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

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday 11 December 2007 06:23, Daniel Holbach wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> as Michael Bienia did in his post, I'd like to add a disclaimer, that
> this does not represent the MC's position, but only my own thoughts.
>
> On So, 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 a lot for bringing this up before the MOTU Council.
>
> > 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.
>
> I personally do not agree with this point. Indeed the situation should
> have been brought up in a different forum and dealt with before, but I
> don't think that Marco is the sole reason for unfriendly behaviour in
> the MOTU team. Everybody is responsible for their own bit of
> unfriendliness. I feel this should be part of a separate discussion.

I do agree that it's not the sole reason, but I think that the frustration 
level has gone up and having to deal with sorting through his work has been a 
significant contribution to that.  We are all responsible for our own actions 
and temper, but we are human and will tend to respond less well when faced 
with frustrating work to do.

> > 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.
>
> I don't agree with this point either. Marco's work still needs review
> and counselling but it has improved a lot over the last weeks.

An other sponsors have the opposite view.  I've quit sponsoring, so I don't 
have current information, but the quality of his work was largely consistent 
throught the Gutsy cycle.  He has not, in my opinion, exhibited any 
significant capability to learn from his mistakes.

> > 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).
>
> Indeed. While most of the MOTU Council's work up until now was related
> to MOTU membership, it's clearly part of the MOTU Council's charter.
>
> > 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.
> >
> From reviewing his work for a longer time now I get the impression that
> Marco has the tendency to do too many things at once. I personally feel
> that until this changes, Marco can't become a MOTU - he needs to be more
> careful.
>
> > 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).
>
> About your point I like that you're not trying to exclude Marco, but
> leave the door to the MOTU team open.
>
> I have a different idea though. What do you think about this:
>
>       * To address your point of disruptive behaviour, Marco will be
>         asked to agree to run all of his work by volunteers. I'm willing
>         to be one of them.

You've asked him to do that before.  He's agreed.  Then he's not done it.  He 
has demonstrated repeatedly that he is either unwilling or incapable (I 
neither know nor care which it is) of sticking with what he says he will do.

>       * The volunteers will report every two weeks about what's going
>         on.
>
> That way whatever Marco attempts to work on will not disrupt the work of
> others, but still he can contribute and also we'll actively track
> improvement (or lack thereof and have objective data points) and make a
> decision based on that feedback. Maybe we can call this a 'probation
> period'.

If there was any basis in his behavior to date that he would follow what he 
says he will do, then this would make sense, but in fact the opposite is the 
case.  I stronly believe that as long as he retains the ability to file bugs, 
then his potential for disruptive behavior is unmitigated.  I would suggest 
that whoever volunteers to work with him take his submissions via mail and 
file them after review with an annotation that it was provided by him.

> > 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 don't see any worth in this. Marco will have to respect the MCs
> decision.

Actually preventing him from doing stuff is the only thing that will be a 
solution in my opinion.  Asking him to do/not do is nothing.

> > 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.
>
> We'll have to find a balance between not misleading new contributors,
> not trying to set up a "mischief police" and keeping everybody
> productive.

Agreed, but I think this is a special case.
>
> After commenting on all the points of your proposal, I'd like to add a
> few thoughts of my own. Your initial mail was a good attempt at trying
> to address all the problems around Marco. While this is important, I
> think it's even more important to have the general discussion.
>
> Which problems did we face programmatically? What can we do to fix them?
>
> Problems I can identify are:
>       * confusion of who's responsible for dealing with the problems
>       * lack of integration of Kmos in the team (I'd have expected Kmos
>         to ask for more advice)
>       * much earlier escalation to the MC
>       * <please add points to the list>
>
>
> It's important to draw the right conclusions out of this as it's a
> precedent and has a much higher impact than just this situation. I chose
> the solution I proposed above under the assumption that we use a similar
> process the next time much much earlier.

I think that because of some of the things you mention above, this is an 
unusual and unique case.  Next time will get dealt with earlier.  This is not 
a good way to set the precedent.

> To me it's more important to learn something out of this incident and
> make proper programmatic changes for the future than trying to cowboy
> somebody out of the team. (I don't specifically refer to Scott's
> proposal with this comment, just as a general thought and advise.)

I think making Ubuntu better is bigger than any one individual.  I think it's 
clear we need a clear way ahead for the future, but I think we have time to 
deal with that.  I think the immediate need is to put in place actual 
limitations to stop what's already gone on far to long.

I think it's ironic that we (in Ubuntu) often chide Debian for discussing 
stuff endlessly and here we are navel gazing while he's already been chucked 
out of Debian Games for causing much less trouble than has been done here.

Just to make sure there is no confusion:

I do not believe that any 'solution' that asks him to do something is any 
solution at all.

Scott K