[aur-general] TU Application - Konstantin Gizdov

[Eli Schwartz]

On 10/27/18 6:12 PM, Christos Nouskas wrote:
> I've been with Arch since around 2004-5 and I've never seen such a
> hostility against a contributing user.
> 
> Konstantin clearly cares about his set of packages because they are
> the tools of his trade and of some of his co-workers (at a
> high-profile institution, not at some pet shop). It's also clear that
> he's not just a packager but also a co-developer of at least some of
> the software set. It's only normal for him to be concerned about the
> way this package group is handled, given the importance of its
> applications. That also was the very reason he applied for a TU.

That's... fine? I mean, there's lots of people for whom the tools of
their trade *at high-profile institutions* are php, openssl, nginx, gcc,
or numerous others. I'm sure they're very concerned about these things
working properly.

I don't regard Arch Linux as a *toy* of an operating system, fit only
for idleness and hobby time.

Appropriately, therefore, I treat all, or at least the majority, of Arch
packages as important things which Arch users in general and
specifically, should be concerned about. I guess there are games which
are unlikely to be of job-related importance, but most packages are
important to at least some subset of users, or we wouldn't be so eager
to package them.

I therefore do not ascribe any explicit importance or special
consideration to anyone's job.

Furthermore, we have a very well working bugtracker within which the
many people who use Arch Linux in professional, and yes, sometimes
high-profile environments, frequently communicate their concerns about
the packaging of particular software packages. This is called due
process. It's something you don't need to be a TU in order to do. If the
only conceivable way to to contribute to Arch was to become a TU, we'd
have a very small and insignificant distro indeed.

To this date, I'm unaware of the fundamental purpose of the bugtracker
failing our professional, high-profile users.

> Now, even if he had been over-zealous about it, justifiably so in
> many's opinions, he had been a far cry from whining or implying
> oppression or telling bald-faced lies or being a control-freak - jeez,
> why such strong expressions? I read the word "implying" numerous times
> in the bashing posts and some arguments (not all, for sure) were even
> based on Konstantin's "hidden insinuations", not his actual arguments.
> 
> Mistakes do happen and I doubt that being a TU means being infallible
> or indisputable. But watching a man getting severely reprimanded over
> some petty mistakes, which had resulted from over-zealousness and not
> mal-intent, is just sad.

It is pretty darn hard to make a mistake about whether you yourself have
done three things when you only actually did two.

It is also pretty annoying for me, personally, to be flat-out told
(before this TU application process even started) that I personally,
would have refused to reopen a bug report for which there was a reopen
request, save for a mailing list thread having been opened about it.

I stated pretty clearly on September 30:

"It was not denied to reopen. It was reopened as soon as you asked for
the first time."

I received the response: "Yes, by you after I send this email, unless I
am mistaken."

I repeatedly explain that we are willing to reopen any bug that has a
reopen request, without needing some sort of mailing list drama to force
our hands.

But a month later, he continues to assert that the dates on the email
thread *prove* that I only reopened the bug after his thread, with a
pretty obvious logical conclusion that this fact is somehow relevant and
therefore pertains to my own hidden motivations.


I dislike the idea of encouraging a general perception in the Arch Linux
community that anyone who files a bug report should also start some
mailing list thread to ensure we actually respond to the bug report. If
for no other reason than that we have 60,000 historic bugs, many of
which are still open, and people would get pretty bored and stop reading
the mailing list if it just became a copy of the bugtracker.

> Especially because it comes from the very people who advised him to
> apply as a TU and that man is now appealing to.

I did *not* advise him to become a TU, and I don't recall anyone
publicly doing so on the mailing list at least.

I did direct him to the due process for doing so, but that is not proof
positive that I encourage and support his application... I would do the
same for literally anyone whatsoever, even if that person was the CEO of
Microsoft, a core member of some particularly ill-regarded Arch
derivative like Manjaro, or an unabashedly public member of some
three-letter spy agency who blogged every day about the noble cause of
weakening security and injecting spyware into Linux distributions.

Everyone deserves the chance to try and be convincing to the general
class of Trusted Users, whether I personally feel convinced or not. In
fact, everyone deserves the right to try and be convincing even if no
one feels convinced.

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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