I'm sorry

https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39

by wfox • 5 years ago

345 262 5 years ago

github.com

herpderperator• 5 years ago

Anyone have a link to the PR in question?

llacb47• 5 years ago

https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778

SandB0x• 5 years ago

The diff https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778/files

bingohbangoh2• 5 years ago

Wow. That’s very brazen to force a PR in like that.

The apology made it sound like a small change that didn’t follow protocol. I didn’t realize it got called out as it happened and she pushed it through anyway.

tonymet• 5 years ago

That extra whitespace is horrible

snapdaddy2• 5 years ago

Yeah, as I thought - If I were the maintainer of that project I would have had no issue with her merging that. But I also understand why PRs exist and process, so I would have said, 'yeah, cool, just don't do it again. Nothing to see here, move along.'

pcj-github• 5 years ago

I just don't get why not drop a brief explanation on the validity of the PR? She could have so easily avoided this. Active maintainers are right to be pissed.

ggambetta• 5 years ago

I'm only having my first coffee of the morning, but I read that as Rocky from Andy Weir's excellent Project Hail Mary would have phrased it... "Anyone have a link to the PR, question?"

copperx• 5 years ago

Some context would be awesome. Is anybody here privy to the events surrounding this apology?

Aaronontheweb4• 5 years ago

https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

1_player• 5 years ago

Sorry, but tl;dr? The link you posted is deep into some drama I don't know what it's referring to.

Afforess2• 5 years ago

I'm confused why the correct course of action isn't to revert the commit, ask the author to re-open the PR for comment, and follow the process. Why the tortious apology?

umeshunni• 5 years ago

Because attention seeking...

Afforess2• 5 years ago

I'm trying to assume good faith

da_big_ghey• 5 years ago

Maybe since this person has a prominent place there is an attempt to set a better example for others? Not a cool move by Oren but maybe a "teachable moment".

Zababa6• 5 years ago

If I wanted to interpret this in a paranoiac way, I would say that's because the author of the PR isn't apologetic at all, and in fact is quite fine with forcing a PR through the maintainers without their consent.

bovermyer3• 5 years ago

Remember the old adage - never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon's Razor, I believe it was.

And here, by "stupidity," I just mean the author didn't think about that.

Too often people are willing to attribute sinister meaning to what, in reality, was just a mistake.

codingdave• 5 years ago

I'd guess because of this part of the post:

"There is a pattern that needs to be resolved. Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means..."

This sounds like not only an apology, but an attempt to start a discussion surrounding the community overall and get everyone to have matching expectations.

bombcar3• 5 years ago

“I’m sorry you don’t understand that I’m altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”

katbyte4• 5 years ago

the maintainer closed the PR twice, asking for her to follow the process before she reopened and merged it. Then reverted it.

the apology is because it's not just about this PR. Among other things there is moving a number of projects into the foundations enterprise gh org without any warning/discussion using the admin account they forced upon/bullied project orgs into adding. This has affected some in a negative way already.

pwdisswordfish0• 5 years ago

holy fuck, does every little mistake need a solemn 4000 word apology these days? that’s already not a world i want to live in, but then even the apology gets shit on and invalidated. people need to take everything much less seriously, especially shit that happens on the internet.

this whole thing should have been able to be a new PR with “sorry about the merge before, i screwed up and it won’t happen again” at the end, and everyone should have been fine with it and moved on.

kgraves• 5 years ago

It is now an expected requirement nowadays to write a 4000+ essay to apply for redemption from the public.

Saying "sorry" just isn't enough to absolve your "misdeeds", whatever they might be.

Zababa6• 5 years ago

I think the apology is here because the author of the PR doesn't want to revert it. As you can see, it's still merged: https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/blob/b930a34badfb2164f38...

Edit: as lots of people said, I was on an older version of the file. I'm not sure how I did this, but I should have double-checked, especially since there was some base64 stuff in the URL.

bombcar3• 5 years ago

I can still cut it down to three words:

Sorry not sorry.

markphip3• 5 years ago

I did not see any indication that she was asked to revert the PR. It seemed like it was more just about that she felt it was OK to bypass the policy.

gus_massa• 5 years ago

It was reverted in https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/commit/a502b596d4c4a45a7...

int_19h• 5 years ago

You're looking at the older version of the file. Here's the complete history:

https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/commits/main/src/Directo...

So it was merged, then reverted almost immediately, and then reimplemented by the project maintainers in the manner they preferred (without a new dependency).

Aaronontheweb4• 5 years ago

That's a small part of a much larger trust issue with the foundation: https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

beachy• 5 years ago

The comments beneath the apology make the point (I couldn't quite follow it all) that this wasn't really an apology at all.

The lengthy word count might tend to confirm that,as you say a genuine apology should be terse and direct.

Sebb767• 5 years ago

The lengthy word count might tend to confirm that,as you say a genuine apology should be terse and direct.

I've seen enough short apologies posted here and the comments below usually pointed out the lack of effort, the lack of commitment to do better, the lack of pointing out errors and the likes. Any form of apology will get some flak just based on whatever form it took, so I don't think one can judge just based on word count.

oingodoingo• 5 years ago

welcome to open source, it’s just this thread over and over again every day

kanbara• 5 years ago

wdym take everything less seriously? the internet is as real as real life, people who donate their time to work on OSS deserve respect and the same cordiality that they would irl.

i think her apology is a wash but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't act without empathy or reason.

you can enjoy not living in the world-- just go off grid and don't try to push that people can act without remorse or consequence :)

robbedpeter• 5 years ago

When it's 4000 words, they're saying "sorry, not sorry" and expecting to get away with it.

booleandilemma3• 5 years ago

“Sorry you’re upset”

computerdork• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's very hard to see the context, and maybe this really is management being horrible, but yeah, don't know, seems like small stuff to me: A PR that got pushed through, and moving to Github enterprise. Obviously, there was a breakdown in process and communication, but I'm sure Linus has done much worse with Linux.

Yeah, from an outsiders perspective, the apology felt pretty heartfelt (and humbling too, especially for issues that seem somewhat routine), but as mentioned, maybe there are other details we're not hearing?

... btw, these roles on community foundations/boards can be hell, because the community begins to vent at every mistake (and there will always be mistakes). Devs of .net, maybe give the person a break? She's a person.

philliphaydon3• 5 years ago

It's not /just/ about the PR, the whole foundation has pulled all the projects it had access to into the DNF organization without telling anyone about it.

globular-toast2• 5 years ago

people need to take everything much less seriously

I am starting to think there is a part of (some?) people's brains that needs to take something seriously. When all basic needs are met: food, warmth, security etc., problems are invented to give that part of the brain something to do.

nazgulsenpai• 5 years ago

I would guess it's somehow related to this earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630

TedShiller• 5 years ago

Why is this person even involved?

oh_sigh• 5 years ago

Is there a tl;dr of what happened? I read the apology and I have no idea if she is sorry or what she is supposed to be sorry for.

Aaronontheweb4• 5 years ago

https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

Aaronontheweb4• 5 years ago

Context: https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

sneak5• 5 years ago

It's so ridiculously annoying when an apology or PR statement assumes complete and total familiarity with the existing goings-on.

There's even a whole language of euphemism around it. "Recent events involving the community", et c. So lame!

remexre• 5 years ago

I think the goal of that language is to avoid an increase in drama from random people outside the community (e.g. us!) reacting to the apology without actually being an affected party. If you don't know what the apology's referring to, it's probably not directed to you!

carrolldunham• 5 years ago

Well, except why someone be reading it if they were not?

cortesoft• 5 years ago

Umm the people who she is apologizing to know why she is apologizing... I don't think it is super important to educate the peanut gallery on the issue... if you don't know what the apology is for, the apology doesn't really matter to you.

lostmsu4• 5 years ago

The GitHub Enterprise organization thing poses a request to GitHub: is there an audit trail for this kind of operations (moving organization to be a part of another org)? If there's none yet, the need is apparent.

sorenjan• 5 years ago

So it seems that the root of the whole mess is that the .NET Foundation demands that every project lets a centralized and anonymous committee enforce their code of conduct by banning users from all member projects.

https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/projects/issues/174

https://dotnetfoundation.org/about/code-of-conduct

oaiey4• 5 years ago

No, that was not their problem. CoC violations have not been a problem here. It is the complete lack of communication and a enforcement of other things (the .NET Foundation things they should do), like account management, code ownership and collaboration model.

All of that is however, quite debatable whether it should or should not done by the foundation, but the utterly lack of communication and community participation is the problem here.

rvz• 5 years ago

Is there any point in saying sorry anymore? One commenter in the thread already described it as a non-apology.

For them, there is no '𝘴ₒᵣᵣy' or '...please, I can explain...' or 'it's not what you think it is'.

Once it has already been admitted, the road already looks like it is heading to no redemption.

nickff• 5 years ago

The top comment on the apology is also an accusation of insufficient prostration.

I agree that internet culture seems antithetical to forgiveness, and have no idea what can be done about it.

Arnavion3• 5 years ago

What the heck are you two talking about? You're making it out as if the two top-level comments are just that OP didn't apologize enough. In reality they're responding specifically to the OP's individual claims and pointing out they're not accurate.

You think that "Our projects were moved to GitHub Enterprise to consolidate billing but we never had a bill in the first place." and "You're telling us we don't have copyright over our projects but the contract we signed doesn't say that." is "an accusation of insufficient prostration" ?

alpaca128• 5 years ago

You might want to consider that the forced pull request has still not been reverted by this person. So an apology but no intention to undo a mistake? Does not sound very genuine in any way.

Also, an apology about a PR isn't this long. This is a wall of text with a few meek words inbetween.

sva_• 5 years ago

Forgiveness seems to be a somewhat old tradition that slowly goes out of fashion. I find that very regrettable, as forgiveness is the thing that enables the other one to admit their mistake and then improve upon it, which I think is one of the pillars of our society.

yifanl• 5 years ago

Not to armchair, but I think it's a reaction to the very liberal interpretation of the phrase "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" that seemingly every entity with authority has used in almost any community.

Like me personally, I'm just about out of forgiveness to give, it's too often that the entity in question goes and skips asking permission a second time after they apologize for the first time.

Though in this specific case, the infraction seems really so minor that I'd happily live and let live.

katbyte4• 5 years ago

an apology is more than just saying "i'm sorry". Anyone can say "i'm sorry" - not everyone can/will/or does apologize.

markphip3• 5 years ago

I did not really dive into the details of the legalese that was shared in the comments, but on the surface none of what the .NET Foundation doing seems that odd. How is it any different really from how Apache or Eclipse or many other foundations operate? I think it is less about the Foundation trying to seize the projects from the founders then it is the Foundation doing what it needs to do to apply its legal value to the projects ... which is seemingly why these projects decide to move to the foundation.

Maybe I just missed some nuance that was discussed in more depth elsewhere.

Macha3• 5 years ago

Compare the Linux foundation's treatment of projects:

Node: Neither the OpenJS foundation, nor its parent the Linux foundation claims owner ship of Node: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/LICENSE

Linux: No copyright assignment, just a compatible license required: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

The CNCF and the kubernetes system does do a CLA, so it's not a concept the Linux foundation has never heard of it, but clearly it's not required for every project they support.

See also SPI's stance, which provides the legal support for projects like Debian and Arch Linux: https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/relationship/

initplus2• 5 years ago

Others in the space do ask for copyright assignment though, eg. FSF.

rectang6• 5 years ago

The .NET Foundation does not require copyright assignment.

https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/foundation/blob/master/...

The CLA only grants a copyright license.

EDIT: Apparently the .NET Foundation has an additional copyright assignment track. Their documentation is inconsistent and not up-to-date. This is deeply unfortunate and certain to cause grief.

5. Licenses.
a. Copyright License. You grant .NET Foundation, and those who receive the Submission directly or indirectly from .NET Foundation, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license in the Submission to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute the Submission and such derivative works, and to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties.

What appears to be at issue is administrative control over the Github project / organization.

syshum• 5 years ago

Hell Linux foundation does not even own the Trademark to Linux. Linus hold that personally

initplus2• 5 years ago

It seems the issue hinges on: did a copyright assignment take place in order for projects to join the .NET foundation? It currently seems unclear whether this is the case or not.

Foundation seems of the opinion that assignment did occur, but individual projects differ on whether they think they have assigned copyright or not. There are legitimate reasons for copyright assignment but all contributors need to have the same understanding of whether a copyright assignment applies or not. If projects have not had individual contributors agreeing to a copyright assignment up to now, then it's not possible for a project to assign copyright to the .NET foundation without the consent of every contributor. Which is likely a tricky proposition...

gkoberger• 5 years ago

My best attempt at a tl;dr:

There are a number of projects under the .NET Foundation umbrella, all maintained by different teams.

The .NET Foundation, supposedly for billing reasons, switched to GitHub Enterprise. People weren't aware it was happening or that a side effect of this would be that certain people would have increased access to their repos.

The person writing this post, Claire Novotny, merged in something maintainers disagreed with and that she shouldn't have had GitHub permission to merge. This lead people to realize access controls had changed and become concerned about abuse of this power.

heavyset_go6• 5 years ago

There is also the fact that some projects were moved from their maintainers' public GitHub accounts to the DNF's GitHub Enterprise accounts without notice.

If you read this discussion[1], several maintainers only found out today that their projects have moved accounts because reading the thread itself prompted them to double-check.

[1] https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

neltnerb• 5 years ago

Thank you, now it makes much more sense.

samhw6• 5 years ago

There's another, slightly confusing aspect which u/vb explained absolutely brilliantly here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781621), namely that she wore two hats: one as the ED of the Foundation, the other as a long-dormant maintainer of that particular project.

She apparently intended to merge that PR qua the latter, but didn't make that sufficiently clear, and also made some offhand remarks about Foundation rules which (accidentally?) implied she was acting qua the former.

Oh what tangled webs we weave...

burnished• 5 years ago

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer?

Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient?

It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. You are going to get the same response whether you frankly admit fault or apologize because some one else didn't understand your good intentions.

shijie• 5 years ago

I was also struck with commenter’s swift label of her apology a “non-apology.” I’ve seen this on Twitter and elsewhere. It’s basically a proxy for “I don’t think you’ve suffered enough to be forgiven.” And that strikes me as honestly a little bit terrifying.

not2b• 5 years ago

I think that this is an authentic apology. However, non-apologies are common. I think the Wikipedia page does a good job of explaining the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

haswell3• 5 years ago

If you read the entire post, it quickly becomes apparent why people are reacting poorly.

The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself.

One example:

There is a pattern that needs to be resolved. Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means. We share a checklist with project maintainers on project changes they accept as part of becoming part of the .NET Foundation. That’s obviously not sufficient. We will post a new document that describes what you can expect when your project joins the .NET Foundation...

To me, this says "sooo, even though I screwed up, I'm technically allowed to do what I did and you probably should have already expected that based on the agreement you signed, but we'll make our materials even clearer so you don't make that mistake again".

It turns the problem back around on the community. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with the rest of the post after the apology...if it was posted separately. When included in the same post, it's hard not to take it as "sorry, but I still wasn't technically wrong".

I do think the whole culture around public apologies and the hair-splitting and analysis that comes after is concerning and often unhelpful. But I think the backlash here is understandable.

sneak5• 5 years ago

The .NET Foundation is just Microsoft money trying to pretend that Microsoft isn't for-profit or pro-proprietary-software. Microsoft only tolerates open source insofar as it doesn't impede any opportunities Microsoft has for increasing Microsoft revenue. When dealing with Microsoft puppets such as the .NET Foundation, one must always remember that all of this pro-open-source project stuff is pretense and subterfuge to maximize Microsoft profits, not to enrich the open source world.

The person (affiliated with the .NET Foundation) giving this apology is on the Microsoft concentration-camp-money payroll. They are being paid to do things that will ultimately result in the sale of more proprietary Microsoft software and services.

Don't get it twisted. These FOSS project maintainers were fools to get in bed with the enemy.

snapdaddy2• 5 years ago

I did not get that at all. To me it sounds like she is coming clean with what she sees as the issues surrounding the project, including poor communication. I read that as, 'another problem we've seen is that people are unclear what it means to become a member of our organisation so we are working towards improving that.'

I initially read her apology and thought it was likely a response to an overblown situation that occurs because it's on the Internet and it's much easier to assume the worst of people's intentions.

I can imagine merging a PR I made that I imagined to be obvious and fine. I probably would have just said, 'oh yeah, sorry. I'll try not to do it again. My bad.'

But then again, that's probably why I'm not the leader of the .Net foundation :-)

eyelidlessness2• 5 years ago

The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself.

This is also recognizable as “I’m sorry, but” or “I’m sorry it made you feel that way”. Both of which have meaningful applications in very specific circumstances but neither of which belong in a public apology.

sillysaurusx8• 5 years ago

I was ready to agree with you. And then I read https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

And then I realized: her apology here isn’t addressing the root concerns. But it’s addressing everything she has authority to address. Therefore, it’s the best apology possible, but people may be upset because e.g. her merging a PR without discussion is perhaps less anxiety-inducing than the idea that your GitHub repo can be moved without warning to a separate enterprise account (if I’m reading this correctly).

I assume she can’t address the latter, since it’s unrelated to her. But she quite thoroughly addressed the former — which is great! — but perhaps she should have distanced herself in her apology from the other happenings that people have brought up.

I don’t know. It was just sort of shocking to read “they transferred my GitHub repo without warning” without an immediate “crap, sorry! We’ve reverted that” reply. I assume I’m missing lots of context though.

cmeacham98• 5 years ago

She says she is the "Executive Director for the .NET Foundation". I'd be extremely surprised if this role didn't allow her input into the decision to move projects to a separate enterprise account without informing the project maintainers.

heavyset_go6• 5 years ago

e.g. her merging a PR without discussion is perhaps less anxiety-inducing than the idea that your GitHub repo can be moved without warning to a separate enterprise account (if I’m reading this correctly).

You're reading it correctly. There are several maintainers in that discussion who only found out today that their projects were moved from their public GitHub accounts to the DNF's GitHub Enterprise accounts. They weren't notified, and some of them only found out because they read the discussion you linked and decided to check the status of their projects.

As far as I'm aware, the projects haven't been transferred back to the accounts they belonged to prior to being moved to the DNF's account.

ed_elliott_asc• 5 years ago

I don’t understand why people get so angry about this sort of thing, when I saw on Twitter that someone was upset because they had been migrated to GitHub enterprise my immediate reaction was to think that Microsoft did it to give them a better experience rather for some nefarious secret plan.

There is no law to say that people have to give their projects to the DNF, there is no law that says people have to use those projects and can’t start their own projects - join it if you want, don’t join if you don’t want.

mithr2• 5 years ago

I believe the issue is that the maintainers were explicitly told that they weren't "giving" their projects to the DNF, but rather that the DNF was there to support them, while the maintainers retain complete control. So the DNF is saying "we're sorry you misunderstood", and the maintainers are saying "we didn't misunderstand, you're not allowed do that".

It's an ownership issue rather than a benefits issue -- if you joined a homeowner's association in order to have a say in how things work in your neighborhood, and then got back from vacation and discovered they completely redid your yard while you were away, without telling you about it or asking your permission, you'd be pretty mad even if the yard ended up being nice.

nebulous12• 5 years ago

Did you read the whole post? It does start as an apology, but then it explains that she actually had every right to exert control of the project and implies the only reason people are complaining is that they didn't understand the new hierarchy they had inadvertently signed up to.

gpm3• 5 years ago

So I'm an outsider here, but I think you're missing the point.

Sure, the post starts out as an actual apology for her actions with regards to the PR, but that doesn't seem to have been the meat of the complaints.

Then her post goes on to start making claims that people were upset because things "sound scary" but that the foundations unilateral decision to move projects under their github account actually somehow "gives them more control over their projects".

Then she goes on to make legal claims that "project ownership changes", when that does not appear to be what the contracts actually say. At this point she is litigating in public against the project maintainers when it seems the foundations purpose in life is to represent them!

There's also an implication here by putting the legal claims after the part about moving projects without the consent that the foundation was "in the right" to do this because they had a contract giving them that right.

Then the email wraps up with multiple paragraphs of polite speech that can frankly be summarized as "and now you get to wait and see what we dictate".

"Non-apology" doesn't seem to be quite the right term, she did apologize at the start for one thing, but the rest was anything but an apology.

Lammy• 5 years ago

I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient?

The exact same apology, but coming from a male.

mithr2• 5 years ago

I think this is actually a result of this post being a very savvy PR move. The title and beginning of the post make it seem like she's personally apologizing for merging a piece of code. That's all good and well -- I think her apology for that part is mostly fine. And at a casual read for a person who's just peeking in, and hasn't read the other post on that board for context, that's all it appears to be.

But (as other folks have mentioned) most of the maintainers are commenting on the rest of the post, which sort of hides behind that apology. The rest of the post addresses the real outrage that's been growing in that community -- not due to a bad merge, which is rude but somewhat understandable as a mistake, but due to the .NET Foundation essentially overstepping what the project maintainers understand as the DNF's role and authority.

That part is a complete non-apology, where the executive director of the DNF is basically saying "we're so sorry that you didn't properly understand that we could do this, we'll fix that by publishing a clearer document", and "we're so sorry that you didn't know we could just move you to our enterprise account, we'll communicate better next time". Both of these are spun as communication issues, whereas in reality they're authority issues -- the maintainers don't think the DNF should be able to just decide to do that, on its own, regardless of how well it's communicated.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

People map their mental model of others onto text as they read, which is one reason why text-based communication, while low bandwidth, is also often misunderstood due to all of the subtle information compression that is lost during the information exchange.

bmy78• 5 years ago

Actions speak louder than words. If she were truly sorry, she would’ve reverted the PR and have it go through the normal process. Instead she wrote a really long message about how the .NET Foundation owns your project.

wk_end2• 5 years ago

The commit was reverted (see https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/779)

kylemh• 5 years ago

Yes, but the author wasn't the one that reverted it.

f00zz• 5 years ago

That's a lot of words to apologize for something that could be fixed with a force push

aae42• 5 years ago

I couldn't help but think the same...

You're sorry? Ok, revert it then.

shric• 5 years ago

It was reverted: https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/779

heavyset_go6• 5 years ago

They'd also need to transfer the projects themselves from the DNF's GitHub to the public GitHub repositories they were transferred from.

Arnavion3• 5 years ago

The PR is one tiny part of what the discussion is about.

jsd1982• 5 years ago

It seems to me that there is a valid apology present in two paragraphs:

[...] I made a mistake this last week when I made a PR and merged it to a project without discussion. [...] I overstepped. I failed to consider how the interaction would look through the lens of my current role. [...] this was a mistake. I sincerely apologize.
To recap, I’m sorry about the PR I made and merged on the ReactiveUI Splat repo. That was a mistake. [...] On behalf of myself as the Executive Director, past and current boards, I’m sorry that we’ve created an environment where maintainers are surprised by their relationship with the .NET Foundation. It will be my and the new board’s number one priority to fix that.

How does one label this as a "non-apology"? Mistakes were acknowledged and corrected; actions were regretted and improvements are identified. Shouldn't that be enough?

sjburt• 5 years ago

On behalf of myself as the Executive Director, past and current boards, I’m sorry that we’ve created an environment where maintainers are surprised by their relationship with the .NET Foundation. It will be my and the new board’s number one priority to fix that.

This is the non apology. It's not apologizing for the nature of the relationship that was created, it's apologizing for people being surprised by the nature of the relationship. There's an implication in the statement that the maintainers failed to understand their agreements and that's the real root of the problem.

In terms of the "fix", it's not clear whether the fix is to renegotiate the agreements, or just to make it more clear what the agreements meant (in which case, the harm is not really being addressed).

nebulous12• 5 years ago

If you look at the post as a whole, it reads that she's "sorry" that this happened, but the only reason that it's an issue is because the member projects don't understand their place. Literally: "It is also clear that the .NET Foundation project governance model is not well understood. Project maintainers sign an agreement that either assigns or contributes their project to the .NET Foundation. That’s the point at which project ownership changes."

ljm• 5 years ago

While I’d been involved in this project as a founder and maintainer for many years [...] I failed to consider how the interaction would look through the lens of my current role.

That part could have been explained better, I think. It suggests it would have been a non-issue if not for being an Executive Director, it's just concerned with 'how it looks'. In that sense I can see why people would treat it as a non-apology.

I created a PR in ReactiveUI’s Splat project and merged it with my ReactiveUI maintainer permission. I shouldn't have merged this PR without explicit sign-off from the other maintainers, because it's disrespectful and rude not to follow the project’s process.

This is an improvement, as it addresses the actual problem in the PR in question. It would have been good to start with this.

Also, as the executive director for the .NET Foundation I should have been able to manage the conversation and the disagreement with the other maintainers a lot better.

But then it misses the mark again, here, as I don't believe it's an accurate reflection of the issue in the PR.

---

I'm not involved in any of this so I don't know if the general response to this is overly harsh or not, particularly with calls like "resign and find a new ED in 24 hours". I don't rate it as a particularly amazing apology, but I also don't think it's intentionally a non-apology. If anything, it's a mismatch of perspective: the author sees a misuse of Executive Director Power and thinks that to be the problem, but the other people involved see a maintainer ignoring their Code of Conduct.

Of course, the other issue is that it conflates the incident with the pull request with a whole bunch of organizational politics, which does feel like a bit of a sucker punch. Perhaps they should have been discussed separately, e.g. with an apology on the PR relating to what happened there, and then... all that other stuff.

BigRedDog16692• 5 years ago

For one thing it doesn't say what she did was wrong by itself (repeatedly ignoring the maintainers rejections and not following submission guidelines), but it just looks wrong because she is the ED (but she's actually doing it as the maintainer)

Edit: on 2nd thought it seems she is also claiming she should be able to make this change unilaterally as Director and the problem is that people don't understand that. Which kind of makes this a non apology for saying sorry while also saying the problem is people's misunderstanding. Which also makes the part about doing the change as a maintainer a lie if that's the argument (she clearly said that in the PR too)

GordonS• 5 years ago

But she doesn't even explain what the "mistake" was (moving OSS projects), and even down plays it by only mentioning merging a PR and not the intent behind the PR.

She also doesn't say why she thought this change was needed, or why on earth she would even think to do such a thing without talking with the maintainers.

These reads as a weak, non-apology to me - makes me wonder if the text was really written by her, or by legal.

For context, I've been working in Microsoft shops and with dotnet for 2 decades, and I'm pretty much a dotnet fanboi - the actions here have burned a tonne of goodwill, both with dotnet developers and those others who are/were tempted by it. I'm not angry, I'm disappointed :(

satisfice2• 5 years ago

I don’t know enough about this to comment, except to say, gee, isn’t the social and business life of human adults complicated?

Yes it is. It is complicated. How strange, then, that so many people seem to jump with both feet into complicated shared ownership arrangements with near strangers— leading to the absurdity of public messages flying around instead keeping these communications private to the specific people who understand them?

Why am I even seeing this shit? That is auto-fail right there.

dgb23• 5 years ago

Because it is a public open source project?

cormacrelf2• 5 years ago

They're discussing this on a public forum, but only sharing screenshots of small sections of PDFs which remain private. The CLAs are the governing documents here, and nobody except the people who have access to those agreements in full have any business even forming an opinion as to what rights are held by whom. Posting selected parts (literally just the definitions section, the non operative part!) for public point-scoring is pretty ridiculous. Either shut up and email them privately, or post the entire thing so people can see what you've signed up for.

(The outdated copy of the agreement that's available online is not good enough.)

satisfice2• 5 years ago

Yes. Stop that. Or else maybe don’t be surprised when it all goes wrong. Communal projects are an invitation to drama.

kuschku• 5 years ago

Because the Dot Net Foundation shut down all internal means of communication and directed people to the public forum.

armchairhacker• 5 years ago

This whole situation is toxic. She literally made a 1-line change in a configuration file with basically no downsides.

She also repeatedly re-opened and then merged the PR despite the other guy telling her to follow the format and wait for a review. Which she shouldn't have done. But then everyone started bashing her and .NET for other (similarly small) things and extrapolating that. Then there's this 1000 legalese word apology, and then people are bashing her for the apology.

heavyset_go6• 5 years ago

Please read this discussion[1]. The issue goes far beyond a pull request.

Project maintainers had their projects moved from their public GitHub accounts to the DNF's GitHub Enterprise account without notice. Some maintainers only found out about the transfers of their projects because of this[1] discussion.

[1] https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

dclowd99012• 5 years ago

In practice, how does such a change actually affect the project owners? Because from all the kerfuffle, I haven't seen a single legitimate grievance or issue this actually caused the owners. In fact, one of them even says (paraphrased) "If you had just waited for review, there probably wouldn't have been any issue."

This _does_ feel very toxic and unnecessary.

sprkwd• 5 years ago

She literally made a 1-line change in a configuration file with basically no downsides.

Yes, but did she get her t-shirt?

edandersen• 5 years ago

She literally made a 1-line change in a configuration file with basically no downsides.

It was a change to a .csproj file, changing the project dependencies. Not a configuration file.

booleandilemma3• 5 years ago

Is this related to, or a distraction from, this?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630

ziml772• 5 years ago

Does anyone have a good summary of what happened here? I'm not really following what the foundation did wrong. Did Microsoft do something underhanded? Did they get caught trying to start the extinguish phase of EEE?

drekipus• 5 years ago

Did they get caught trying to start the extinguish phase of EEE?

Effectively, yes, and a bunch of people are surprised about it.

ilaksh• 5 years ago

It's basically a cult. No one expects their dear leader to do something wrong.

bingo-bongo2• 5 years ago

The executive director of the .NET Foundation force merged a PR on a project, instead of following project guidelines.

The incident snowballed into other projects discovering they have been moved to the .NET Foundations Github Enterprise account without their knowledge.

And even more projects joining the snowball with “we were told the Foundation were just there to help us, not take over project ownership”

And now there is a huge snowball with a lot of projects and people stuck inside.

ziml772• 5 years ago

Thanks now the apology and replies make a lot more sense.

Aeolun2• 5 years ago

This whole thing just screams clusterfuck to me.

Don’t trust Microsoft or give anyone admin access to your repos if you won’t want them to do bad shit.

I guess they technically own Github, so don’t use that if you don’t trust them either.

oaiey4• 5 years ago

I think there is very little intent on Microsoft behalf in this. This is a OSS foundation which enforce their (understanding of) ownership. What is horrible is the absolute lack of transparency, communication and community in this foundation.

What they have done happens also in the Apache, Eclipse or whatever foundation as well. Just that these are communities which are mature and composed of experienced open source people which know how to address and communicate with other maintainers/egos/people. Open Source Communities are about people. Not the tech. You are only successful if you are good with people. What they did there multiple times was pulling nuclear options without telling people.

The .NET Foundation is run by Microsoft MVP program (Claire, Ben, others) which live in their own dimension which is different from the rest of the community. They are supported by lawyers/managers of Microsoft trying to protect the brand and the core of .NET. That is a setup for failure without any malicious intent.

Disclosure: .NET Fanboy + (successful) open source maintainer (not .NET foundation related)

avsteele• 5 years ago

I am not versed in all the details here, but it is clear there is a diverge of expectations between MS and some of the repo owners. This is just part of business. Legal agreements and projects are complicated. Not everything is going to be spelled out. In a good business relationship you acknowledge this and work in good faith to resolve differences when they occur.

However, top comments make clear there is a dire need for professional communications training among these programmers. There is entirely too much emotion on display here. Stuff like this:

   While I appreciate that this must have been hard to write, this is a total non-apology and just about meets the incredibly low expectations I and others had for the .NET Foundation's public statement.

.. and the other comments like it, are not productive. There is a difference in expectations, so resolve it by making offers to MS for proposed changes. Ultimately there is a negotiated settlement or you walk. That's it. Don't bring emotions into it.

drfxyjhdyfrhgc2• 5 years ago

Did you look at the Contribution License Agreement? It appears that the issue at hand was in fact "spelled out". Repo owners aren't unreasonable to interpret this action as bad faith. I would agree that their message would be better communicated with a more amicable tone.

dclowd99012• 5 years ago

I would agree that their message would be better communicated with a more amicable tone.

This was entirely GP's point.

cies• 5 years ago

It says: "owned or managed".

It does not say "owned AND managed".

MSFT has been in the business of using legal to make money. This is not the Apache Foundation. This is a non-profit arm of MSFT.

RNCTX3• 5 years ago

I don't see why you think people should respond in an amicable tone to an employee of a corporation blatantly attempting to seize ownership of assets which currently do not belong to them.

gatlin• 5 years ago

I think more highly of people who are honest about their emotions and express them, instead of pretending that the motivating force behind almost all of our personal behavior isn't "relevant." Emotional ≠ unproductive.

judahmeek2• 5 years ago

It's not a question of whether they express their emotion, but how they express it.

It's possible to express anger without burning bridges.

emodendroket3• 5 years ago

I don't. The essence of civilization is suppressing animal instincts in service of a higher goal.

RedShift1• 5 years ago

I don't see anything wrong with that quote. Can it be expressed more "softly"? Sure. But that person is expressing his opinion and I don't see any problem with that. You could also argue it lays the foundation for further escalation but that's on whoever chooses to engage in it IMO.

There seems to be a more general trend going on, some think themselves or others must be protected from "harshness" (even though I consider the above quote to be only a mild example - see the rest of the internet...). For example Linus Torvalds gets a lot of flak for his opinions on some pieces of code he doesn't like but every time I read those emails, I feel like people are blowing it way out of proportion. I'm sure it's not fun to be on the receiving end but his arguments are typically sound and likes to write a lot to really drive his point home. I'd rather be told I'm working on a dead end than a "nice comforting letter" explaining how my patch can't be accepted _right now_ because of x and y with wording that could be interpreted as "it could be accepted later" just to be friendly even though the code is structurally bad and needs to go back to the drawing board. It would give hope where there is none and I think that is worse than "no your code sucks because of x y and z".

I think in this case here it was ok for disappointment to be expressed.

judahmeek2• 5 years ago

You could also argue it lays the foundation for further escalation but that's on whoever chooses to engage in it IMO.

This sounds like victim-blaming. I can imagine neo-nazis using this type of statement to defend someone who yelled the N-word in a black neighborhood.

The truth is that inflammatory language, which GP's quote was, is rarely constructive.

indigochill• 5 years ago

I'd say the key thing wrong with it is that it's not actionable. It doesn't express what the commenter would like to see changed. It's just general vague disapproval.

Harsh or soft, criticism should always be actionable. The way you describe Torvalds' feedback, that's actionable, when someone is told what makes their code unacceptable, so they can correct course and try again.

EDIT: I should edit to add, the post that the quote is from -does- in fact then go on to point out what it finds unacceptable. But I'm commenting just on the quote.

pizza234• 5 years ago

(Rationally) making a point, expressing emotions, and being offensive/insulting are entirely separate things.

There are a few misconceptions at play:

  1. that expressing negative emotions implies being offensive

  2. that being offensive strengthens an argument

In my experience, being able to separate the offensive part, which is certainly difficult, leads to much more productive outcomes, without losing argumentative strength - besides, being also (considered) more professional.

some think themselves or others must be protected from "harshness"

In the above perspective, harshness is simply improductive in any context - being firm and persuasive is always a better choice. It's just very difficult :^)

I'd rather be told I'm working on a dead end than a "nice comforting letter" explaining how my patch can't be accepted _right now_ because of x and y with wording that could be interpreted as "it could be accepted later"

This is a dichotomy between an arguably harsh approach and a false/polite one. There are other different approaches (besides, I think that there's nothing offensive/harsh in being told that one is working on a dead end).

I don't see anything wrong with that quote. Can it be expressed more "softly"? Sure. But that person is expressing his opinion and I don't see any problem with that.

Being considerate towards other people leads to a much more productive collaboration. This vision:

You could also argue it lays the foundation for further escalation but that's on whoever chooses to engage in it IMO.

is indeed non-collaborative - essentially, not being interested at all about the other person. The point is then just venting frustration rather than communicating (in general, not the specific case).

I doubt that anybody can hold a lead/management position with this attitude (without being considered at least an unpleasant manager).

For example Linus Torvalds gets a lot of flak for his opinions on some pieces of code he doesn't like but every time I read those emails, I feel like people are blowing it way out of proportion. I'm sure it's not fun to be on the receiving end but his arguments are typically sound and likes to write a lot to really drive his point home.

This argument actually proves the point. Torvals made a public apology:

  http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html

so definitely there is something (to say the least) inappropriate with that attitude. There are indications that he went to therapy specifically because of that:

  https://twitter.com/lexnfx/status/1409185767348310020

All in all, I definitely support (in a more verbose way :^)) the argument:

top comments make clear there is a dire need for professional communications training among these programmers

chrisseaton2• 5 years ago

his arguments are typically sound

Telling someone to kill themselves is not a sound argument under any circumstances.

xunn0026• 5 years ago

Excuse me? The post is a non-apology. It starts with a minor PR while in fact it turns out to be about the whole organizational structure which was a surprise to people that joined it?! This is a fundamental problem, not a minor PR and how the process for merging that is.

As for emotions and business you are also quite wrong. Emotions will give you some pretty good hints about reality. Ignoring those and trying to be 'productive' is a sure way of being tricked all the way to the bank. There's a reason emotions exist and to lobotomise yourself won't make you a better business person.

fsloth• 5 years ago

"There's a reason emotions exist and to lobotomise yourself won't make you a better business person."

This. If the other party has identified you as a mark for their scheme, non-emotional professional haggling will result in the worst case in profit for the hostile party, and even at best will be a total waste of time for you and exhausting.

I.e. it's "Excuse me sir I notice an acidic liquid flowing from your direction. I would appreciate if you could either maneuver yourself or stop the said liquid flow as the volume of fluid gets in contact with my countenance." v.s. "Stop peeing on my face you **hole!"

You should not aggravate situations beyond reasonable bounds, should not become a sosiopathic professional victim and so on - but for a person of healthy psychological state, your emotions definetly are a valuable guide.

acoard• 5 years ago

Wanted to support your point on emotions with a quote from my favourite philosopher, David Hume:

"We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."[0]

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3ATreatise_of_Human_Natu...

RNCTX3• 5 years ago

There is a difference in expectations, so resolve it by making offers to MS for proposed changes.

Here's some more rude commentary for you: you are showing your hand, and it's a very poor / weak one.

You seemingly operate under the assumption that corporate-speak is some sort of invisibility cloak that gives the denizens of said corporations free reign to exploit whoever they like, and those exploited should politely ask for their soylent green in return.

Well, if I were giving my humanities-grad opinion to those developers in terms of dealing with people like you, I'd tell them to immediately recognize and refuse to deal with people like you, and more specifically to tell you that "if you want me to participate in your HR-speak, you can pay me a salary, until then the discourse is not on your terms. Maybe you should tell your boss to send someone else."

jsiepkes• 5 years ago

I am not versed in all the details here

You should probably read the conversation in the PR: https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778

there is a dire need for professional communications training among these programmers.

Maybe, but probably not why you think.

Once you've read the PR's conversation you'll see this isn't about someone just merging a PR which wasn't approved. This about someone submitting a PR, a maintainer asking for discussion before merging it, ignoring the maintainer and just merge the PR, the maintainer asking why it wasn't discussed and then making a snide remark to the maintainer.

So I agree that the "Sorry for merging a PR" isn't going to cut it here. The merging of the PR was the least of the problem. It's a hollow corporate-style apology where someone is allowed to be called out for. It's like saying: "Sorry I hurt your toe" after you pushed someone of a cliff.

zb• 5 years ago

I don't know anything about the .NET Foundation or much about this particular situation, but I know a little about open source governance.

It appears that Novotny believed she was acting in her capacity as a (long-dormant) maintainer of the project when she merged the PR in question. It was clearly wrong to do so without following the process set down by the other maintainers, and she was right to apologise.

However, as the Executive Director of the Foundation, she also had the power (perhaps indirectly) to force a merge of a patch in any project controlled by the Foundation. All Foundations must reserve this power to themselves (you can't take on legal liability for something you have no control over), but they also must never use it. To do so is the nuclear option, to be invoked only after all trust and goodwill has been irretrievably lost anyway, because it certainly will be once you use it.

When you wear multiple hats and one of those hats is very powerful, it is critically important to make clear when you are doing stuff but not wearing that hat. Sometimes even that doesn't help, and it's better to just refrain from doing that stuff until you have handed the hat on to someone else.

In this case she failed to make it clear that she was wearing her maintainer hat and not her ED hat. In fact, she accidentally invited speculation that she was wearing the ED hat by referring to the change as a requirement of the Foundation. I'd imagine this is why things blew up.

Note that this probably indicates a problem with the structure of the Foundation. It's more or less inevitable that at the board level these things are pay-for-play, and that the ED's continued employment is at the discretion of the board. But technical decisions should be delegated to a neutral body, preferably elected by the project maintainers. It doesn't sound like that exists, but had it done this situation might have been avoided.

The other issue seems to be a fundamental disconnect between the Foundation and the maintainers of various projects in it about the purpose of the Foundation. For example, I saw one where a maintainer politely declined to give the Foundation access privileges required to enforce the Code of Conduct, instead saying that the maintainers would enforce it themselves. Sorry, but I don't think any foundation could accept that. One of many reasons for joining a foundation is that it gives contributors confidence that there is a CoC backed up by an independent organisation, and that can be enforced even (especially) against powerful members of the community such as project maintainers - potentially even all of a project's maintainers. This is one of many ways that Foundations help build contributor confidence, which is one of the major benefits for a project of joining a foundation, and all of them rest on the credibility of the foundation to act as a circuit breaker and assert some kind of control should dire circumstances crop up. To allow individual projects - even historically well-behaved ones - to opt out of that control would be to effectively render those guarantees meaningless, and in fact reduce the foundation to what would be effectively just a giant fraud against contributors.

It appears that many projects signed up without being made aware of this, and that is an absolute disaster for which only the Foundation can be responsible, and again they are right to apologise for failing to communicate it. However, what many people wanted was an apology for having technical measures in place that would allow them to exert control over projects, which the Foundation cannot really apologise for because it would effectively be an apology for existing. Inevitably people who wanted that will see this response as a non-apology apology.

It looks like a long, hard road back from here to rebuild trust. I'd suggest that the board needs to work collaboratively with the community to clearly document the rights and responsibilities of both the Foundation and the individual projects, that they consider establishing an independent governance body for technical oversight, and that any project that feels this isn't what they signed up for be given the opportunity to leave on good terms.

oaiey4• 5 years ago

This is the exact summary of what is wrong and need to be improved. Thanks for that.

The .NET Foundation needs a revitalization and maybe a split into a ".NET Foundation" and a ".NET Community Foundation" to separate the .NET and the .NET community. The F# community is much better in this separation of community and Microsoft.

9woc• 5 years ago

This is the best explanation of what's happening.

RNCTX3• 5 years ago

For example, I saw one where a maintainer politely declined to give the Foundation access privileges required to enforce the Code of Conduct, instead saying that the maintainers would enforce it themselves. Sorry, but I don't think any foundation could accept that. One of many reasons for joining a foundation is that it gives contributors confidence that there is a CoC backed up by an independent organisation, and that can be enforced even (especially) against powerful members of the community such as project maintainers - potentially even all of a project's maintainers. This is one of many ways that Foundations help build contributor confidence, which is one of the major benefits for a project of joining a foundation, and all of them rest on the credibility of the foundation to act as a circuit breaker and assert some kind of control should dire circumstances crop up.

Which is why those people in your hypothetical rightfully see CoCs as poison-pills meant to silently transfer ownership from themselves as owners/founders/copyright holders to corporate "contributors."

To which the obvious response is "if you want to own my assets, buy them, stop tip-toeing around contracts and trying to get them on the cheap."

gorgoiler• 5 years ago

Well, if you ask me, I’d like to see an apology for the one-line whitespace change, using !=true, and closing the XML tag without a space.

From the commit which started this whole brouhaha:

https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/commit/cd2cbb807b36dd89b...

That’s some grade A hornet nest kicking right there.

chrisofspades• 5 years ago

Visual Studio removes that space automatically when you use it to manage dependencies. It's quite annoying.

gego• 5 years ago

...so that's how you get a lot of work for nothing... people, please never sign something without at least clearly stating what you think it means. A sneaky way is printing the document and sending it back together with a statement of how you interprete it - best on the page you should sign... A simple (see email 211007) below your signature often is enough... if you did not sign on paper but just by clicking some buttons, your position is even better, especially if you are in a non us legislation and there is no translation...

pabs3• 5 years ago

A recent article about issues in the .NET community:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/05/microsoft_net_foundat...

dusted2• 5 years ago

Such politics and drama... over what? was the merged code bad? did it not improve the project? What was even the thing being merged? was it even code?

[edit: I found the commit, the apology should probably include that the file was not beautified before the PR was made..]

philliphaydon3• 5 years ago

That’s only 1 small issue of the bigger issue of projects being pulled into the DNF org with no one’s knowledge.

dusted2• 5 years ago

That's not the topic of this apology, so it's an entirely inappropriate place to have that discussion. The apology is about not following the procedure..

BurnGpuBurn• 5 years ago

Years ago I heard Microsoft was open sourcing .Net. and I thought that was a clever idea. But with all the drama coming out of the community now for years and years I seriously question the intentions behind that move. It seems to me Microsoft just wanted a bunch of free coders on their .Net projects.

And it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft set out to destroy a community of volunteers either.

mustardo• 5 years ago

I assume they want to retain "ownership" so they can execute the extend and extinguish steps unopposed

samhw6• 5 years ago

You do realise they created .NET?

knorker6• 5 years ago

"Sorry I opened a PR and merged it without discussion" is not an honest description of what happened (https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778), and therefore the apology seems very insincere.

You can't apologize and at the same time minimize the thing you actually did. It's pretty much like ending your apology with a "but". And this (not really) apology is a big "but".

More to the point though, this apology attempt made it worse. It starts off with a dishonest apology, and then goes into a big policy and contract debate.

Why would you conflate the two? Whatever point you're then trying to make about policy and ownership is tainted by both the personal misstep (I call it that unsarcastically) and by the insincere apology.

It's needlessly ineffective.

1. It makes your apology sound like "I'm sorry, but I'm the dictator here" 2. It starts you off from a position of "I was wrong, admit I was wrong, but here's how actually I'm right"

It's going to be hard convincing anyone if you start from a position of being wrong. And not just wrong but also really rude.

It seems to me that it would be much more effective to just apologize for the obvious process mis-step and arrogant rudeness (it happens to the best of us), and let that sink in. And then start a new conversation about policy.

Whoever raises "yeah, well weren't you the one who went around PR policies?" in that thread will be the unproductive one, and it won't go anywhere.

As-is the policy points can't be taken at face value.

xwdv2• 5 years ago

If this is not desired behavior it should be enforced by requiring a reviewer to sign off on the changes before merging. By not requiring this it means it is okay for pull requests to be merged without discussion, even if it is a rare occurrence. This is one of those occurrences.

knorker6• 5 years ago

So, first of all I disagree. Just because something is not prevented by technical means doesn't make it allowed. That goes for all things in life, outside of a supermax prison.

And after being asked twice by another maintainer (one of the two current maintainers (none of which are her), as I read it) to please follow the procedures, she tells him to fuck off and overrides him.

And after all that she does actually write something intended to look like an apology. So what does that mean? Either she disagrees with you, and indeed she should have followed procedures, or all she's apologizing for is "sorry you got so upset", which more of a taunt than an apology.

No, actually. Contrary to what cryptocurrency people would have you believe, there are other and more effective ways to prevent undesirable behaviour than technical means, for the vast majority of behaviour.

arusahni• 5 years ago

If this is not desired behavior it should be enforced by requiring a reviewer to sign off on the changes before merging.

From what I've read about this specific incident, it seems this was enabled by the fact that this project had been moved to GitHub Enterprise without the maintainers' knowledge. One of the features of GitHub Enterprise is that some privileged users in the organization can bypass such restrictions. That may be what happened here.

sillysaurusx8• 5 years ago

The ending of that was so unexpected:

Wow great conversation! Let's lock it to contributors just for a laugh and not because someone on Twitter just unhelpfully sent 27.3k Looky-Loos over to drop their $0.02 on my repo
@reactiveui reactiveui locked as resolved and limited conversation to collaborators 6 days ago

Either I'm out of touch (quite probable) or sarcasm doesn't translate too well, since... I think they're unhappy with someone tweeting a link to this PR, but it also seems unclear why discussion was shut down.

knorker6• 5 years ago

I think that was a good call. Most mob-comments on these things are not productive. And especially when done on the project's own infrastructure (unlike here on HN) it's like locking your normally-open door to prevent people coming into your house to berate you. Let the people upset write to their local paper, instead.

I don't think the thread would be helped by 100 "who's here from HN?", "Congrats, you're on reddit", and such.

MrBuddyCasino• 5 years ago

„Apologizing when you are caught to is never an apology, but an indication of submission.“ NNT - https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1427341684447264772

scns• 5 years ago

In one sentence: "Justification admits guilt."

jrochkind1• 5 years ago

Coming into this as an outside observer, I don't really understand the original infraction and can't judge it's severity.

But reading the apology, I still had the reaction: Wow, they really don't understand community management if they think this is going to work for anyone, which they seem to be telling us is in fact their whole job?

azarovalex• 5 years ago

Same vibe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4

globular-toast2• 5 years ago

I preferred open source before people like this got involved with all their bullshit and doublespeak.

jebronie• 5 years ago

Very toxic behaviour from this person.

bob1029• 5 years ago

Total waste of everyone's time. I suspect if the word "Microsoft" were not in this equation, this HN thread would not exist and no one would give a shit.

A lot of people have ulterior motives and 99% of the "toxicity" I have observed to date comes from either trying to hide those motives or pretending like others couldn't possibly possess them.

samhw6• 5 years ago

Yup, I'm inclined to agree. I also think the word 'toxic' is horribly overused, to mean essentially 'anything I don't like'.

Though FWIW, ulterior motives are hidden by definition – as in, that's literally the meaning of the word 'ulterior' – so I'm not quite sure what the last sentence is getting at.

itoocode• 5 years ago

Moral to learn as developers: Follow PR rules even if you are owner or admin, senior executive dev or junior dev.

_pmf_• 5 years ago

It's a Microsoft project, and Microsoft employees can and will do what they want.

smohare• 5 years ago

I’m not sure that thread supports your point, tbh.

I'm sorry

Related Stories