Goodbye Cody Somerville

Thu Jan 25 06:37:07 UTC 2007

Mornin' all,

A few weeks ago Cody Somerville stepped up to take on the xubuntu side
of the IRC channels. He seemed enthousiastic and a quick learner so I
gave it to him and let him join our trusted group of operators.

After that he caused nothing but problems with his mutiny and constantly
trying to push everyone his way. Yesterday he went one step too far and
e-mailed the community council, accusing all of us of being corrupt and
accusing me of abusing my powers. You can find this mail at the botom of
my e-mail.

I feel I've let all of you down by bringing him in and defending his
actions. This morning, after having thought about this for most of the
night, I removed Cody's access to #xubuntu-* and #ubuntu-ops. Let's hope
that the chaos he caused by trying to push everyone his way settles down
now.

I propose we have a new IRCops meeting next week, tuesday 21:00 UTC. We
still need to complete the IRC council and have lots of loose ends to
talk about.
-- 
Dennis K.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

[Below follows codys e-mail to the CC, jono and mdke]

I regret to contact you on a rather sad topic today - Abuse and
corruption within our IRC op-team. As a member of the team, I can tell
you that we've been experiencing difficulties over the last few months
due to lack of leadership, structure, and definitive policy. There have
been many actions which would be considered rather questionable and
several events that have caused much division within the team. We've
attempted to resolve the issues via mediation, team meetings, and
direction from a rather dysfunctional and non-existent IRC Council.
However, an incident occurred earlier this week that I feel involves the
immediate intervention by the Ubuntu Community Council. 

On Friday, January 19th, an individual named Malt acted inappropriately
in #ubuntu-offtopic was was banned. This individual felt that this ban
was unjust and joined #ubuntu-ops in an attempt to appeal. The basis for
his appeal was that he felt that the ops were being sexist because the
person he made a joke to was a girl and he felt that if the individual
was a male, it would have been a none issue. He also said that he had
been in a similar position and the ops did nothing to help him. In the
end, it degraded to a point where malt had the following to say before
being banned: 
        [11:57:28] <malt> and because she has a pussy you guys take up for her more like nerds,

        and you are like OH MAN ITS A GIRL DUDE.... HEY DUDE TAKE UP FOR HER SHE MIGHT SHOW 
        US HER ON CAM..... I have decided to lift my my ban with a proxy, KTHX. I will
        wait for my ban now.
Unfortunatly, Malt kept his promise and used a proxy to evade the ban.
He verbally attacked members of the op team via private query, joined
the channels to demonstrate his ability to evade the bans, and quite the
nuisance for the ops present. What Malt did was wrong and we could have
all walked away from the situation with the issue resolved but
unfortunately the ops involved started to make some bad choices. 

The first sign of trouble was when the ops involved (4 Ubuntu Members, 2
of them Ubuntu Developers and 1 of them a FreeNode Staff Member, and 1
Canonical Staff Member - Jenda, Hobbsee, mneptok, PriceChild, and Mez)
started to lose their cool and then their professionalism. They started
to trade comments with Malt that were equally colorful and explicit -
most of them via private query but they quickly started to leak to the
channel. Then comments like the following occured: 

        [12:04:51] <+mneptok> well, if we know the ISP we can fake a DMCA claim and get him

        blackholed with no investigation ;)
Though perhaps the above said in good (or bad) humor, it unfortunately
didn't stay as a joke for long.

Since Malt was continuously evading the bans set on him, the ops
involved tries to find a staff member to assist them. Unfortunately
there was were none available with the powers required. At this point,
Mez tried to tricky Malt into visiting a channel which would
automatically kline those who joined. Though Malt most likely would have
been awarded a k-line from a freenode staff member, it is not our place
to take justice like this into our own hands. Even though the malicious
trickery was unsuccessful, what happened was wrong. What is even more
unfortunate is that it doesn't end here. 

At this point, Mez and mneptok contacted Malt's ISP via telephone on
behalf of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu IRC op-team with the approval of the
other individuals involved and then proceeded to e-mail them with the
logs (which, of course, included the very inappropriate comments made by
our very own ops - a very poor reflection on Ubuntu). I feel this was
wrong of them to make this decision themselves - at this point it wasn't
about stopping Malt, it was about getting revenge. 

When contacting the ISP gave little gratification, something much graver
occurred. Our 4 Ubuntu Members (2 being MOTUs and 1 being a first-level
freenode staffer) , and 1 Canonical Staff member decided to take part in
something that is arguably illegal - launching a DDoS attack against
poor Malt and attempting to find exploits in his system (as he was
running several services on his computer such as an IRCD server). All of
the individuals involved have admitted that they took part in this
activity and that the intent was to cause a DDoS except for Mr. Kurt von
Finck (ie. mneptok) who admits to taking part in the activities but
refused to classify it as a DDoS as he has the following to say: 

        [14:19] <mneptok> somerville32: and like i said, if i wanted him
        off the network, he'd *be* off the network. and now i have had
        to say that lame crap twice. :/ 
        ...
        [14:20] <mneptok> somerville32: i know how to launch a DDoS
        attack. this was most assuredly nothing even close.

What Malt did was wrong but it doesn't excuse the actions of the ops.
They acted unprofessionally, maliciously, and poorly represented Ubuntu
and the Ubuntu IRC Team. IRC is an important mechanism by which many
users get help, support, collaborate, and chit-chat. The Ubuntu IRC Team
ensures that this mechanism runs smoothly with a fair hand. However, the
Ubuntu IRC Team is currently dysfunctional and needs much work as it is
currently impeding the cohesion of our community and the effectiveness
of this very useful mechanism - We need your help. 

Unfortunately, I fear the retribution of Seveas. I've been pushing for
many changes within the Ubuntu IRC Team and not everyone is happy with
these changes - everything before was confidential so corruption could
run rampant. Seveas has abused his powers before and I've called him on
it. I feel that my continual push against the grain of corruption within
the Ubuntu-Team will result in my dismissal. I just feel that
social-justice and fairness is important, especially in the spirit of
the Ubuntu community. The IRC Team needs some shaking up for it to align
with that spirit. There are lots of well respected members of our
Community in the IRC-Team - they just sometimes make bad choices and do
bad things. What is even more unfortunate is that several of these well
respected members in our IRC Team have already resigned from our
community because of this corruption. I'm ready to see change and I
think they would too. 

Before I go, I'd like to quickly mention what happened to one of our IRC
Ops when they were mouthy in another, non-ubuntu related IRC channel on
FreeNode. Seveas witnessed Amaranth get in a rather heated argument and
Seveas decided to strip Amaranth of his position and remove his cloak
but so far the ops above have only been reprimanded. 

As my last note, I'd like to nickname this issue "The Dark Side of the
Moon".

Thank you,

Cody A.W. Somerville