Why Scott Moreau got kicked out Re: Scott Moreau Banned From Official Wayland IRC Channel

A couple people have said that from the outside, it looks bad that Scott forked Wayland and then got kicked out. They requested somebody post an explanation to this mailing list. I think this is pretty reasonable. I have no authority, and can't speak for anybody but myself, but I saw all of what happened, and I believe I understand it. Most importantly, nobody objected to Scott forking Weston, which I believe would satisfy all his goals. Others have forked it before, and the response was positive. (This included ubuntu's wayland system compositor work, and the ADWC tiling WM type fork: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/+archive/system-compositor http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA5MTA ) The final problem was that, despite his proclamations that he intended to keep his forks compatible with wayland, he refused to use the existing mechanism to retain protocol compatibility to make the protocol changes he needed, without providing a reason. (Details below.) But I believe that alone would not have gotten him kicked out. The larger problem was his constant abusiveness that we've put up with over the last year. More visible in IRC than on this mailing list. 17:25 <@krh> is there [anybody] in this channel you haven't insulted or bitched at? 17:25 < soreau> krh: Probably not.... (Yes, that's an incomplete quote of his response. I really feel his acknowledgment is important to share, and his backpedaling is not.) 02:22 < Dolomere> If you dont mind, can I ask a question about the whole argument with scott? .... 02:38 < thiago> Dolomere: I asked why he forked the wayland library too 02:38 < thiago> that was a misunderstanding 02:38 < thiago> but he won't go back now 02:39 < thiago> he agrees that it was a mistake to do it, it serves no purpose, and yet he won't back down 02:39 < thiago> he got banned from the IRC channel because he was annoying. That happens all the time to people on IRC. Don't read in to it more than "person was annoying on IRC". 02:39 < airlied> if he just wanted to go play on his own, he could do that, the fact he needs to mail the list and tell everyone with lots of crap about compiz history, means he is just time wasting dramtic artist 02:40 < airlied> he likes seeing his name in phoronix 02:42 < airlied> if he comes back in x months with a working DE that does everything he wants then fair play 03:00 < airlied> what he did wrong was be an arsehole multiple times 03:00 < airlied> when pointed out he was being such, he claimed he has communciation problems and then did it again 03:01 < airlied> http://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/how-to-protect-yourhow-to-protect-your-open-source-project-from-poisonous-people 03:01 < airlied> here's some nice slides 03:02 < airlied> he fell into "Lack of Cooperation" sldie 23 11:38AM < daniels> tgs3: yes, he was persistently abusive to people ('fucking idiot' was thrown around a bit), and also refused to engage with the review process, ignoring all reviews which pointed out problems with his code and refusing to fix them. it wasn't pleasant or fun for anyone else but now we're just trying to move on and do what we're actually here for - which is write code. 11:55AM < jekstrand> tgs: The problem is that Scott's voice of opposition was opposition to code review and thinking through the protocol before committing it to master. 11:55AM < jekstrand> tgs3: Scott specirically didn't care about well thought-out software. 11:56AM < jekstrand> tgs3: Read this if you want more info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-March/007814.html 12:01PM < daniels> tgs3: he was calling random people 'fucking idiots' for no reason and being generally abusive. ignoring him sends a message that as a community, we think it's great to abuse random people. that's absolutely not on - it's a surefire way to kill your project. 12:07PM <@krh> the fork is fine, the drama around it wasnt 12:38PM < damien_l> fwiw, I'd recommend people to watch http://blip.tv/tech-love-live/osb09-donnie-berkholz-assholes-are-killing-your-project-2464449 This is where Thiago patiently took the time to explain how Scott could make his needed protocol changes without breaking compatibility, and Scott refused without providing a reason. Copy and paste existing protocol stuff from the wayland repo into his weston fork, then edit it there. On 03/25, Scott Moreau wrote: > On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote: > > What we're asking is that you avoid forking Wayland at all. Don't change the > > library, don't change the default extensions (including wl_shell), don't add > > new default extensions. You said you want to avoid incompatible changes: well, > > avoiding the fork also avoids the temptation. > > > > Try to do your changes in a different extension. Copy the current wl_shell into > > a new one and modify it to your heart's desire. If, at the end of your > > experiment, you conclude that the current wl_shell is flawed by design, then > > Wayland should deprecate it and adopt yours. On the other hand, if we conclude > > that your improvements can be added incrementally, we can simply do exactly > > that. > > This sounds great but this is not the solution I have come up with. > > > I'll ping you on IRC to discuss this. Several people have asked you to do it > > and you have either missed the point or failed to explain to us why the fork > > is necessary. Another recent example of how unpleasant Scott was to work with. I strongly suspect this instance of him getting set +q (quiet), and his banning, have been the only disciplinary type uses of ops in this channel since it was created over two years ago: --- Day changed Wed Mar 20 2013 18:26 < Darxus> soreau: As always, if you'll just tell me exactly what you want changed, I'm happy to change it. Copying and pasting plain text into an email and then editing it to what you would like would probably be great. 18:27 < soreau> I told you, get rid of the +s crap for weston-launch and add the runtime stuff for mplayer 18:27 < soreau> and put mpv on there too, 4 lines http://www.chaosreigns.com/wiki/Wayland_MPV_instructions 18:29 < Darxus> soreau: I can do the +s thing, and the mpv thing. The last time we discussed this I tried to get details on exactly you want changed about mplayer because I've never tried it and would rather not guess. 18:30 < soreau> I gave you the link http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-January/006968.html 18:30 < soreau> last time 18:31 < soreau> been telling you little things about the website for months, you just don't have an interest in maintaining it and I can't understand that 18:32 < soreau> every time you act like you can't read or you don't know what I'm talking about, or you want me to write a patch.. for a two second change on a website 18:32 < soreau> I mean wtf 18:33 < Darxus> --- Log opened Fri Feb 22 03:20:10 2013 18:33 < Darxus> 11:47 < soreau> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-January/006968.html 18:33 < Darxus> 11:50 < Darxus> soreau: That is distinctly different from telling me what you would like the contents of http://wayland.freedesktop.org/extr as.html to be. You could copy and paste the current text of the page into an email, edit it to what you want it to be, then email it to me. Do you just want me to add a note that mplayer needs to be run as "./mplayer -vo gl $filename"? I don't know the details of the problem, so I'm hesitant to modify the page based on my guesses. 18:33 < Darxus> And no answer. 18:33 < soreau> See now look! 18:33 < soreau> Instead of making the change you're trying to start shit 18:34 < soreau> JUST FIX IT ALREADY 18:34 < Darxus> I'm asking you the same yes or no question I asked you before. Why can't you just answer me? Because you'd rather continue to complain? 18:34 < soreau> Forget you man and forget your bullshit 18:34 < soreau> I don't have time to hold your hand while you kick scream and cry 18:37 < Darxus> soreau: You realize this kind of behavior is exactly why I have little motivation to cooperate with you, right? I honestly have no idea why you can't just answer the yes or no qestion. I'm not trying to "start shit". I'm trying to do exactly what you want me to do, I'd just like confirmation that my guess is correct first. 18:38 -!- mode/#wayland [+o airlied] by ChanServ 18:41 < soreau> If you cannot read plain english, then I'm sorry but I cannot help you 18:44 < soreau> Your desire should be to help others, not dote on a needless response, that was clearly implied by the initial query 18:45 -!- mode/#wayland [+q soreau!*@*] by airlied 18:45 <@airlied> come back in a few hours dude, seriously 18:56 < jpetersen> Darxus, thanks for maintaining the website 18:59 < daniels> indeed -- "If you believe everything you read, better not read." - Japanese Proverb http://www.ChaosReigns.com