic behavior I think maybe part of the problem across the board is a tendency to use analogous thinking to 'raise the stakes' of relatively minor matters by comparing them to very serious matters. It's important to keep ourselves grounded and remember that we're discussing programs, not pogroms.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > It's weird for open source because the ousted party can usually take the tree and fork Ah, but they can't do this freely and effortlessly if they've been labeled as Persona Non Grata in the license by the previous maintainer. (See, it's genius! This is such a great idea, I can't possibly tell what might go wrong with it. "Programs, not pogroms" indeed.)
      - CRConrad 7y ago
        But then, if the prospective oustee is a long-standing member of the already-existing community — and it's hard to argue that the co-founder is anything but that — then shouldn't it be the Johnny-come-lately constable of the tone police that should be the one to fork the tree and start their own community around that?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mikekchar 7y ago
For me, personally, it would be easier to accept a good faith answer if they explained what "sharp tone" led to the expulsion. I mean, I can completely understand if threats were made, or if disparaging comments against protected categories (i.e. sexist, racist, etc comments). Or hate speech, or content that is clearly against policy (i.e. links to pornography). Personal attacks, doxing, stalking, extended periods of harassment etc, etc, etc. There are lots of things that people get banned for and it's pretty easy to say what they are. Banning someone because they vehemently disagree with you? I mean, that's the only thing I can parse from their statement. It's basically saying, "I do not wish to discuss things with you, so you are banned". The funny thing is, I don't think that's inherently wrong. In any group, I think you should be able to choose your friends. If you don't want to hang out with someone, then that sucks for that person, but lots of things in life suck. However, banning the co-founder because you no longer wish to talk to them is pretty much the definition of a power grab ;-)
- latk 7y ago
  ESR was not banned for having the wrong opinion – many others expressed similar opinions both before and after his messages. But ESR, over the course of a few days where he returned to the mailing list, was increasingly unable to express those opinions in a professional manner. While the moderators never stated their rationale, an unfortunate combination of off-list and on-list replies leaked one of ESR's blocked emails[1] although there were possibly others. Given the context of the discussion, ESR is not only deeply unprofessional here, but also making personal attacks against Coraline Ada Ehmke. Disagreement is OK, attacks are not. And as Gil notes in that email, how ESR is promoting his cause is actually hurting and undermining open source, not rescuing it. I'd add that such attacks are even more unacceptable when they come from an ex-President or Cofounder. If I had been the moderator to make that call, I'd even have considered banning ESR without any particular evidence. That guy isn't new to the scene but has a long history of troublesome behavior. Even his first message upon return did not provide anything new to the discussion, so there was no reason to believe that keeping him around would provide any value to anyone. When his messages were largely brushed off (because they contributed no novel points aside from BeInG wRiTtEn By ThE cOfOuNdEr) that only seemed to encourage him to get more extreme, thus running straight into a ban. If not after that message, surely after the next. [1]: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
atq2119 7y ago
From the description, this sounds like a permanent ban, which is a really blunt tool -- and overly convenient, given how controversial ESR is. Keep in mind that this is about a discussion that's not in a technical, but in a political forum. After all, the OSI is a political institution, not a technical one. If people are acting in good faith, I would expect at most something temporary. This points at what I consider the real problem with CoCs: they're too vague and typically allow people to feel righteous while making truly toxic decisions. This stems from overly-broad language being adopted without an actual "litigation" (in the informal, community sense) of individual cases.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  OSI is also a technical institution. Why is he controversial then? It's because of his statements.

meowface 7y ago

It can be both. Many power grabs and coups are performed by people with a good faith belief that they're right and the current administration is wrong or dangerous.

asveikau 7y ago
Yet I feel like "power grab" is a loaded description that implies such a "grab" is unjustified and that the grabber is primarily interested in power for power's sake, not for otherwise justifiable, altruistic, or benevolent reasons.
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  Because it is a bad thing regardless who does it. If the supposed good guys were actually as good as they thought they were, they would simply aim to do whatever jobs need doing with as much integrity as they posess. They wouldn't be grabbing power, for any reason. There is no "enlightened" reason to grab power. If you don't like how someone else runs something, it's not your only option to try to take it over from them. You can also simply not join that club and not care what it does or how it does it. An organization like OSI isn't like a geographical country where you are forced to be in it, and so there is some legitimate excuse for actively vying for control over it and it's policies.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    The whole idea of merit and meritocracy is that power and influence (and perhaps control, if applicable) should be allocated fairly and transparently, via processes that reliably correlate with good decision-making. Notably, a stridently authoritarian leadership style calling for bans on "evil" and "unethical" software use (as featured in the so-called "Ethical Software Definition") does not correlate with such; but to be fair, neither does the use of obnoxious name-calling like "toxic loony". To me, the latter just feels sad! So, I'd say I can see "both sides" in this, so to speak.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    It's weird for open source because the ousted party can usually take the tree and fork. A prominent example of this is OpenBSD, which started with Theo being ousted from NetBSD. In many ways that fork is now more influential than the original. My initial reaction was to compare your sentiment to nation states and consider it in its extreme to be a justification for despotic behavior, though your comment tries to rule that out. After further consideration I think the OpenBSD example is more illustrative and a more constructive reply. Outside of licensing wars which sometimes happen, there is not always a need to be the "original" fork.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > My initial reaction was to compare your sentiment to nation states and consider it in its extreme to be a justification for despotic behavior I think maybe part of the problem across the board is a tendency to use analogous thinking to 'raise the stakes' of relatively minor matters by comparing them to very serious matters. It's important to keep ourselves grounded and remember that we're discussing programs, not pogroms.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > It's weird for open source because the ousted party can usually take the tree and fork Ah, but they can't do this freely and effortlessly if they've been labeled as Persona Non Grata in the license by the previous maintainer. (See, it's genius! This is such a great idea, I can't possibly tell what might go wrong with it. "Programs, not pogroms" indeed.)
    - CRConrad 7y ago
      But then, if the prospective oustee is a long-standing member of the already-existing community — and it's hard to argue that the co-founder is anything but that — then shouldn't it be the Johnny-come-lately constable of the tone police that should be the one to fork the tree and start their own community around that?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mikekchar 7y ago

For me, personally, it would be easier to accept a good faith answer if they explained what "sharp tone" led to the expulsion. I mean, I can completely understand if threats were made, or if disparaging comments against protected categories (i.e. sexist, racist, etc comments). Or hate speech, or content that is clearly against policy (i.e. links to pornography). Personal attacks, doxing, stalking, extended periods of harassment etc, etc, etc. There are lots of things that people get banned for and it's pretty easy to say what they are. Banning someone because they vehemently disagree with you? I mean, that's the only thing I can parse from their statement. It's basically saying, "I do not wish to discuss things with you, so you are banned". The funny thing is, I don't think that's inherently wrong. In any group, I think you should be able to choose your friends. If you don't want to hang out with someone, then that sucks for that person, but lots of things in life suck. However, banning the co-founder because you no longer wish to talk to them is pretty much the definition of a power grab ;-)

latk 7y ago
ESR was not banned for having the wrong opinion – many others expressed similar opinions both before and after his messages. But ESR, over the course of a few days where he returned to the mailing list, was increasingly unable to express those opinions in a professional manner. While the moderators never stated their rationale, an unfortunate combination of off-list and on-list replies leaked one of ESR's blocked emails[1] although there were possibly others. Given the context of the discussion, ESR is not only deeply unprofessional here, but also making personal attacks against Coraline Ada Ehmke. Disagreement is OK, attacks are not. And as Gil notes in that email, how ESR is promoting his cause is actually hurting and undermining open source, not rescuing it. I'd add that such attacks are even more unacceptable when they come from an ex-President or Cofounder. If I had been the moderator to make that call, I'd even have considered banning ESR without any particular evidence. That guy isn't new to the scene but has a long history of troublesome behavior. Even his first message upon return did not provide anything new to the discussion, so there was no reason to believe that keeping him around would provide any value to anyone. When his messages were largely brushed off (because they contributed no novel points aside from BeInG wRiTtEn By ThE cOfOuNdEr) that only seemed to encourage him to get more extreme, thus running straight into a ban. If not after that message, surely after the next. [1]: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists....

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

atq2119 7y ago

From the description, this sounds like a permanent ban, which is a really blunt tool -- and overly convenient, given how controversial ESR is. Keep in mind that this is about a discussion that's not in a technical, but in a political forum. After all, the OSI is a political institution, not a technical one. If people are acting in good faith, I would expect at most something temporary. This points at what I consider the real problem with CoCs: they're too vague and typically allow people to feel righteous while making truly toxic decisions. This stems from overly-broad language being adopted without an actual "litigation" (in the informal, community sense) of individual cases.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
OSI is also a technical institution. Why is he controversial then? It's because of his statements.