Gerrit etiquette

Dear coreboot community members,

Recently there was some unpleasant activity on Gerrit which violated the guidelines [1] regarding respectful conduct. Unfortunately this has directly caused a valued member of the community to withdraw from maintainership and has damaged relations with others as well.

After discussion and deliberation, the coreboot leadership has decided to revoke +2/-2 privileges for the provocateur and have asked him to fork the project to continue his work elsewhere, at least for the time being. This decision might be reconsidered at a later date if this person shows respectful behavior when working with community members in the future.

This is not the first time such situations have occurred and similar actions taken. It’s never an easy decision to make, however it is necessary to maintain a healthy and productive community. Even when only two people are directly involved in a conflict there are often others who are impacted. The cost of alienating developers and damage to the project is too high to tolerate any individual’s bad behavior.

We generally trust that developers acting in good faith and in a respectful manner can resolve conflicts on their own. However, we will continue to develop guidelines to help move things along when disagreements inevitably occur. In any case, it is always required that we treat others in a professional manner and communicate with respect, regardless of who is right or wrong on any issue.

[1] https://doc.coreboot.org/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.html (https://doc.coreboot.org/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.html)

Revoke of Gerrit privileges and asking to fork (was: Gerrit etiquette)

[Paul Menzel]

[Your plain text email part of the mail is strangely indented.]

Dear David,

Am 01.02.20 um 19:16 schrieb dhendrix--- via coreboot:
> Recently there was some unpleasant activity on Gerrit which violated the guidelines [1] regarding respectful conduct. Unfortunately this has directly caused a valued member of the community to withdraw from maintainership and has damaged relations with others as well.
>
> After discussion and deliberation, the coreboot leadership has decided to revoke +2/-2 privileges for the provocateur and have asked him to fork the project to continue his work elsewhere, at least for the time being. This decision might be reconsidered at a later date if this person shows respectful behavior when working with community members in the future.
>
> This is not the first time such situations have occurred and similar actions taken. It’s never an easy decision to make, however it is necessary to maintain a healthy and productive community. Even when only two people are directly involved in a conflict there are often others who are impacted. The cost of alienating developers and damage to the project is too high to tolerate any individual’s bad behavior.
>
> We generally trust that developers acting in good faith and in a respectful manner can resolve conflicts on their own. However, we will continue to develop guidelines to help move things along when disagreements inevitably occur. In any case, it is always required that we treat others in a professional manner and communicate with respect, regardless of who is right or wrong on any issue.

Thank you for the email, which I am pretty sad about to hear. For such a 
drastic measure, I really want to know about more details, as otherwise 
it’s just accusation.

1.  Who is the current coreboot leadership? How many of those voted, and 
what was the result?

2.  Which comment violated the guidelines? I guess it’s about change-set 
[2]? Reading the comments, and considering, that English is not the 
mother tongue of some participants, and reading an apology, I’d really 
like to know what Gerrit guide lines were violated.

3.  Why did the coreboot leadership not step in earlier to avoid further 
escalation despite being added early on as reviewer so was made aware of 
the discussion?

I really appreciate the work of everybody, and I am saddened, that such 
conflicts arise. Hopefully, there will be an amicable outcome nevertheless.

Kind regards,

Paul
>

[2]: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/38221

Revoke of Gerrit privileges and asking to fork (was: Gerrit etiquette)

[Kyösti Mälkki]

On Sun, Feb 2, 2020 at 2:40 PM Paul Menzel  wrote:
> Thank you for the email, which I am pretty sad about to hear. For such a
> drastic measure, I really want to know about more details, as otherwise
> it’s just accusation.

Paul,

Let's just move on. The outcome is what was expected and my English is
too good for me to try to hide behind a language barrier.

I cannot share the details of the discussions, nor does the leadership
have some of the details from my side.

Kyösti

Revoke of Gerrit privileges and asking to fork (was: Gerrit etiquette)

[David Hendricks]

Hi Paul,
> [Your plain text email part of the mail is strangely indented.]

Thanks for pointing that out. I use my coreboot.org e-mail address sparingly and it seems there were some minor issues in how I was using the webmail client. Let's see if this message shows up better...
> Who is the current coreboot leadership? How many of those voted, and
>
> what was the result?

It's currently Stefan, Werner, and myself. When things blew up in the patch you cited we started an e-mail thread to discuss what was to be done, and we agreed that rules/guidelines need to be enforced.

We tried to reach a consensus quickly, taking into account timezone differences, then discussed the issue in the leadership meeting on Jan. 29 and followed-up with an e-mail to the list (a poorly formatted one - sorry).

The project structure was put into place when coreboot joined the Software Freedom Conservancy, and is described in the following PDF (note: I stepped in when Marc Jones withdrew): 
https://www.coreboot.org/images/b/b4/Coreboot_and_the_Software_Freedom_Conse...
> Which comment violated the guidelines? I guess it’s about change-set
>
> [2]? Reading the comments, and considering, that English is not the
> mother tongue of some participants, and reading an apology, I’d really
> like to know what Gerrit guide lines were violated.
> Why did the coreboot leadership not step in earlier to avoid further
>
> escalation despite being added early on as reviewer so was made aware of
> the discussion?

Although the patch is what spurred action in this case, what happened was the result of tensions that had built up over several months. I think this is generally true of past incidents as well - Frustration builds and people eventually burn out or lose their temper.

coreboot is a highly active project and we have a large, global community. It is practically impossible for a small handful of people with day jobs to monitor every interaction and Gerrit comment.

That said, there is room for improvement in our guidelines and earlier intervention. We obviously don't like losing developers, so waiting for things to explode is not a viable path forward. I hope we can reach a better understanding of the underlying issues and develop guidelines to avoid the build-up of tensions we saw here. The "Workflows and Guidelines" thread is a good start.
> Hopefully, there will be an amicable outcome nevertheless.

For sure! If this were about some troll who just showed up then dealing with the problem and moving on would be easy. Dealing with the fallout in this case will take a lot more time and effort but I hope we can eventually be whole again.