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Debian

Debian Developer Demoted, Quits After Two Decades With Project (itwire.com) 218

Posted by BeauHD from the leaving-for-greener-pastures dept.
juul_advocate shares a report from iTWire: A developer who had more than two decades of service in the Debian GNU/Linux project was stripped of his status in December leading to him deciding to leave the project. Norbert Preining told iTWire in response to a query he decided that having been graded down to Debian maintainer was not something he wanted after all these years. He has now joined the Arch Linux project.

Preining said what basically happened was that the [Debian account manager (DAM) team] thought he was bullying members of the project. "I guess they are referring to my run-in with Martina Ferrari where she called me out in very strange and unfounded ways, which started a long lasting disagreement between her and me, and the blog post about Lars [Wirzenius, a project member] which was nothing more than a selection of quotes from Lars' own blogs," he added.

"Anyway, these were all old things, but DAM still prefers to paint me in the light of 'You have been bullying members of the project for years' (quote from Enrico Zini on the debian-private mailing list) and that I cannot communicate with the Community Team, which back then included Martina, and which has again hit me in the back by allowing other members in Debian (I refrain from naming them here, but will do in my blog post) to bully me, even in unrelated forums and on IRC. The bottom line is that Martina, Lars, and those others are close friends of DAM and CT [community team] and the 'leading circle' in Debian, and thus it seems that they are exempted from adhering to the same community standards." Preining said the situation that led to his demotion was "more or less" about political correctness, adding that he'll explain more about the events in a blog post later on.
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Debian Developer Demoted, Quits After Two Decades With Project More

Debian Developer Demoted, Quits After Two Decades With Project

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  • tl;dr (Score:2, Troll)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

    Douchebag quits and says you can't fire me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Douchebag quits and says you can't fire me.

      So much this. From looking at the story, I'm only surprised they put up with him for that long.

      • So much this. From looking at the story, I'm only surprised they put up with him for that long.

        Which facts lead you to this conclusion?

        • I would also like to know. The links provided don't give much more detail than the summary.

          We live in a world where workplace bullying is a real problem, and causes real harm, and as such demotion/termination are justified responses to it. We ALSO live in a world in which people make false accusations of bullying for political reasons (or for reasons of personality conflict or differences of opinion).

          I have no way of knowing which is more likely in this case. Did people accuse him of bullying just becaus

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sinij ( 911942 )
            From what I understand lightly digging into this, Debian Dev opposes CoC and gets flagged as 'problematic' by the woke crowd, then later solely on this basis get smeared and purged.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      Down with this sort of thing!

      What makes you think the developer in question was a douchebag?

    • Yep. the fun from Debian has been lost because making sexist jokes, or treating other people like shit is not allowed any more Details to follow. Sounds like he's a douche.

  • So I guess I still get to use his work (Score:3)

    by Deep Esophagus ( 686515 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @04:35PM (#62360619)
    Coincidentally I also switched from Debian to Arch Linux earlier this year.

  • Just as you thought things change when you leave high school, it's the same thing all over again in your adult life.

    "High School Never End."

  • It's not stated explicitly in the article, but Debian distinguishes between a developer (DD) and a maintainer (DM). Developers are considered "full members of the Debian project" [debian.org]. Apparently a DM can have only a guest account at Debian, so maybe that's the sticking point for Peining, since he appears to be a pretty accomplished software developer in his own right.

  • I have a couple of thoughts.
    1) Hooray!! This story SHOULD be on slashdot.

    2) We need to do more to distinguish between people's actions and intents. MLK's 'content of their heart' if you will. Some people are assholes. Sometimes those assholes don't really realize their assholes. Some people are over nice. Some of them don't understand that they're overly nice. Both of these people need to respect each other for the good work they do, despite their faults. We shouldn't judge people for their entire li

    • Sometimes those assholes don't really realize their assholes. That's because eyes face to the front while assholes face to the rear. Oh wait you meant "they're".

    • Sometimes you NEED that guy in the back with an attitude and cheeto fingers. We may not talk about that guy in very flowery tones, but we need that guy.

      No, you never need that guy. There's always someone out there who is a better programmer, and not an asshole. Dump the assholes, dump the prima donnas, find the people who are both good and have enough humility and respect for others to get along. Some of them are extreme introverts and don't have great people skills, but that's fine, as long as they have a good attitude, and some humility. And if you look (and pay them) you can even find extremely talented engineers who are also great with people, and exce

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        The question is whether this is theoretical or intended to mean this guy in particular.

        At least in the linked materials, he doesn't seem to be particularly an asshole. To give that impression, one person basically just put words in his mouth. He expresses that it's tiresome to have big drag-out threads where people without a horse in the race insert themselves into a conversation to joke about abstract concept of scaring people away from committing, which no human would take seriously. Basically it struck

        • The question is whether this is theoretical or intended to mean this guy in particular.

          The former. I didn't look into things enough to form any opinion about this guy in particular.

          I feel like I hear about these unworkable assholes, but I haven't really run into one in my work at all in the open source world, and in commercial software I have seen *close* but generally still workable.

          I have seen them in the commercial world.

    • "Anybody making public blog posts about internal drama should probably just be let go outright."

      I agree with the sentiment above but you'd be surprised how often people are let go over internal drama that stayed 100% internal. Lots of fragile people with fragile, delicate feelings. But the moment internal discussions are aired publicly for outsiders to see, well that's when the line is crossed. It is important to both choose one's words and one's battles in life. Fight the battles worth fighting and eva

  • This is how it should work. (Score:3)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @05:33PM (#62360857)

    They don't like him, he doesn't like them - so he moved on. Doesn't matter who's "right" or "wrong", the marketplace will decide such things. I guess we'll see over time as certain projects become more or less successful based on how they deal with these situations.

    Is it better to alienate and push away the very rare super-nerd talent that puts in tons of free hours doing very specialized work because they enjoy it, or is it better to alienate the PMs, community outreach, organizational glue types who are a dime a dozen. I guess we'll find out but I have my own theories....

    That said - in the end I think the douchebaggery from either end of that particular spectrum is far more limited than many people imagine from reading these types of articles. For the most part, the vast majority of people in these organizations act professionally, neither being sexist/racist nor assuming everyone else is racist/sexist. So it's probably in the noise.

    • You present a false dichotomy.
      I assure in the world of highly talented software development, there are not just asshole developers, and the snowflake people who manage them.

    • These issues should require video chat mediation. It's well researched that people interpret social media written communication way worse than person-to-person. Maybe this is priming from the FB feed, but maybe people just think everyone on the Internet is an asshole rather than a bad comedian.

  • Future of Debian (Score:3)

    by sheph ( 955019 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @05:39PM (#62360881)
    I'm just dying to see what positive impact this is going to have on their end product. It seems like the woke push out the people who actually do real and meaningful work in exchange for virtue signaling. That's just been my general perception, but we'll see.
    • Norbert Preining posted this on his own blog. [preining.info]

      Everyone is free to have his own opinion (sorry, his/her), and I am free to form my own opinion on Sarah Sharp by just simply reading the facts. I am more than happy that one more SJW has left Linux development, as the proliferation of cleaning of speech from any personality has taken too far a grip.

      Coming to my home-base in Debian, unfortunately there is no one in the position and the state of mind of Linus, so we are suffering the same stupidities imposed by social justice worriers and some brainless feminists (no, don’t get me wrong, these are two independent attributes. I do NOT state that feminism is brainless) that Linus and the maintainer crew was able to fend of – this time

      He was cheering that a "SJW was pushed out" and is upset that someone pushes him out based on his politics. How ironic.

      • Yes, he was an asshole who let his own political beliefs get in the way of his job, and he got demoted. I'd do the same. There's a point where no matter how gifted someone is, their presence and their behavior is so disruptive that you're better off without him. And if he magically thinks he can be a derisive jerk on other projects, he's going to have a hard time.

        Why the fuck would anyone be talking about SJWs and slamming other members of a project like this? That shows an utter lack of professionalism.

        • From what I remember about the Sarah Sharp incident: She left kernel development because Linus can be an asshole. But Linus is an equal opportunity asshole and nothing from her complaints were about politics or identity.

          • I do believe Sage did at various points make it about that issue and argued that, though Linus did not make a distinction in whom he was an abrasive towards, it supposedly affected certain groups more.

            Frankess be, whatever gender differences may or may not exist in how people react to blunt language, cultural differences are far stronger, and it it's typically more so a discussion of Europeans vs. North Americans, than males vs. females, in desiring blunter or more polite communication. — Of course,

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nagora ( 177841 )

            From what I remember about the Sarah Sharp incident: She left kernel development because Linus can be an asshole. But Linus is an equal opportunity asshole and nothing from her complaints were about politics or identity.

            Sharp first kicked off about a joke Linus made about not crossing one of the other developers because he was so big that he might squish you and not even notice.

            Sharp went to 11 on this as an indication that "threats of physical violence" were being advocated as a way to get code accepted. It was 100% nuts and she was allowed to rant about it for far too long before being shown the door. No project needs that sort of disruptive behaviour.

        • Yes, he was an asshole who let his own political beliefs get in the way of his job

          Bingo.

          Why the fuck would anyone be talking about SJWs and slamming other members of a project like this?

          You answered that in your very first sentence :)

          People who have let this politics bleed into their work life have nearly invariably hit the point where they can't even parse the world in any terms but their politics.
          To him, every ill he encounters is rooted in the enemies of his football team.

        • On 4chan, they call it “living rent free in one's head”; I' surprised that term hasn't leaked out of 4chan much yet.

          It essentially describes a state of mind where people constantly think about one particular antagonist they are obsessed with and take every opportunity to complain about that opposing force and interpret everything as though it be related to that. As in, one is letting one's enemy live rent-free in one's head.

          It's really quite common that members of certain groups seem to constant

      • And bizarrely invoking the Spirit of Torvalds.

        Words you have never heard Linus use:
        SJW.
        Feminist.

        This is just another pissed off shitstain screaming to the world about being made to account for the fact that the world is waking up to the idea that you don't need to coddle pieces of shit, and if you do, they'll change the culture around themselves to suit themselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      It seems like the woke push out the people who actually do real and meaningful work in exchange for virtue signaling

      Could you explain this "virtue signaling" of yours?

  • Honestly, I don't know any of these people and I can't say I'm super bothered by any part of this, but Norbert's charges that he was being victimized by a run-in with Martina Ferrari intrigued me, so I followed the link. "Martina Ferrari is definitely not a made up name" swore her beast friend Patricia Ponycar. Anyway.... I read the blog that Norbert claims attacked him in "strange" and "unfounded" ways. By the way, this blog is apparently from Oct. 2015, so this happened over 6 years ago. "Strange"
  • Innovation stops at the point when "project managers" take over.
  • Yikes, must've been that time of the month...
  • And what exactly does this have to do with how superior systemd is?

  • is that he confused gender with sex in a (forum?) post

    as i understand, sex is determined physically, by chromosomes and whatnot and can be determined objectively in a medical sense. Gender, however, is a social construct with little to no meaning overall. I'm a guy, but I could arbitrarily decide to identify as a she. Nothing of value would change in my life. How the hell would a pronoun change, change the way people interact with me, when they can *clearly* see and hear I'm a guy?

    I still maintain to this d

    • That may be so, but many people have insecurities (including many people working in the CS field - such as us). When we go on our daily lives as human beings, we try to be nice to other people and to cope with their various issues and quirks in a way that will not hurt their feelings. This is what we do as social animals, we try to find ways to mitigate conflicts with people that we are supposed to interact with on a regular basis. Of course sometimes we are clumsy and we do things that end up hurting them

      • We don't generally take being polite to the level of getting wrapped up in personal power fantasies. If my coworker asks to be called "his Highness" and I don't play along, no one feels I've done anything wrong, despite the fact that his Highness identifies as a cannabis king.

  • I read a lot of the linked content. His original blog post wasn't terrible. It was mostly a posting of what other people had said on the kernel mailing list. He exposed himself with bad writing. If you're writing about a touchy subject then proof read and make sure your position is really clear.

    The post by Martina Ferrari is odd. It's hard to understand exactly what she is attacking. You'd think she didn't really read the blog post but just skimmed out the meaning - which is exactly why you need to be reall

  • Only when you realize that they're at different points of the same spectrum do you learn to ignore both of them.

    • I'm starting to think the word "toxic" itself is a big part of the problem. It's a dismissive designation that doesn't require any precision. It doesn't explain why some behavior is wrong or how to address it or how to resolve conflict. It's like the modern use of "Nazi" on Internet forums. It's not adding anything useful.

  • I understand that Linus can be a bit abrasive at times. Honestly, he probably should learn how to communicate that the code doesn't meet standards or is broken without belittling the developer.

    But it is also true that hypersensitive people can destroy an entire team. It may be unprofessional to belittle others for their mistakes, but it is likewise very unprofessional to butt in on other people's conversations, to make accusations based on your misunderstandings, etc... Quitting a project because someone wrote something which hurt your feelings, especially if they weren't talking to you, or meant something else is the mark of someone who doesn't have the emotional control and self-discipline to do professional level work. If the only thing you create at work is drama, you're better off in Hollywood than working as a kernel maintainer.

    There will always be people in society who are socially inept, or who have difficulty reading other peoples' emotions. As an adult and professional, you should be able to work with them, to understand their difficulties, and to focus on writing great code rather than getting caught up in how you feel.

    Yes, jerks can be bothersome at times, and may make a few people unhappy. But SJWs are the tactical nuclear weapons of open source develoment - they're not satisfied until nobody is happy. They have the unique ability to drive away current and prospective talent, and to prevent any meaningful work from being done by the few who remain.

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