Leaving F-Droid • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#51

Post by ibejoeb » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #32

lucideer wrote: post #24

@dang given the subject of this post is censoring statements made within their own community, I'm concerned about how quickly this was dropped off frontpage due to being flagged here on HN - wondering if this is potentially an abuse of the flag button (by sockpuppets?). If not and this flagging was approved by mods for legitimate reasons please ignore this comment.

i might flag this because the statement is to vague to merit any public discussion outside of the people involved. all we get is speculations and accusations, that are not worthy of a discussion on hackernews, in my opinion.

That's true, but then contrast that to the treatment of the openai situation, where there were 1000+ comment threads devoted to vague tweets. (The "I Love You All" = Ilya thing was particularly wacky.)

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#52

Post by em-bee » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #47

em-bee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, but without details we are not able to find out anything about the nature of these issues, and therefore it is not possible to draw any conclusions that would be helpful. i am an f-droid user, and i am certainly concerned if there are issues in the community. but this post does not help to enlighten matters and i feel it will only attract vocal outsiders who have nothing substantial to contribute. this issue ne…

> this issue needs to be handled internally What a truly odd sentiment from someone with an apparent interest in open-source community-led projects.

on the contrary. open source (or free software) doesn't mean that every dispute has to be out in the open. there must be room to handle disputes privately, and the actions by some of the people involved here seem to show that they do not want to handle this in public. (whether that is justified or not is a different question, but again, without details we are unable to make that judgement)

i find that dragging disputes into the public is often used for one side to draw support in their favor. i don't think that this is happening here, as the statements made are to vague. but in general i am not a fan of making such things public as it prevents people who are involved from opening up and sharing their concerns in the internal discussion for fear of having them made public too.

we need to give people in dispute the space to resolve their issues without forcing them to face the court of public opinion.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#53

Post by gazby » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

I briefly joined some F-Droid Dev rooms in hopes of helping with their speed/capacity issues by chasing some CDN sponsorships or expanding the mirror list, however the possibility that any commercial provider or user-provided mirror might have access logs enabled was enough to end the conversation. I 180'd after that. Never was a community-run project IME.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#54

Post by lucideer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #52

lucideer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this issue needs to be handled internally What a truly odd sentiment from someone with an apparent interest in open-source community-led projects.

on the contrary. open source (or free software) doesn't mean that every dispute has to be out in the open. there must be room to handle disputes privately, and the actions by some of the people involved here seem to show that they do not want to handle this in public. (whether that is justified or not is a different question, but again, without details we are unable to make that judgement) i find that dragging disput…

> doesn't mean that every dispute has to be out in the open

Of course not, nor did I imply such an extreme.

> we need to give people in dispute the space to resolve their issues without forcing them to face the court of public opinion.

This only functions with balanced moderating forces within an internal dispute - where there is a clear power imbalance (e.g. a technical lead who holds exclusive keys to things), resolution of a dispute in private will typically lean heavily in favour of those holding defacto power, leaving "the court of public opinion" a sole remaining last resort.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#55

Post by lucideer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

gazby wrote: post #53

I briefly joined some F-Droid Dev rooms in hopes of helping with their speed/capacity issues by chasing some CDN sponsorships or expanding the mirror list, however the possibility that any commercial provider or user-provided mirror might have access logs enabled was enough to end the conversation. I 180'd after that. Never was a community-run project IME.

> Never was a community-run project IME.

That's the impression given by posts linked here. The initiative to begin trying to transform it into a community-run project seems to have kicked off roughly 12 months or so ago[0] - and by all accounts seems to have been met with significant resistance from the bdfl that preceded it.

[0] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/commit/031eeb78c8e35960a9a...

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#56

Post by remram » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #26

remram wrote: post #9

This is quite serious. The only point of f-droid is to be a community repository, if it is controlled by a single individual doing harmful things with no oversight, it is over as far as I'm concerned.

Like Linus on the kernel?

Linux is explicit about their governance model...

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#57

Post by rodlette » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

aredox wrote: post #29

rodlette wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author, who notes: > Sadly, this is not a single incident -- if it was I would still believe things could be fixed -- but a pattern of behaviour that has continued for years. I've tried to be patient, hoping we could still resolve things, give everyone the benefit of the doubt as I constantly have. But clearly, this is not possible as long as Hans refuses any and all accountability for his actions, and any attemp…

And the fact several other people have resigned?

I'm not suggesting the aggrieved party is making false accusations. I just don't understand the intent behind a public letter that has no details/references.

Who is the intended audience? How are they meant to evaluate the letter?

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#58

Post by remram » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #30

lucideer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which someone made private "because I felt like it" Further to making statements in their own community private, it seems even this HN post has been flagged by someone for some reason...

And I'm unable to vouch for it like I usually can - but I an also flag it if I wanted to? I don't know what that means. HN moderation is such a black box.

I think you can only "vouch" once it's "dead", as long as it's merely "flagged" you can only "upvote" to counter it.

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#59

Post by the_third_wave » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

Without more information this just comes across as yet another Code of Conduct struggle session. Depending on which position an uninformed observer - and that means all of us here - takes it is either the result of Hans being an authoritarian *-ist/*-phobe hell-bent on playing power games or of Hans successfully fighting the multi-headed woke Hydra which intends to turn the project into yet another vessel for spreading its ideology.

I'm an avid F-Droid user so I do have a vested interest in the project remaining active and on-target. As it stands I do not know whether Hans' actions helped to keep the project healthy or had the opposite effect. Does anyone here know more?

Re: Leaving F-Droid

#60

Post by em-bee » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

gazby wrote: post #53

I briefly joined some F-Droid Dev rooms in hopes of helping with their speed/capacity issues by chasing some CDN sponsorships or expanding the mirror list, however the possibility that any commercial provider or user-provided mirror might have access logs enabled was enough to end the conversation. I 180'd after that. Never was a community-run project IME.

you mean that the f-droid maintainers did not want to rely on mirrors that would log downloads?

sounds a bit extreme on the privacy front, but not entirely unusual. i see no relation to how the project is run though. on the contrary, i expect community run projects even more likely to reject logging because it only takes a few vocal people to demand that. meaning the more people have a voice, the more likely demands for privacy come up. see debian and their popularity counter for example when they could just log all the downloads instead.