Request for MOTU Council to consider Marco Rodrigues (Kmos) not potentially suitable for MOTU

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday 08 December 2007 22:16, Jordan Mantha wrote:
> [CCing Kmos so he has a chance to respond]
>
> On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 02:32 -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > This has been a difficult mail to try and write.  I've struggled with it
> > for a long time and not come up with a completely satisfactory way to
> > deal with this issue.
>
> Thanks for bringing this up for consideration of the MOTU Council. I
> think an open and honest dialog is much more useful in solving the
> problem than IRC rants (even justified ones) and festering attitudes.

I wish I didn't have to.  I wish that the activities that lead me to make the 
request hadn't happened.  I wish that someone in our 'leadership' would have 
stepped forward to deal with it.

> > I've decided to just go ahead and send this as good as I can make it
> > right now because we are getting close to Debian Import Freeze and the
> > potential for him to be disruptive to the MOTU work flow is about to go
> > up again.
> >
> > This is an excerpt from a discussion explaining what is the trouble that
> > happened recently on #ubuntu-motu.  Link to the full log is below.
> >
> > <Hobbsee>  Kmos is probably the most disruptive motu-hopeful we've ever
> > had. <Hobbsee>  he's gone from closing bugs at random, to mass filing
> > sync requests, to mass filing removal requests, to then making promises
> > that he has no right to make.
> > <Hobbsee>  each time, he says he wont do it again, and then finds
> > something more disruptive to do
> > <Hobbsee>  he manages to remember information for short periods of time. 
> > i've had him forget (willfully, or otherwise) information in just under
> > an hour. He then claims that he was never told the information.
> > <Hobbsee>  he's also one of the few to have been thrown out of
> > debian-games too, and attempted to be thrown out of ubuntu.
> > <Hobbsee>  each time, he appears to have little-to-no consideration of
> > others, and also likes randomly pinging people so they can action
> > whatever he wants done - even though it's far from urgent.
> > <Hobbsee>  yes, he's still around somewhat, but much quieter.
> > <Hobbsee>  and various people have stepped down from the sponsorship
> > queue due to him.
> >
> > http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2007/11/28/%23ubuntu-motu.txt starting at
> > [10:51]
>
> These are some serious charges indeed, especially concerning continuing
> incorrect behavior after being told what not to do. Marco, please do
> respond to these accusations. Do you feel Hobbsee is misrepresenting
> your work, or is she correct? One of the biggest issues that people are
> having is that you are doing things on a mass scale before checking with
> MOTUs to see if what you are doing is correct. Would you be willing to
> stop doing mass changes and ask for help before making changes to bugs
> for a while?

We've already been through that.  He was asked to stop.  Daniel Holbach even 
asked him to do nothing without giving a chance to review it.  In both cases 
he agreed and then in short order quit doing it.  Any assertions that he 
makes about what he will or will not do have been clearly shown to be 
unreliable.  I don't see any benifit in asking him to do this again.

> > Additionally, I think that frustration with him and the lack of anyone
> > doing anything about it is the major source of the declining friendliness
> > of #ubuntu-motu and the MOTU ML in recent months.
>
> These seems quite odd to me but I'll take your word for it.
>
> > I started going through all the IRC logs and bug filings on Launchpad to
> > present a detailed accounting of the scale of the negativity caused by
> > Marco, but it was to depressing.  I'd invite you who are unfamiliar with
> > his work to grep the online IRC logs and look at his track record on
> > bugs.  At one point in the Gutsy development cycle it was taking 3 or 4
> > MOTUs to keep up with undoing the damage this one person was doing.
>
> That's not good at all, we can't and shouldn't have that sort of
> resource drain. What was done at the time to deal with the issue?

Asked him to stop.  Several times.  I'll note that he was asked not to file 
mass synch bugs even before he filed his first one.  Asking him to do or not 
do something has only a very short shelf life.

> > It appears to me that nothing of any significance has changed about the
> > work that he is doing.  It is overall of negative value and disruptive to
> > Ubuntu development.  The only change is that he's been less active
> > lately.  When he's active, things appear to me to be of the same low
> > quality that we've been seeing for months.
> >
> > This is an unprecendented request, but this is an unprecendently
> > distruptive 'contributor'.  Before making this request, I consulted with
> > Jono as the Ubuntu community leader to determine the appropriate forum to
> > resolve our concerns.  He told me that MOTU Council should evaluate this
> > for Ubuntu (I had thought it would be the Community Council, but he said
> > MOTU Council had the authority to decide this).
> >
> > This is what I believe is necessary to resolve my concerns:
> >
> > 1.  That the MOTU Council make a statement that it does not believe that
> > in the near term he has the potential to be a MOTU.
>
> How is this relevant? What are you wanting to achieve with such a
> statement? I'm not being critical, just unsure.

I think it sets the stage for what follows.

> > 2.  That the MOTU Council make a provision for reconsideration at a later
> > date so that this is not a permanent decision (my though is if he can
> > privately convince two MC members he's deserving of another chance then
> > they can bring it to the community and we can decide).
>
> Reconsideration of what? The item below? Besides his LP account he
> doesn't really have anything relevant but membership in ~ubuntu-bugsquad
> and ~ubuntu-bugcontrol.

The items below yes.  He's caused considerable trouble, but I don't believe 
that anyone is completely irredemable.

> > 3.  That the MC ask for all of his Ubuntu related Launchpad priviledges
> > be revoked (he is involved in at least one other project that uses LP, so
> > it's more complicated than just suspending his accoung).
>
> I'm fairly sure this is impossible to do in Launchpad. You can't prevent
> somebody with a Launchpad account from filing bugs and doing quite a bit
> of the bug work Kmos has been doing. Removing his ~ubuntu-bugcontrol
> membership would be the closest.

Then cancel the account.  If Launchpad can't prevent members of one project 
from interfering in the work of another, that's a serious scaling deficiency 
in Launchpad.  The Ubuntu related pieces of his account need to go exactly to 
prevent bug filing.

> > 4.  That the MC tell him he is invited to read the MOTU mailing list and
> > the IRC channel so that he can continue to attempt to learn, but that he
> > is not to give advice/answers or disrupt the activities of developers
> > (asking the channel generically for an answer wouldn't count, but
> > bothering specific developers would).  That the MC authorize IRC
> > operators and mailing list admins to enforce this if he does not restrain
> > himself.
>
> This makes sense but I'm afraid it could be too subjective. Some people
> will have a much different threshold of what's disruptive. The number of
> people having to "police" in this scheme is fairly large.

Agreed, but it's the best compromise I could come up with.  Him giving wrong 
answers is also a source of disrupton that needs to be handled.

> Overall, I think we need to hear from Marcos. I want to know what he's
> willing to do in order to cause minimal disruption. Is he willing to not
> mass file bugs and ask before closing bugs? If he is then I think we can
> work with that. If he is not or is not able to do that then I think we
> have no alternative but to do something drastic which may take some work
> from Launchpad administrators.

He's already agreed not to do this before and then done it anyway.  
Personally, I view any solution that relies on his personal restraint to be 
no solution at all.

> In all cases we need to resolve this quickly. This has been going on for
> months and is doing neither Marcos nor Ubuntu any good by dragging it
> around.

Agreed.

Scott K