1) You are accused of being evasive.

You are in fact, evading the issue of replying to the critisism

2) You are accused of, when pushed into a corner, replying with personal attacks instead of replying to the issue at hand

You are in fact, doing EXACTLY this

3) You are being accused of not being responsive to issues when placed in front of you

You are again, doing EXACTLY this.

How much of what murray said is wrong, from what I am seeing, murray has hit the issue straight on the head, you are a catastrophe.

On the issue of censorship, or abuse is pretty clear, you are being abused (in your language) because you are refusing to face responsibility for things you have done, this didnt arrive at your door because you got out of the wrong side of the bed, it arrives because you are neglecting your responsibilities and hurting the gnome development process. You’re reaction to that critisism is to refuse to publish it until pushed, answer this, why did it take you two days to moderate my comments, when others took mere minutes to appear? They were on the spam pile? Give me a break, this is a “the dog ate my homework excuse” they were no more on the spam pile than any other comment, this is a blatent lie to make you look like you DIDNT try to supress what I was saying.

As for your connection with canonical, you’re a little young in the tooth to be throwing “I’m more commited than you” comments at me, I was on the web, throwing shit at people who deserve it a good ~10 years before canonical even existed.

Oh, something else which is a bit strange, you see, in language terms, there is a definition called “Framing”, you can look it up on wikipedia, what it means, is you define the terms of a discussion in a way which is beneficial to yourself, in basic terms anyway. People think that a discussion must always be positive, that you must only bring “positive” things to the table for discussion, the reason people like to say that, is because negative things, like critisism, tend to harm those people’s public personalities and they don’t want that, so they like to say “you are just being negative” etc etc.

You know what jeff, in the real world, being negative is a good thing as much as being positive is. Being negative means YOU ARE ON THE END of the critisism and answering back to someone by suggesting they are being negative is in fact a defensive mechanism designed to coerce people into thinking that the person being positive, is the person worth listening to and the person being negative, isn’t worth listening to. Politicians like to use these terms (funnily enough, you are being described as one of those too). Because it victimises the attacker and makes the issue look like you are being attacked without worth.

But the point here is jeff, that you are being attacked because you dammed well deserve it, you are not the victim here, WE ARE, you are the attacker and WE ARE the defenders, you are degrading the development of everything you touch and we are forced to defend it by pushing you out.

I often tell a story where the attacker starts a fight and cries in pain, because of a wound inflicted upon him by the defender, he cries and screams for help from those around him, those around him, too oblivious to the situation, naturally rallies around the attacker, not knowing who attacked who, or understanding it anyway. The defender now becomes the attacker, in the eyes of those who would rally.

So, In the eyes of the attacker, who is the attacker, in the eyes of the defender, who is the attacker and in the eyes of those who rally around to help the attacker, who is the attacker.

Depending on who you are, depends on what your answer to those three questions will be.

So, stop with the self-flaggation and self-victimisation, it’s pathetic.

chris

You suggest that due to my connections with Ubuntu that I’m soft or have different expectations of community behaviour. I was the #3 employee at Canonical, and have been deeply committed to FLOSS and GNOME for a very long time. Criticism is not new to me, and I’m comfortable dealing with it in my own way. If you don’t like the way I’m dealing with it, then that’s fine. Tell your friend. Yell into a pillow. Your opinion is not relevant to me. Sorry.

Choosing not to allow abuse on my website is entirely up to me, and not an issue of censorship. The comments policy on my blog is very clear. I let your comments through (from the spam pile, which I rarely check) despite your nasty attitude, because they demonstrate the kind of obligation some people feel I should have to them.

I often tell a story about a guy who disses someone’s car, and then asks to borrow the keys: You’re doing exactly the same thing. I have no obligation to you, in any sense whatsoever, and your negative contributions do not encourage it.

You’re welcome to keep flaming me here. Go right ahead. There is nothing about this post that I will look back upon fondly anyway.

you’re now being evasive, what you are doing, is victimising yourself, in the hope that people will rally around the wounded animal and protect it from the big bad wolf, when the wolf is only interested in a response, an answer.

where are the answers jeff? seriously, you wanna live in the big world, lets start acting like a man and not like a frightened animal.

So instead of replying with a REASONABLY WORTHWHILE comment, you reply attacking my interaction with the community, saying that I am not relevant, but the problem is NOT MY RELEVANCE, BUT YOURS.

Nobody cares about how relevant I am, but people do care about how relevant YOU ARE, because people listen to you, they listen to me too, but in different circles and we don’t cross paths. But my critisism has still gone unanswered.

Thats a really bad sign

You’ll see the comments now, but they took two days to appear whereas the comments from other people, have taken mere minutes, the problem that I pointed out, was that Jeff seemed to think that brushing the issue under the carpet and not allowing people to say negative things was the way to deal with things, it was only until I pushed the issue and made it public on my blog, which has been read a great deal of times since I posted it, now all of a sudden, the comments appear.

Maybe jeff had a change of heart on the issue of censorship.

The facts still remain, he is up for election to the board, correct? He’s been accused of some pretty hard hitting facts, do you see ANY reply to ANY of the comments put before him? Forget HOW I said what I said, if it makes you feel any better, read Ronalds comments, do you see any reply to what HE said???

Ronald above, gave a much cleaner posting than I did, but along the same lines, has Jeff replied to ANYTHING, even slightly???

Apart from saying that murray is “slightly” right, the only thing Jeff has said is that he is unhappy that a grave personal attack was made on him by another community member and he thinks, for some strange reason, this is weird, and unusual.

Someone plug Jeff’s computer back in, it’ll help him read up more on what our “community” has been doing for the last 15+ years that I’ve sat quietly at the back. Personal attacks are not new, they are not “unusual” or weird, they are every-bloody-day, Only an ubuntu follower could think that having a personal attack weighed against him was a new thing for “our community”.

Why is it that ubuntu followers think that things that happen to them are new?

Back to the point, Jeff has been called a catastrophic failure and instead of reacting and defending his position, he’s just sat back and said nothing, he hasn’t HELPED his situation, he’s CONDEMNED himself, he’s ALLOWING comments to fall into the public knowledge and become true, by not refuting them when he had the chance.

You know how trademarks work right? If you had a trademark, you are forced to defend it, merely because if you do not, you lose the exclusive right to that mark, thats why when you tread even slightly on the toe’s of other people with highly valuable trademarks, they come down on your like a ton of bricks, because if they do not, they risk losing it, merely by not defending it.

Personalities and Community worth are similar to this, if you don’t defend yourself, you’re dead meat, you will be stripped alive and left with nothing, guess what Jeff is right now?

So, Jeff, are you going to grab this by the balls and do something, reply? Refute? Say SOMETHING that says “Murray got it wrong” ?

talk about dead man walking.

And to all those who think I am being cruel, well, here we are people, welcome to the world, it aint some happy place with chocolate houses and people who sing songs, it’s about proving your worth, working hard and sweating like a bastard because someone wants your hide.

If you don’t like that, then leave, nobody forces you to be here, so here it is, Jeff.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP, but don’t reply with one of those generic, oh-so-predictable “its a personal attack and I don’t feel like responding right now” get off your ass and do something.

chris thomas

You sir are an ass. You comments are clearly here. If you want to be part of the prosecution, then you show the proof of then accusations made by Murry.

I read Murry’s post and it is almost completely personal attacks. Murry is doing the accusing, he should have to prove his position.

Jeff has responded in a mature manner to what appear (without proof) to be false accusations. Jeff’s post show a level of maturity that does not exist in Murry’s post and one wonders how such a person as Murry ever successfully wrote rules of conduct for anything.

Troy

Could you propose that a neutral 3rd party write a GEP (I’m assuming http://developer.gnome.org/gep/gep-0.html is still being used) for precisely this situation? This cacophony might be the start of a good thing and good PR since, if successful, it can show that GNOME can work through it’s problems and become better for it.

BTW, you might want to read “Susan Scott — Fierce Conversations”. It’s a good guide in how to approach these sorts of issues.

Best of luck!

I’ve made my response, and made my peace with some of the truths and issues raised by Murray, in spite of his irrational hatred.

He has made it clear that there is no opportunity for resolution here, and instead of providing constructive criticism or information for voters, Murray has unleashed a severe, offensive, personal character assassination that is unbecoming of our community (and sadly, will have quite a negative impact on it). His freedom, his choice.

There is nothing left for me to respond to. I’ll continue my long-standing commitment and contributions to the GNOME community, and improve where I need to.

I’m comforted by the fact that those weighing in from a distance are irrelevant, and comforted by the amount of support I’ve received from others close to the community (and in some cases, their very welcome, positive, constructive criticism).

He stated that you shouldn’t be on the board or any sort of leader because:
1) You deal with people in paranoid psycho way and that’s destructive to the community.
2) You hate him and the feeling is mutual.
3) People depend on you and there’s no way around you so he’s frustrated.
4) The GNOME board decided (including you and him) decided to ignore the problem rather than deal with it because of the bad publicity.
4) Some specific examples (e.g. the list of modules in GNOME+requirements, etc) with some vague comment on how you obstructed it..
5) You’re unreliable and make excuses about it.
6) Your behavior was bizarrely evasive, irresponsible, and obstructive
7) Ultimately, you’re nothing more than a politician (i.e. “Anyone who spends all their time on self-publicity is likely to be elected.”)

Yes, I’ve cleaned up his emotional language, but that’s all that’s said and those a valid point (which *can* be refuted if they are false).

Point (1) is subjective and carries no weight except for individuals that you deal with. Personally, I’ve found you to be a bit quirky at time, but in a nice sort of way, so that likely carries no weight with anyone other than Murray. His forecasting of what you’d do if you lost the election is irrelevant to the problem at hand. He doesn’t own the future, and if time will prove him right, he’ll be vindicated. If not, you’ll be. But that’s the future.

Point (2) and (3) is something than *can* be fixed. As I’ve stated, it’s been done in the Linux kernel and other projects where two or more conflicting personalities are in play. But it demands leadership and the willingness to utilize neutral 3rd parties to act as buffers, to to delegate some responsibilities away from yourself where he depends on you. Personally, I see this as a failure of leadership.

As for (4), everyone’s to blame for that one. Please don’t try to sweep it under the rug again or let him get off easy too. I needs to be dealt with.

The points in (5) is easy to answer to. Either they are true or not. If they are true and you had good reasons (or had poor judgement), it’s easy to state. If not, then it’s easy to point out where you’ve been exactly the opposite or you’ve been hands off (except possibly a few minor concerns that ultimately wouldn’t have affected the deliverables).

Points (6), (7), and (8) are vague and demand clarification because they are serious charges if they are true. What he’s stating, in effect, is that you’re in the position for your prestige and not because you want to actually contribute to GNOME. If what he’s saying is true, then you’re a good GNOME ambassidor, but not any sort of leader.

Please move beyond Point (2) and deal with (4). Yes, you’re not perfect, but neither is he. Deal with it.

What I see here is a fight or flight response. (Murray feels he has no choice but to start a fight and you’re trying your best to evade one through emotional jujitsu as I’ve observed). Depending on whether you’re from Germany (where the “Just get to the point and take me as I am as a person with none of this evasiveness” attitude dominate) or from the orient (where the “surround every disagreement with enough ceremony and indirectness to make the emotions of the problem go away and wisdom prevail” attitude dominate) either he’s right for being blunt (though rude) or you’re right for being diplomatic (though evasive).

There *is* a 3rd option … **stop playing games with each** other and work things out. It’s your right to demand that he do the same. You don’t have to *like* each other, but it is possible to respect your enemies in much the same way that adversarial lawyers or generals may fight on opposite sides and hate each other’s guts and positions but still respect each other’s skill and unique dedication to their cause.

If you can work things out, then the GNOME community will be the better for it and you’ll both save yourselves a lot of grief. If you need help from third parties like Luis Villa (which seems to be in high esteem by both of you), then get it. It will be worth the time you spend. If you need to do it in private with him so you can be completely honest, then do it. But since it’s already in the public, a joint statement like “It’s right that we’ve been sweeping this under the carpet. We were all wrong in doing this, but we’re now going to deal with this in private once and for all, and let you know the results” is the best thing for the GNOME community. But whatever you do, don’t just sweep it under the rug yet again and let it fester there (until the next time).

Otherwise, *neither* of you deserve to be on the board and should devote your talents where you’re best suited. I’m sorry, but true leaders can’t be children.