Reconciling
The discussion with Richard Stallman ended with requested silence.
I’d like to ask people to use the following meme for future such discussions:
La pensée ne doit jamais se soumettre, ni à un dogme, ni à un parti, ni à une passion, ni à un intérêt, ni à une idée préconçue, ni à quoi que ce soit, si ce n’est aux faits eux-mêmes, parce que, pour elle, se soumettre, ce serait cesser d’être.
– Henri Poincaré, University of Brussels (1909-11-19)
As for the conclusions. I believe this survey result and this analysis are conclusive.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:46 pm
So… Pushing a vote among GNOME foundation members?
Or keeping the status quo until the next conflict comes up?
/me wonders…
December 21st, 2009 at 10:12 pm
@andre klapper: I think the status quo is going to be kept. Silence was requested. I count the request to silence as a request to a status quo.
But I don’t think it’ll last for very long. Which is why I propose Henri Poincaré’s meme.
I hope the foundation’s board will have the courage to act based on the facts. It’s demeaning to our developers when it doesn’t.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I was not aware of this survey, surely it’s my fault because I didn’t have the time fo reading all the message from the foundation list.
Checking the results it seems I’m part of the minority of people who are for keeping with the association with GNU. this is sad because for me this is important.
I think that there is an alternative solution that hasn’t been discussed or taken into consideration. Peter Hjalmarsson suggested on the foundation list two two feeds: the “planet”, and the “universe”, like gentoo:
“Then for the “planet” you can have a code of conduct of what they are
allowed to tag as GNOME (i.e. upcoming events in OSS-land where GNOME
will be represented, development in projects blessed/used by GNOME,
comments about projects being blessed/used by GNOME, projects
interesting for people interested in GNOME), and a “universe” with maybe
an disclaimer that the posts there can have nothing what so ever to do
with GNOME.”
I think this solution not only fixes this “minor” problem. The new “planet” helps to share a community view of our project. And this is useful not only for the community members, but also for the people outside the community that want to know about GNOME. And the current planet will be the Universe GNOME so it “will be a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors”.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:04 am
I was aware of this pointed expression of personal opinion, sorry, “survey”. It was impossible for me and many others with views like mine to take part in the survey because there was no option for an answer matching a moderate view.
So this conclusive pointed expression of personal opinion, sorry, “survey” does nothing whatsoever for anything except Philip’s ego.
Sorry, it could have helped.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:10 am
@Jarral: Please start your own survey, or shut the fuck up.
I’m serious.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 am
Did you ever notice, sorry read, the Code of Conduct?
(I am serious too).
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 am
Wow, if the GNOME community is composed of people like you, I’ll be switching to something else ASAP.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:49 am
So they told you and Lefty to STFU and now you guy are angry .. awww
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Currently about 93.8% of the responders do not have their blog syndicated on Planet GNOME, I honestly don’t care about the position about the topic of people who aren’t GNOME contributors. the poll is irrelevant.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 am
@nicu: Read the analysis of Lefty that I linked to. In the analysis he talks about the numbers of the about ~ 90 respondents who are syndicated on Planet GNOME. The percentages lean even more towards the answers that have most support already (~ +80% instead of ~ 75%).
@Wow: sure, bye.
@Tom: I don’t know what they told Lefty. I also don’t know who you mean with ‘they’. Read the thread and find out for yourself what I meant with requested.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm
@Jarral: I have helped formulate GNOME’s Code of Conduct, so yes I know about it.
First of all.
What I told you isn’t a violation of it: It’s a sane proposal that tells you to either make your own survey, or to shut up. Which is precisely what everybody else is expecting after your baseless nonsensical whines about the current survey.
Second.
I’d like to be frank and clear about this: this blog and these comments are NOT hosted on GNOME infrastructure. I pay about ~ 80 euros per month for infrastructure hosting among other things this website. I pay that out of my pocket. GNOME has nothing to do with this. This also means that GNOME’s Code of Conduct doesn’t apply here and that, therefor, your comment about it is irrelevant.
You are a guest here. You aren’t a guest on GNOME infrastructure at this moment. If any code applies here, it’s my code. And it certainly isn’t up to you to dictate what code is applicable on my infrastructure.
If you’d claim that the blog item itself is a violation (which would of course be more nonsense) then it’s up to GNOME’s planet maintainers to decide to mirror, or not to mirror, my blog item on their planet-gnome website.
In other words are you on the master copy. The master copy is my infrastructure. I dictate what code applies here. You don’t. GNOME doesn’t. I do.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@nicu Not every foundation member is aggregated on planet gnome
The survey and the discussion was about more then just p.g.o. it’s about the stance that GNU (by way of RMS) took towards gnome. Pvanhoof narrowed it down pretty well when asking RMS “You write ‘minimal support’. ‘Minimal’ to me means: either you do this, or you’re out. Feel free to correct me.”
I don’t think RMS responded to that, but it’s the core of the matter. Either GNU has unwritten rules that need to be adhered, in which case GNOME as a project should seriously look if it can stand by those unwritten rules, or RMS was only politely lobbying for the changes on p.g.o, in which case GNOME could consider it and decide to follow or not.
The survey was certainly not binding, but it showed a clear cross-section of what the outcome would most probably be, would GNU decide to “enforce” their unwritten rule. Which in turn gave the ball back to GNU, who, as far as I know, have not responded yet, resulting in the current situation.
So in a sense it is not that GNU can’t have rules, or that the proposition by RMS was so bad (well I would be against it, but it’s not the end of the world) but in how far GNU can tell GNOME what to do. We are not the software equivalent of a vassal nation.
In my opinion, GNOME should be able to draw its own course, in terms of software development, and in terms of evangelisation. For GNOME I think the latter lies much more on open source and open standards then on free software. That is not the same as GNU or the FSF, but I don’t think it has to be. But if GNU finds that it is important, then we should seriously consider the implications of that.
It goes without saying that the above is my own opinion. Which I think is shared by others, but I of course can not be sure of that.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
@Erik Snoeijs: I at least share that opinion with you.
Also note this analysis of Lefty: http://tinyurl.com/ykdc28z (it talks about the ~90 respondents who do have syndication on planet-gnome, for in case nicu wants to know about what he apparently does consider relevant).
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Like Jarral says, and he is a professional survey designer and analyst with many years experience, the survey sucks. There is no room for any response that is not an agreement with the PhilipLeftyPosition. But the whole idea of a survey on this issue sucks too.
Pretty much everyone would prefer not have advertisements mingled in their cornflakes, and there are a minority contributors on Planet Gnome who do just that. We do not want it, we prefer you do not do it. Nobody is demanding rules or expulsions or any of the baseless crap that the PhilipLeftPosition casts around - even Stallman is not asking such.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
@Georges
“Pretty much everyone would prefer not have advertisements mingled in their cornflakes”
Let’s say for instance that someone was given the ability to give away vmware licenses to the gnome community? Clearly that’s advertisement, but I surely wouldn’t mind having that mingled into my cornflakes.
The world isn’t black and white, and nor are people. You can spout rhetoric like “We do not want it, we prefer you do not do it.” But that doesn’t make it true.
There is no “We” there is no “PhilipLeftyPosition”. There are only individuals. If at some point GNOME has to take a stance in this, all those voices will be heard via a fair vote. In the mean time, everyone is entitled to have his or her own opinion, with emphasis on “own”.
Also, to address your first paragraph. Saying “we prefer you do not do it” is a rule. You can masque it as guideline, or whatever, but in essence it is just a rule.
Personally I don’t understand the reason why the survey has to be “attacked”, it’s results were clear, but there it ends. It was certainly not an official survey as I think Lefty has explicitly noted. As such, it was a clear argument from lefty to show that there is a considerable base of people who did not agree.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
@Georges: And what Philip says, and he’s a professional professional (w00t w00t, bling bling, look I’m a professional!), is that you probably want to start your own planet-gnome. You can ask the GNOME admins for a neat subdomain. I’m sure that if your project proposal is sound, that you’ll get it. That you’ll even get free hosting by GNOME and everything.
Pretty much everyone would prefer the whiners to really just do that (we’re really serious when we say that you should start your own planet, we really really are).
The conclusion of the thread on the mailing list was most definitely and clearly that planet-gnome is doing just fine, that no changes are needed. Not a single change.
As for the survey, just like starting your own planet, start your own survey. If your good friend Jarral is so professional at making surveys, then what the heck is holding him back making his own survey?!
So until you guys stop whining and instead start DOING (like we, GNOME developers DO our jobs - professionally), you’re all just whiners. And unless you have something constructive to say (Juanjo Marin’s proposal is at least a bit constructive) you can and will be ignored. And that’s a good thing (in fact, I shouldn’t even give you a platform for your whining).
Now go do something useful.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
> Personally I don’t understand the reason why the survey has to be “attacked”,
> it’s results were clear, but there it ends. It was certainly not an official survey
> as I think Lefty has explicitly noted. As such, it was a clear argument from lefty
> to show that there is a considerable base of people who did not agree.
This is very accurate indeed.
It’s also true that there’s no “we”, nor is there a PhilipLeftyPosition. That is again nonsense slandering that we individuals constantly have to endure from a small small minority of our users who represent themselves as if they’re a majority. Which is of course nonsense too.
I think Lefty and me had one single personal E-mail sent to each other since the debate started. Lefty forwarded me a E-mail that he had sent to Stormy, with a note that goes like: “just for your information, this is what I’ve send to Stormy”. And I replied “Oh, thanks to keep me informed on this”.
In fact did I receive far more private E-mails from totally different GNOME people who were not involved in the discussion at all; giving me advise on various things (advises like how to enact the vote officially).
But of course must the crazy fanatic people make it a conspiracy between me and Lefty. Really, those guys are stupidly crazy. I hope they do realize this. And really, if that’s the kind of users that we loose: Then yes, please be gone. Those fanatics have no idea how much they are hurting GNOME as a community. They are by far far far the winners of all the hurting (just ask around at our conferences, where the doers are).
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
It’s fun to see just how deeply some folks are invested in trying to smack down any sort of criticism at all here. Jarral has his (putative) appeal to awe—but has no “professionally designed survey” with any different results to show us. Tom has nothing whatsoever. Georges has nothing whatsoever, except paranoia, conspiracy theories and a bucket of water to carry on Jarral’s behalf.
I’d have to be one heck of a propagandist to come up with a survey that show a nine-to-one majority favoring a proposition that they only think they believe by virtue of the way I phrased the questions. These guys are giving me a heck of a lot of credit.
Tell you folks what: put together your own survey, and show me the vastly different results you get from people.
In other development, the guy who’s previously called Linus “an idiot” and Tim O’Reilly “a parasite” called me a jihadist. I think that’s a good sign, actually.
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
Don’t get be wrong, I think what RMS asked for is *totally wrong* as it would be *censorship*. At the same time, question 5-8 on Lefty’s survey are obviously crafted to fit an agenda.
For that matter, I like a lot the offtopic posts on the FLOSS planets where I am aggregated, I can learn a lot about my colleagues (I have not voted here since I am only a GNOME user, my contributions are small and not relevant in any way).
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@pvanhoof Did you “help formulate GNOME’s Code of Conduct” by way of counter-example? And really, nobody cares how you administer or pay for your keyboard, just what you post to the feed. As always, the people who see least need for a code of conduct are the ones most in need of it.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
@Lisat: I was one of the people behind the “assume people mean well” advise (it’s in the mailing lists archives somewhere if you want to look it up).
However
These comments don’t appear on the feed, so I don’t know what you are talking about (you talk about feeds, but this isn’t about feeds).
The comments are hosted on my infrastructure. Whoever mirrors these comments onto their infrastructure are responsible _themselves_ for what they copy from here.
Similarly if you have a complaint about the blog item itself; you should go to the maintainers of planet-gnome and explain them why the blog item, the item itself, is a violation of GNOME’s code of conduct.
You have to explain that to _them_, not _to me_ because _they_ copy from _this_ master copy. And _here_ there’s no GNOME Code Of Conduct that is applicable.
Because I am the owner of the infrastructure that hosts the comments, it’s _my_ code that applies here.
Nobody has any business dictating _me_ what code I should use here.
You, for example, don’t have any business, any business whatsoever, to dictate to me what code I should commit to for stuff that is hosted on my own infrastructure.
You do understand the concept of “ownership”, do you? It’s childishly simple:
I’m the owner of this place. It among many other things means that I decide. Not you.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
@nicu: First it was the fact that 90% of the respondents aren’t GNOME contributors. Then I pointed you at Lefty’s analysis of the 10% that are ensured GNOME contributors (because they have their blog syndicated on planet-gnome, which is pretty much a as complete guarantee as you can possibly get). Now it’s bias in the questions. What is it now? Bias or the fact that not every respondent is a GNOME contributor?
I already responded to others here that when people feel that there’s bias in Lefty’s survey, that they should start their own survey.
I’m starting to think that no matter what, certain people wont accept the results of a democratic vote (unless it fits their private agenda).
And as Lefty pointed out in an earlier comment:
> I’d have to be one heck of a propagandist to come up with a survey that
> show a nine-to-one majority favoring a proposition that they only think
> they believe by virtue of the way I phrased the questions. These guys
> are giving me a heck of a lot of credit.
Can those people come up with an intellectually honest reply to that?
They can’t, right?
Right (that is effectively what I think of you guys), until you guys come up with something intelligent that debunks Lefty’s accurate counter argument.
ps. Increasingly I think that those “GNOME critics” just aren’t intellectually honest. And please convince me why I should care at all about intellectually dishonest people? Because I don’t, in case you don’t know yet.
Ignoring intellectually dishonest people is a good thing to do.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
@pvanhoof
Now first let me say that I have no problem with how you communicate. Perhaps it is because I am dutch and as such used to very direct statements which is the norm in dutch culture.
However, I don’t really agree with you that the code of conduct only applies to gnome. While technically that is completely true, it’s also technically completely true that the code of conduct isn’t enforced and as such only applied as one sees fit.
What I think the essence is of any code of conduct, gnome or otherwise, is that it creates an etiquette of moral handling. As such, it doesn’t really make sense to say you only need to behave as such in a confined space but not in other places.
Now let me again iterate that I don’t think you actually went against the code of conduct, but I find the justification you gave to be strange in this respect. Now this could all be because I’m actually quite a ideological person, but in my perception if one chooses to act by a code of conduct he would do so in all aspects of his life.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
“And as Lefty pointed out in an earlier comment:
> I’d have to be one heck of a propagandist to come up with a survey that
> show a nine-to-one majority favoring a proposition that they only think
> they believe by virtue of the way I phrased the questions. These guys
> are giving me a heck of a lot of credit.
Can those people come up with an intellectually honest reply to that?”
When Churchill asked “How often do you beat your wife” the answer is conclusively recognized in the mean of the response value, married men beat their wife X times per week. This is conclusive, because we did a survey.
When PhilipLeftySurvey asked “6. Do you agree that viewing proprietary software as “illegitimate”, “immoral”, “antisocial” and/or “unethical” should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?” the answer is also conclusive, also is conclusive agreement that Stallman made such declaration.
Not represented is the view that Planet Gnome’s value is reduced by an increasing advertorial content. One post last week was purely advert for commercial enterprise, with contrived example code. Others were, as Erik Snoeijs suggest, product offers - maybe we vote on value of inducement that is acceptable? There are many outlets for commercial advert, is difficult to avoid and pleasant to have some community sites.
We do not need law to prevent chewing gum in public like in Singapore, but for gum-chewers to know not to spit offensively.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
@jarral My example was fictional, and if not please post the link to the post so I can get in on the action.
Instead of making a appeal to majority Lefty actually took the time to set up a survey and prove that a significant amount of people did not agree.
You can do the exact same thing. Right now. No body is stopping you. I’d even wager people who are aggregated on p.g.o would be happy to provide a link to it on their blogs so that you can get enough votes for it to say anything.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Note that Lefty did a survey, I didn’t. Lefty also didn’t communicate a single thing with me about that survey. I don’t know what you mean with “PhilipLeftySurvey”. For me you’re simply spitting out a silly conspiracy theory. And it’s undermining your credibility.
More to the point of your ramblings is the last question of the survey, which for some bizarre reason you are forgetting to mention in your “analysis”:
“8. If moderating Planet GNOME to ensure that proprietary software did not receive favorable mention, which Richard Stallman views as representing “minimal support” for free software, were a condition of GNOME’s continuing association with the GNU Project, would you favor:”
And here are the results:
Disassociating GNOME from GNU: 73.6%
Moderating Planet GNOME: 26.4%
To ensure that also nicu is happy, 79.3% (69/87) answered “Disassociating GNOME from GNU” according to Lefty’s earlier mentioned analysis about respondents that do have their blog syndicated on planet-gnome.
That’s almost 80% of the GNOME contributors and more than 70% of everybody disagreeing that planet-gnome should be moderated to ensure proprietary software does not receive favorable mention.
How is that not conclusive?
Furthermore about your “analysis”: The mailing list thread didn’t include the notion that it’s somehow necessary to uphold planet-gnome’s value. This is something you bring into the discussion that ain’t relevant at all.
What you are basically saying is this: The survey isn’t good because it doesn’t ask people whether or not they like the color green. You see, not represented is the view that Planet Gnome’s value is reduced by an increasing amount of the use of the blue color.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
@Erik Snoeijs: I can’t agree with this. How much I live my life within the borders of a moral code depends on the venue.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
@pvanhoof - I didn’t expect you to coming running out with hands in the air admitting guilt over your contribution to the code of conduct, but I seriously LOLled that you claim any credit for “assume people mean well”, the only part of the code that actually defends misconduct, and one that has been heavily used in recent months.
Love ‘n’ kisses, God knows you need ‘em! Later, Lisa.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Dear Lisa, you are crazy.
Love ‘n’ kisses
December 24th, 2009 at 9:45 am
@pvanhoof: the thing is, as anti-censorship as I am, if I would take the survey my answers would get interpreted as anti-GNU/anti-FSF, which is NOT the case. You don’t need to be a genius propagandist to craft a survey, being an engineer with an above-average IQ level should be enough.
Holding my own survey is not a realistic proposition, since I am unknown in the GNOME world so not many stakeholders would be interested by it. But if I did that, it would not be very difficult to chose a set of questions, promote it heavily in some, let say skeptical about Mono, communities and get to completely different results.
December 24th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@nicu: I have no doubt that you’d get different results if you’d promote the survey at anti-Mono folks. But anti-Mono folks aren’t necessarily planet-gnome’s target audience.
The thing is, though, that Lefty promoted it on planet-gnome (where obviously planet-gnome’s target audience is located) and that he did a separate analysis of the respondents that answered that they do have a blog that is syndicated on planet-gnome.
Both the audience-people (people without syndication on planet-gnome) and the GNOME contributors (people with syndication) are what I call “relevant respondents”.
The questions, especially the last question number eight, where, unlike Jarral’s proposal, all relevant to the thread on the mailing list. And the result of the survey is in all interpretations far above 70% against moderating the planet to ensure favorable mention of proprietary software. In case of people who are syndicated on planet-gnome, the result was around 80% even.
That’s an overwhelming majority.
December 24th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Mr. Van Hoff,
Please stop wasting everybody’s time with this discussion.
The only legitimate way for GNOME as a whole to leave GNU is for GNU to kick GNOME out. Short of that, you can only fork GNOME, taking with you as many people as you might, possibly grabbing the resources and the name along the way. GNOME as a whole, however, cannot leave GNU since there is absolutely no mechanism for GNOME to speak as a whole. Enumerating the GNOME members is simply not possible since it has always been an ‘opt-in’ kind of community.
Furthermore, GNOME does not vote, that’s simply not how we have ever worked and would be impossible to organize. GNOME has always worked by leaders doing stuff and others following. The foundation membership is not GNOME; indeed, if you read the discussion of the formation of the foundation you will see that it explicitly declared that it would not try to be GNOME but would remain a forum for exchange between GNOME and the business community. That you do not know or have forgotten this and now confuse the foundation membership with the GNOME community is exactly the fear many of us had when the foundation was formed. Merely by imposing a vote on our historical association with GNU, you would have to define those who are eligible to vote, thereby imposing on the community your view of what GNOME is. How could you consider those who are not part of the foundation? How would you deal with those who do not vote as a matter of principle, like the Greens who consider the recourse to vote as a great defeat?
Finally, this is all totally, absolutely useless. If you want to post stuff to the Planet as you have been doing, then do, what’s stopping you? If someone asks you to stop doing something, consider the demand and act on your conclusion. If Stallman dislikes the Planet enough he decides to kick GNOME out, that’s his call.
–Adrian Custer
PS I will not respond to comments since I consider this whole discussion to be a royal waste of time.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
@Adrian Custer: The only person adding fuel on ‘that’ fire (the vote itself) is you at this moment. I have already called off the proposal for a vote ten full days ago: http://tinyurl.com/yfrbk9n (in case you didn’t notice that).
I also think all your ramblings about that GNOME can’t vote and whatever is just a bunch of meta discussing.
If such a vote would be cast and a majority would answer that they want to split from GNU, then no matter what your meta ideas about it are, no matter how correct it is what you just wrote, that same reality would change instantly. Everybody with more than half a brain realizes that.
Finally, if it were so useless then why does it concern so many people? If the idea was stupid then why, although I didn’t say much, were so many people interested enough to make a big fuss about it? Surely not because my opinion is important (at GNOME), right? Because it most definitely isn’t as far as I know.
The simple truth is that it’s in the minds of many GNOME contributors. Whether certain other people like that or not.
But now the Adrian Custers of this world want to put some sort of blame on the Philip’s of this world. Claiming I’m wasting people’s time.
People either waste their own time, or they do care about it.
In other words is it merely _your_ opinion that it’s a waste of time. That’s fine, but don’t portray _your_ opinion as _the_ opinion of (and I quote you now) _everybody_.