The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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on project leadership

I'm somewhat calmed down from yesterday. I really let loose, sorry.
It's not really like me, it's something I've avoided in general and
not exhibited here in three years, but I think anyone has their limits,
and mine have been exceeded.

I think Michael's analysis is pretty accurate. It became clear quite
some time ago that I wasn't being supported in even the smallest and
most trivial matters. I attempted to create a board of directors to
help with that, but the board has not been successful. Ian Murdock
feels he's not been forceful enough as chairman, but it's not only his
problem. It's mostly that every member has their idea of how things
should be done, and few of them are willing to give much on their
positions. We can't really run an organization that way.

I don't know at this point if I should leave things in charge of the
board or attempt to bull through my current annoyance and get everybody
moving in one direction again. I'd feel more confident if I felt the
board was ready for the job. While they are sincere people and good
programmers, as a board they haven't shown much capability for
leadership yet. This has left me holding all of the strings for much
too long now. Maybe they'll take this is a cue to get their act together.

Look, guys, this organization isn't going to work the way it is now.
Even if it can't ever be run like a business, it should at least be run
like a volunteer organization. Right now, it's more like herding cats.

	Bruce

Michael Meskes:
> Bruce knows better than I do what happened, but let me take a shot at
> describing the situation.
> 
> I) It's really tough being a leader.  Leaders reap obvious benefits, but
> they also get knocked around a lot, sometimes fairly, sometimes
> unfairly.
> II) It's even tougher being a leader for a bunch of people with good
> tech skills, where "communication skill" is pretty optional
> III) It's tougher still being a leader for a bunch of active
> antiestablishmentarians
> 
> Folks, we keep saying we need Bruce as a leader, but then we don't let
> him lead.
> 
> There was the CD-ROM thing.  There was the RC5 thing.  There was even
> the gated thing.  I'm pretty sure there were more.
> 
> Honestly, if we can't preserve a decent relationship with a good leader,
> the group perhaps doesn't deserve to HAVE a good leader.  It isn't
> quite enough to say "I didn't do anything to him."  You also need to
> back him up when people start jumping on his case for doing what he was
> elected to do.  That's more true for debian than most things,
> because...   folks on the net just tend to disagree pretty brashly.
> 
> Bruce, I imagine some things are really stinging right now.   I think it
> was a very good suggestion: to take off a week, and then re-evaluate.
> I personally think debian has been greatly better off for your
> leadership, whether we've (collectively) managed to show that or not.
> I sincerely hope you'll at least find yourself feeling comfortable with
> remaining on the BoD, but I'd personally prefer it (greatly) if you
> remained our leader.
--
Bruce Perens K6BP   Bruce@Pixar.com   510-215-3502
Finger bruce@master.Debian.org for PGP public key.
PGP fingerprint = 88 6A 15 D0 65 D4 A3 A6  1F 89 6A 76 95 24 87 B3