10 ms·

Leah Rowe Coups Libreboot

71 points by and_who 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
blaser-waffle 6y ago
That title is misleading -- coups makes sense, mostly, but a clearer title would be "Leah R revokes all access to LibreBoot code and infrastructure". This is concerning to me, though, as I have a laptop with Libreboot, mostly to mess around with firmware and low-level stuff, and I'm now worried that some disgruntled owner would insert, out of malice or oversight, something that would mess things up a bunch.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  Does libreboot auto-update now? Back when I played with it, I had to manually apply updates(which I admittedly didn't do).
ipsocannibal 6y ago
This seems a little fishy but I might be missing context. According to https://libreboot.org/contrib.html https://libreboot.org/contrib.html Andrew Robbins is still listed as a maintainer.
- and_who 6y ago
  She missed that one, apparently.
- notamy 6y ago
  If you check out the relevant git repo you can see in the commit log that there's this giant commit message: https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd9cc93494a76af558dae47557d50 https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd...
- burkaman 6y ago
  > I, Leah Rowe, have re-taken full control of the Libreboot project after 4 years delay in bringing out a new release. [...] The people working on it kept adding too many new features without fixing fundamental issues. I have revoked all of their access to project infrastructure; Libreboot is now lead by me. I have a completely different idea for how to run the project and what a coreboot distro should be. - https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html
  - ipsocannibal 6y ago
    Thats the context I was missing. Thanks.
semisight 6y ago
More context: https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd9cc93494a76af558dae47557d50 https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd...
- rstarast 6y ago
  +news/rms.md Oh boy.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/8a46e9cf46080d78e9fc2d833d9136b8f115f7ac https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/8a46e9cf46080...
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    Indeed. Curiously enough I couldn't find the file listed in the commit.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
smoldesu 6y ago
Boy, this smells like a drama drop if I've ever seen one. A maintainer of a relatively well known (and relatively stagnated) project decides to take back control in order to start releasing again, and one of the usurped maintainers comes to HN to post a plaintext complaint about it? Either post her commit message or don't post anything at all, framing this through the lens of a "coup" raises more questions than it answers. Ultimately, I feel like this was distastefully handled on both sides.
- jchw 6y ago
  It links to the Git repo and mentions the commits. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, I’m having difficulty not describing the following as a “coup”: > I, Leah Rowe, have taken over the Libreboot project. > I've done this without consulting the other devs (P.S.: In case it isn’t clear from my tone, though, I am not trying to express an opinion regarding the situation, only that their PoV seems perfectly reasonable.)
  - stock_toaster 6y ago
    I think you cut off that second line a bit too soon. > I've done this without consulting the other devs, > because there are no other devs right now. None of > them are active. They would never accept this change > in Libreboot project governance policy, and I have > control over 100% of libreboot.org > (I never relinguished [sic] control). I make no statement about it being appropriate or not. It does at least provide a bit more context about the Author's stated position.
- and_who 6y ago
  I addressed your concern with the commit message and linked it directly. Honestly, I'm ready to wash my hands of all of this but I'm not willing to roll over, so yeah it is kinda messy but that's the nature of this situation.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Just my two cents. I know passions are high and it’s tempting to see this as a struggle for power but I think that will only worsen the situation honestly. I would disengage completely from this situation and start up your own fork if you wish to continue working on this codebase.
morpheuskafka 6y ago
This project is a joke when it comes to professionalism and quality and it is unfairly giving free software a bad image. The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was thinking it was going to be an old article about what happened for years ago when this maintainer abruptly withdrew the project from GNU with absolutely zero advance notice to anyone. This is why companies pay millions of dollars for Enterprise Linux or, because of its bad image, don't want to use free software at all. Open source firmware is a great and necessary idea, but I do not think the Libreboot project, cool as it may be, is ever going to make substantial progress towards that (for non-decade old laptops).
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > Open source firmware is a great and necessary idea, but I do not think the Libreboot project, cool as it may be, is ever going to make substantial progress towards that (for non-decade old laptops). Not only that, but the Coreboot project -- which Libreboot is a fork from -- has been making incremental progress towards open-source firmware. Their firmware still contains some binary blobs, but, unlike Libreboot, it's actually usable on some modern hardware, and they're making progress towards replacing some of those blobs with free substitutes.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    Actually, I'm a bit out of the loop - is coreboot a strict superset of libreboot? Can you do a checkout of the coreboot code and do something like `./configure --no-blobs --target=thinkpadx60 && make` for systems that support it and get effectively the same thing that libreboot would have given you?
    - spijdar 6y ago
      Not a strict superset, it's more accurate to say libreboot is a restricted and modified (old) subset of coreboot. I don't think coreboot has catered to blob free enthusiasts the same way libreboot has, and I believe the build system is different, so the answer is probably no (?)
    - 6y ago
ipsocannibal 6y ago
On a side note what was the deal with https://libreboot.org/news/leah-fundraiser.html https://libreboot.org/news/leah-fundraiser.html . This seems kind of unseemly to be fund raising for an elective surgery using your open source project as a platform. Was the fundraiser successful? Is type of thing common among project maintainers?
- and_who 6y ago
  Leah has a history of making brash decisions but we (the other devs) agreed to posting that single news article. It meant a lot to her so we allowed that post for her sake, but no it is not common amongst project maintainers.
- knz_ 6y ago
  GCS isn't elective surgery.
  - ipsocannibal 6y ago
    https://thetranscenter.com/transwomen/gcs/ https://thetranscenter.com/transwomen/gcs/ "The decision to have gender confirmation surgery (GCS) is a very personal, private matter, and not all transwomen will elect to undergo this procedure. It is important to keep in mind that GCS is not a requirement for transition, and many transwomen feel happy and content with their bodies without undergoing GCS." So yea, its elective.
jvanderbot 6y ago
> I don't have an exact date as my IRC client is not configured to store the date in each timestamp but Leah and I did speak privately after reinstatement and I made it clear that coups were not acceptable and to not engage in that behavior ever again, which she agreed to. JFC that's just weakness and incompetence. You document this stuff and you don't open yourself up to it again with restrictions no stronger than "I promise".
- and_who 6y ago
  Well, I trusted Leah and that's what a lot of free software development requires. I was foolish for not discussing restrictions at that point but this is a learning situation for me. What would you have done differently?
  - jvanderbot 6y ago
    I don't know the situation well enough to say what I would have done to fix it. But I definitely would have saved the correspondence, and I definitely would have discussed a "soft demotion" in responsibility and power with the other members. "Do business as strangers"
thinkingemote 6y ago
https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html gives Leah's take on this and includes reasons for removing the code of conduct from the project.
- Dunedan 6y ago
  > She acts like a total fascist, going around the internet looking for people that disagree with her political views; she then attempts to cancel those people. > […] > This is why I revoked the code of conduct (Contributor Covenant) on libreboot.org. I do not wish for Libreboot to be associated with her. That reads to me like the CoC was removed for reasons not related to its content, but related to views of its author. Isn't removing the CoC because you don't agree with some views or actions of its author cancelling as well?
  - ytons 6y ago
    No, it's like removing buggy code and not remotely related to real cancelling where a human is removed from some project or other position for political views. This was overdue, but as always in these cases, no one can support Leah publicly. I'm sure there is massive silent support for this move [1]. The Linux kernel should follow, but it is in the hands of developers who are beholden to their corporate masters. The FSF is the last bastion of true freedom, and I hope RMS will be president again. [1] I would not be surprised if it had 70% approval if there were a truly and guaranteed anonymous poll of all open source developers.
adamrezich 6y ago
Where does this recent-ish (last few years) trend of "coups" and power struggles in open-source software stem from? What is causing this trend in behavior?
leahlibre 6y ago
My response: https://libreboot.org/news/resignations.html https://libreboot.org/news/resignations.html I wish Andrew and Swiftgeek all the best. Their work is fully preserved in the Git repository, should they wish to continue it in their own repositories.
Firehawke 6y ago
The right answer probably would have been to fork and just do her own thing under a different name. That's certainly happened more than a few times in the past, and sometimes the new one ends up being renamed to the old project name once it's clear that's the way forward. Cleaner, less drama, and you don't break the trust of your former team.

71 points by and_who 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

That title is misleading -- coups makes sense, mostly, but a clearer title would be "Leah R revokes all access to LibreBoot code and infrastructure". This is concerning to me, though, as I have a laptop with Libreboot, mostly to mess around with firmware and low-level stuff, and I'm now worried that some disgruntled owner would insert, out of malice or oversight, something that would mess things up a bunch.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Does libreboot auto-update now? Back when I played with it, I had to manually apply updates(which I admittedly didn't do).

ipsocannibal 6y ago

This seems a little fishy but I might be missing context. According to https://libreboot.org/contrib.html https://libreboot.org/contrib.html Andrew Robbins is still listed as a maintainer.

and_who 6y ago
She missed that one, apparently.
notamy 6y ago
If you check out the relevant git repo you can see in the commit log that there's this giant commit message: https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd9cc93494a76af558dae47557d50 https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd...
burkaman 6y ago
> I, Leah Rowe, have re-taken full control of the Libreboot project after 4 years delay in bringing out a new release. [...] The people working on it kept adding too many new features without fixing fundamental issues. I have revoked all of their access to project infrastructure; Libreboot is now lead by me. I have a completely different idea for how to run the project and what a coreboot distro should be. - https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html
- ipsocannibal 6y ago
  Thats the context I was missing. Thanks.

semisight 6y ago

More context: https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd9cc93494a76af558dae47557d50 https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/27fce189cd1cd...

rstarast 6y ago
+news/rms.md Oh boy.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/8a46e9cf46080d78e9fc2d833d9136b8f115f7ac https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/commit/8a46e9cf46080...
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Indeed. Curiously enough I couldn't find the file listed in the commit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

smoldesu 6y ago

Boy, this smells like a drama drop if I've ever seen one. A maintainer of a relatively well known (and relatively stagnated) project decides to take back control in order to start releasing again, and one of the usurped maintainers comes to HN to post a plaintext complaint about it? Either post her commit message or don't post anything at all, framing this through the lens of a "coup" raises more questions than it answers. Ultimately, I feel like this was distastefully handled on both sides.

jchw 6y ago
It links to the Git repo and mentions the commits. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, I’m having difficulty not describing the following as a “coup”: > I, Leah Rowe, have taken over the Libreboot project. > I've done this without consulting the other devs (P.S.: In case it isn’t clear from my tone, though, I am not trying to express an opinion regarding the situation, only that their PoV seems perfectly reasonable.)
- stock_toaster 6y ago
  I think you cut off that second line a bit too soon. > I've done this without consulting the other devs, > because there are no other devs right now. None of > them are active. They would never accept this change > in Libreboot project governance policy, and I have > control over 100% of libreboot.org > (I never relinguished [sic] control). I make no statement about it being appropriate or not. It does at least provide a bit more context about the Author's stated position.
and_who 6y ago
I addressed your concern with the commit message and linked it directly. Honestly, I'm ready to wash my hands of all of this but I'm not willing to roll over, so yeah it is kinda messy but that's the nature of this situation.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Just my two cents. I know passions are high and it’s tempting to see this as a struggle for power but I think that will only worsen the situation honestly. I would disengage completely from this situation and start up your own fork if you wish to continue working on this codebase.

morpheuskafka 6y ago

This project is a joke when it comes to professionalism and quality and it is unfairly giving free software a bad image. The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was thinking it was going to be an old article about what happened for years ago when this maintainer abruptly withdrew the project from GNU with absolutely zero advance notice to anyone. This is why companies pay millions of dollars for Enterprise Linux or, because of its bad image, don't want to use free software at all. Open source firmware is a great and necessary idea, but I do not think the Libreboot project, cool as it may be, is ever going to make substantial progress towards that (for non-decade old laptops).

duskwuff 6y ago
> Open source firmware is a great and necessary idea, but I do not think the Libreboot project, cool as it may be, is ever going to make substantial progress towards that (for non-decade old laptops). Not only that, but the Coreboot project -- which Libreboot is a fork from -- has been making incremental progress towards open-source firmware. Their firmware still contains some binary blobs, but, unlike Libreboot, it's actually usable on some modern hardware, and they're making progress towards replacing some of those blobs with free substitutes.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Actually, I'm a bit out of the loop - is coreboot a strict superset of libreboot? Can you do a checkout of the coreboot code and do something like `./configure --no-blobs --target=thinkpadx60 && make` for systems that support it and get effectively the same thing that libreboot would have given you?
  - spijdar 6y ago
    Not a strict superset, it's more accurate to say libreboot is a restricted and modified (old) subset of coreboot. I don't think coreboot has catered to blob free enthusiasts the same way libreboot has, and I believe the build system is different, so the answer is probably no (?)
  - 6y ago

ipsocannibal 6y ago

On a side note what was the deal with https://libreboot.org/news/leah-fundraiser.html https://libreboot.org/news/leah-fundraiser.html . This seems kind of unseemly to be fund raising for an elective surgery using your open source project as a platform. Was the fundraiser successful? Is type of thing common among project maintainers?

and_who 6y ago
Leah has a history of making brash decisions but we (the other devs) agreed to posting that single news article. It meant a lot to her so we allowed that post for her sake, but no it is not common amongst project maintainers.
knz_ 6y ago
GCS isn't elective surgery.
- ipsocannibal 6y ago
  https://thetranscenter.com/transwomen/gcs/ https://thetranscenter.com/transwomen/gcs/ "The decision to have gender confirmation surgery (GCS) is a very personal, private matter, and not all transwomen will elect to undergo this procedure. It is important to keep in mind that GCS is not a requirement for transition, and many transwomen feel happy and content with their bodies without undergoing GCS." So yea, its elective.

jvanderbot 6y ago

> I don't have an exact date as my IRC client is not configured to store the date in each timestamp but Leah and I did speak privately after reinstatement and I made it clear that coups were not acceptable and to not engage in that behavior ever again, which she agreed to. JFC that's just weakness and incompetence. You document this stuff and you don't open yourself up to it again with restrictions no stronger than "I promise".

and_who 6y ago
Well, I trusted Leah and that's what a lot of free software development requires. I was foolish for not discussing restrictions at that point but this is a learning situation for me. What would you have done differently?
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  I don't know the situation well enough to say what I would have done to fix it. But I definitely would have saved the correspondence, and I definitely would have discussed a "soft demotion" in responsibility and power with the other members. "Do business as strangers"

thinkingemote 6y ago

https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot202104xx.html gives Leah's take on this and includes reasons for removing the code of conduct from the project.

Dunedan 6y ago
> She acts like a total fascist, going around the internet looking for people that disagree with her political views; she then attempts to cancel those people. > […] > This is why I revoked the code of conduct (Contributor Covenant) on libreboot.org. I do not wish for Libreboot to be associated with her. That reads to me like the CoC was removed for reasons not related to its content, but related to views of its author. Isn't removing the CoC because you don't agree with some views or actions of its author cancelling as well?
- ytons 6y ago
  No, it's like removing buggy code and not remotely related to real cancelling where a human is removed from some project or other position for political views. This was overdue, but as always in these cases, no one can support Leah publicly. I'm sure there is massive silent support for this move [1]. The Linux kernel should follow, but it is in the hands of developers who are beholden to their corporate masters. The FSF is the last bastion of true freedom, and I hope RMS will be president again. [1] I would not be surprised if it had 70% approval if there were a truly and guaranteed anonymous poll of all open source developers.

adamrezich 6y ago

Where does this recent-ish (last few years) trend of "coups" and power struggles in open-source software stem from? What is causing this trend in behavior?

leahlibre 6y ago

My response: https://libreboot.org/news/resignations.html https://libreboot.org/news/resignations.html I wish Andrew and Swiftgeek all the best. Their work is fully preserved in the Git repository, should they wish to continue it in their own repositories.

Firehawke 6y ago

The right answer probably would have been to fork and just do her own thing under a different name. That's certainly happened more than a few times in the past, and sometimes the new one ends up being renamed to the old project name once it's clear that's the way forward. Cleaner, less drama, and you don't break the trust of your former team.