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

[darxus at chaosreigns.com]

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