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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#201

Post by PKop »

q1w2 wrote: post #85
u320 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but there is no way for us to know who the wrongdoer is in this case.

Why do we care? Are we in middle school? We are professionals - I'm not going to get involved in playground politics.

>Why do we care?

We're developers, and many use Rust (though organizational politics can effect many other projects as well, how it plays out here could affect other situations etc) so in one way or another care very much about if the project is being run effectively, which side to support in internal conflict so as to ensure the project keeps being run effectively etc.

>not going to get involved

Getting involved or not are both political acts.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#202

Post by throwawaygh »

capableweb wrote: post #39
simion314 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe is better that no single action is emphasized or a single person and focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions. Edit: I think if some action will be made public then everyone will focus on debating why that action was correct/incorrect , then a lot of mostly politics dirt will be thrown around etc.

> focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions, when what is supposed to have exemplified the problem is kept in the dark.

The people who own the project, own the project.

The people who own your employer, own your employer.

Does that sometimes suck? Sure. Is it often unjust? Absolutely. Do you sometimes need to switch jobs or fork a project? Yup (see: mod team resigning).

But don't ever get confused and think that an HR process can save you from the whims of your master, and don't ever believe a "rule" that says the owner of something is constrained. Unless there's a higher power that can enforce that rule (e.g., a government or a market). And even then, the rule isn't doing any of the lifting.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#203

Post by gdy »

tinco wrote: post #184
gdy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is 'mature' about making a vague accusation, refusing to substantiate it and claiming that if the other side says anything it would be a lie?

The accusation is not vague and it was substantiated. Just not to you. Not to me either, and I think that's a good thing for now. No doubt whoever steps up to become the next mod team will be fully informed by both sides, and hopefully they can make an objective decision about what should and what should not be public. It is probably none of our business anyway. And it's not a claim that everything they would say wou…

"The accusation is not vague and it was substantiated"

The public accusation is vague and is not substantiated. What is the reason for it to exist in the first place if not to put blame without giving a chance to refute it?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#204

Post by kristoff_it »

jebronie wrote: post #13

Is this a dirty trick by the amazon folks to harm the core team?

As Amazon conspiracy theorist in chief, I doubt this is the case. Amazon likes to associate with good Rust PR, this is just messy stuff that takes away PR bandwidth and that makes things more unstable. People associated with AWS (eg Shane Miller, Chairwoman at the Rust Foundation and head of the AWS Rust team) will have to play a role in this conflict, and the decisions they will make should be publicly scrutinized, but that's it.

The source of this conflict seems a somewhat long-standing tension inside of the Rust organization.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#206

Post by whimsicalism »

dralley wrote: post #178
quotemstr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample: Linux, GCC, Python, and practically the entire free software ecosystem from before the current crazy for hall-monitory-y supervision from above. It is simply demonstrably, factually, clearly not true that a growing community needs the kind of structures that Rust imposed on itself. It really makes me sad that a certain kind of person these days sees some kind of censorious overlord as essential for th…

...I think many people would disagree with you about Linux. And perhaps GCC as well.

Yeah it's comical because Linux has so obviously driven a lot of people away from kernel development. Tech is male-skewed, and OSS more so, but Linux kernel dev is even then still at the far end of the gender disparity spectrum.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#207

Post by dom96 »

> The Rust Moderation Team (Andre, Andrew and Matthieu)

Is the Rust mod team really just 3 people?

I'm really surprised to see this coming from Rust. I've viewed Rust's governance as one of the best amongst open source projects. Coincidentally we have very recently put together a mod team in Nim[1] that is significantly larger than just 3, it would be really great to hear more details so we can learn from this.

1 - https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/8629

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#208

Post by [deleted] »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #159
lovecg wrote: post #49

Why does a language need a “moderation team”? C++ seems to do fine without one.

To give folks who are privileged and well connected but have not put in the time and effort to be able to make technical contributions a chance to put participation in a trendy OSS community on their resume.

[deleted]

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#209

Post by couchand »

quotemstr wrote: post #186
couchand wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your greatest concern is some technical artifact and not the human beings in the community around you, kindly go touch grass.

It is more important to produce great works than it is to adhere to the behavioral strictures of internet activists. 100 years from now, people will recognize the name "Linux Torvalds". Who will remember the tone police? Linux is a major accomplishment and a boon for all humanity. All I see the hall monitors accomplishing is the production of drama.

These "internet activists" you spend so much effort maligning are simply reminding you that there is a human being on the other side of that screen.

I'm not inside the Linux developers' world, but from the outside it seems like a much healthier, more vibrant place since Linus realized that he works with human beings.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#210

Post by mjburgess »

tinco wrote: post #166
mjburgess wrote: post #86

Absent some form of democracy, what does it mean for a leadership to be "accountable"? Power extends from whoever has the authority to hold others to account. So this just reads like a power-grab from the moderation team. What would it mean for them to have the power to hold the core team to account? That they could sack people from it? The goals of the project are set by the core team; not by a moderation team enfor…

It's not a power grab, because they just relinquished power, even going to the point of leaving instructions for the next group of people that would take over. Just this flaw in your logic probably landed you your first downvotes. Second, the CoC is not arbitrary, there's a link to it merged into the repository which means the core team (or at least a majority of it) agreed to it. Their resigning is just a signal tha…

Sure, in round one, they've resigned. Games are played over multiple rounds. We're yet to see how it plays out.

Though I don't really expect those individuals to comeback, this may well just be a move to subsume the projects "technical goals" (ie., those of the core team) under the "ethical goals" of the moderation team. As a technical project, to me, this isnt that sensible.

> leadership to be accountable means that they follow the rules of the system

This misunderstands power. There are no (enforced) rules prior to power. Power is the mechanism by which there are rules. This resignation isn't to establish rules in the abstract -- the CoC exists. Its for a team to have the power to enforce them.

And "Rules" here arent rules at all. They are principals. And pricipals trade-off against each other, and against other goals. When we say the core team has "agreed" that does not imply theyve agreed to all views the moderation team takes.

I have no idea who is in the "right", to be clear, on the ethical issue. Perhaps a member of the core team has done something severely unethical (in which case, presumably the ethical thing to do is tell people...). However the phrasing of this as an explicit demand for power... to me reads a little off.

It reads like they wish to be part of a project where an ethical ideology reins decisively above the technical goals.

Eg., consider the core team will give a member "more latitude" to, say, rehabilitate if they've done something wrong. You might say they shouldnt. But it this a technical project, or a political-ethical one? Are its leaders meant to be morally excellent or excellent software developers?

The reality is that technical projects require technical excellence, not moral excellence. A "moderation team" set-up to demand moral excellence can easily go too far and ruin a project. Of course, if a core member is deeply unethical one hopes the community & core-team will do something about it.

My sense here is that if someone was "deeply unethical" they can be held to account by telling people about it. And if they weren't, then I imagine the core team have made the right decision for the project.

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