Can we refocus on the issues at hand?

[Benjamin Kerensa]

On Sep 16, 2015 1:09 AM, "Jorge O. Castro" <jorge at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I've debated sending this email for a while but as much as I want to
> mute these conversations in my mail client I feel like it's my duty to
> speak out about the project I love.
>
> We've just had a multi-week discussion on a how we should run a
> mailing list and launchpad group. We're literally arguing about
> nothing. I refuse to believe that us, as stewards of Ubuntu and more
> importantly, as friends, cannot have a productive discussion. Our
> success has a project has always been about being smart for the users
> we represent.
>
> Our mission is to make _Ubuntu a wonderful place to participate in_.
> There's nothing on this list in the past few weeks that is doing
> anything that is making that mission possible. Today, if I ran into an
> Ubuntu enthusiast on the street, would you send them to this list? My
> answer is "No, absolutely not."
>
> Let's stop being so pedantic about our tools; we are arguing about how
> to manage a mailing list. A mailing list. A thing that takes messages
> from people and sends it to other people. Over SMTP. A problem that
> was solved _20 years ago_. If we were to publish a team report on how
> we helped Ubuntu this month, we would say "we argued about a mailing
> list".
>
> Is anyone else proud of this? I'm not.
>
> I wish we were this disgruntled about the review queue of actual, real
> contributions made by developers that are sitting in queues in
> launchpad, and how we're going to fix that, or about the unanswered
> user questions on Ask Ubuntu or the forums, or how we're going to
> actively help the desktop team get out of their bug hole, or any of
> the hundreds of problems we could actually be fixing in a project as
> large and complex as Ubuntu a whole.
>
> Can we please get out of this funk now and get back to work?
>
> Ugh crap, this is the part I didn't want to write:
>
> As far as the other thing goes, it's a simple decision. Ben, I think
> you're a nice guy, and I'll always be the first to buy you a beer, but
> this is not the first time you've taken private conversations people
> have had with you that you've quoted out of context to push your
> personal agenda of what you think Ubuntu should be.
>
> You've ragequit the project so many times that I can't even get a
> decent google result of what the reason was last time. I get it, I've
> even ragequit Ubuntu once myself, but you don't have the right to do
> it every 3 months for the last two years and expect us to take it
> seriously when you've spent most of that time going out of the way to
> hurt the project. I really, really want to believe that you still care
> about the things we've all accomplished together as a team, but I'm
> just not getting that vibe from you anymore, I get the feeling that
> you sit there and wait for something mildly controversial to happen so
> you can exploit it for your own benefit.
>
> I totally get that Ubuntu might not be going the way you want it to
> go. I know right, I wish I could just randomly control every
> engineering manager in Canonical, their engineers, and all their
> community contributors to do what I want. Then I'd have the most
> awesome system in the world. (btw, it'd be amazing).
>
> I've known you long enough to know that I think your heart is in the
> right place; but your behavior makes me not believe this is true.
> Please prove me wrong.  And if not and you want to move on and do
> other things, that's cool too, I respect that, but please don't just
> randomly show up on mailing lists and try to armchair quarterback the
> project. Either be here and care, and be productive, or break it off,
> no one will think any lesser of you. This awkward middle ground just
> confuses everyone.
>
> --
> Jorge Castro
> Canonical Ltd.
> http://juju.ubuntu.com/ - Automate your Cloud Infrastructure
>

The ad hominem attack is strong in you today.
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