[Savannah-hackers] Curtesy - Human management of Savannah since 2004

[Mathieu Roy]

> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 16:57:21 +0100 (BST)
> From: "Elfyn McBratney" <address@hidden>
> Subject: [Savannah-hackers] (no subject)
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: address@hidden
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> Can you explain why the "Licensing Lab Web Pages" project was pushed
> through the pending queue?  We have been telling people that ask that
> Savannah is not accepting new projects, though now they may think (and
> rightly so) that we're not accepting new projects that are not GNU/FSF
> related.
>
> Also, was it intentional that savannah-hackers were not consulted on this?
>  It would seem curtious to have done so as we are the ones that would have
> to defend this action.

Hello Elfyn,

I think you deserve to know that, in December, the FSF USA was told in
a private mail (it should have been public, so you'd know) that it was
important for the savannah hackers that was active since then to keep
the savannah hackers in the position they held since savannah was
created: the persons that run and make decisions on Savannah.

If there was problem in savannah history before December 2003, it was
mainly due to services not managed by savannah hackers. I did not
stopped asking access to the web server and the mail server, to fix
things I could handle, and not waiting until Paul (overloaded) can do
it (rarely faster than 3 weeks). For myself, it was absolutely not the  
way to go to make savannah working like the others servers -
restricting access to the machine, refusing to volunteers any right to
do what they think is right.

In December, as said in my first paragraph, the FSF USA was told that
it was important for savannah hackers to be able to do their job as
they did for years. Even more was said: the FSF USA had to choose
between continuing working with the savannah-hackers or look out for
new savannah-hackers. While apparently the FSF USA agreed to continue 
working with the current savannah-hackers -not saying a word about the
deep roots of the issue-, at the same time they contacted Tim Perdue
thinking he would replace gratefully the savannah-hackers (that the
origin of this whole Gforge story, that have not much to do with
Gforge and Savane). De facto, the answer to the simple question "would
you like to continue working with savannah hackers that have their
word or would you like to find new savannah hackers that will 
not be able to make any decision and will not be part of any decision
process because the first ones will no longer feel deeply involved",
they apparently picked the second solution. 

If the FSF USA thinks I'm mistaken, I would be happy to hear them
proving they gave savannah hackers their word on decisions made on
savannah. In fact, I would be truly and sincerely happy to be
wrong. But I hope Richard did not forget that I am before anything
else a graduated student in history and I am trained to avoid getting
fooled when it comes studying the past.

Does the people of the FSF USA truly think things are better know than
they were in the past? If I understood right, the previous year we had
every services running right, with an old computer not even too much
overloaded, we were paid by third parties to improve the software we
were using, and people in charge felt confident in their role. Now the
load average of the server is more important with the brand new
server, there are talks about paying third parties to improve the 
software we use, and new people just as people here from a long time
(even from the start) is wondering about there role here.

Is that really better? Is everything right? Is it possible to find
someone not involved that thinks things are now for the best? Isn't it
time to step back? 

Regards,

PS: please add my in To: field if you reply to this mail, I am not
monitoring the list carefully.

-- 
Mathieu Roy

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