[Aptitude-devel] Request to ctte about administration of aptitude project -- was Re: Processed: Unmark changes that are no longer pending

Sun Jun 1 15:17:58 UTC 2014

Hi,

Just for reference, the fixes marked as pending in the bugs in the email
below that you are unmarking, are not commited to the repository because
you removed access permissions from me months ago and did not restore
them yet after several requests, not because I don't have them applied
locally and plan to upload them in next uploads of the package.

I am still waiting for you to grant me permissions to commit again.

BTW, Daniel, you did not push anything to the repository in more than 2
months now (last commits: 2014-03-22), and also didn't push anything
significant in the 3 months since you kicked me out of the aptitude
project in Alioth.  Even if you have made any improvements in private,
they should not be kept private, as requested since long ago and not
only by me.

So you keep acting in an unproductive way for the project and Debian in
general, and since you don't want to agree to anything and only follow
your own will, I am going to attempt something a bit more radical.  I
didn't want to do because it is bad for everybody initially (hopefully
better for the long term survival of aptitude), but you didn't leave me
any other alternative other than me staying silent, which also is bad
for everybody but for you.

@ctte, tl;dr:

Can you please tell me what's the best way (if asking a formal
resolution from the ctte, or what other ways do I have available) to
request that I am restored my admin status on aptitude project in
Alioth, and Daniel gets the admin permissions removed?

Daniel Hartwig asked Alioth admins to grant him admin permissions in the
project just to remove me immediately (in early March), after more than
one year (since late 2012) of him keeping the development of aptitude in
a stand-still, which I picked it up again in January this year.

The reason was because he did not like the changes that I was doing to
aptitude (mostly fixes to existing bug reports, no radical new
developments), and without agreement from anybody but him he kicked me
out of the project (even plain member status) 3 months ago, so I cannot
commit to the repository.

After several requests, 3 months after that, nothing much has changed.

--

Background: Daniel Burrows, the creator of aptitude and maintainer for a
decade or more, stopped being active in mid 2011, and soon after that
(Nov 2011 or so) both Hartwig and I took over, because Christian Perrier
and other people gave us member permissions immediately and without any
restriction to do as we pleased -- when we did not even know if Daniel
Burrows would eventually return.

Soon after that, in Feb 2012 or so, because of similar clashes (Hartwig
complaining about every other change that I made for one reason or
another, with multiple private messages and very silly details
sometimes) I retired to the background, thinking that it would be better
overall for the project.  (I would be very happy if projects that I
consider important/critical ran fine, and I didn't feel the need to be
involved -- and I would be also be very happy if somebody else was
taking good care of aptitude right now, I would stop again being
involved).

When we took over, the pace of development was good for a while, Nov
2011 to Feb 2012 when we both were active, and then after I retired to
the backstage relatively steady until Nov 2012 (although not very much
after June 2012) when Daniel Hartwig keeped the development active.

But, since Daniel Burrows left, the development of aptitude was only
really active during one year or so.  After Nov 2012, everything stopped
to a stand-still, with only a handful of commits in the first half of
2013 (including people NMUing the package in 2013 due to lack of
response, and no reaction after that).  Seeing the situation of complete
absence of maintainance activity for more than 6 months, I started to
participate again to continue development in early 2014.

When I started picking up development again in Jan 2014 and after more
than 6 months of complete silence or work in code or BTS, Daniel Hartwig
soon started to complain again about minor details of my activities, to
remove commits from me, to undo changes in the BTS that I had done
(changing ownership of bugs from me to him, unmarking as pending, etc,
as he's doing now in the email below), and to act aggressively in
general without feeling the need to explain anything.  Déjà vu of what
happened in 2012.  This time I was doing mostly fixes to existing bug
reports, and not any significant new features or any significant new
development, and I was going to integrate changes from other branches
which had not been developed for 1.5 years, so they would not be lost
completely.

Part of Daniel Hartwig's complaints were that some of these new features
(mostly or all his) were being still developed, but slowley and in
private, and that my changes were going to cause problems for him
integrating.  I stopped doing anything but trivial fixes to bug reports,
but nothing helped, and Hartwig kept complaining for one reason or
another about minor details.  Months after that, what he promissed that
would be integrated in 2/4 weeks, is still nowhere to be found in the
public repo of aptitude.

After many discussions and Axel Beckert trying to mediate in several of
them, as I said above, at some point in late February or March, Daniel
Hartwig asked Alioth admins to grant him admin permissions in the
project (Alioth admins did, because he was a legit contributor and in
principle they didn't have any reason not to), just to remove me
immediately, because he did not like the changes that I was doing to
aptitude, and without agreement from anybody but him (Axel and some
users in the mailing list complained about it) he kicked me out of the
project (even member status) 3 months ago.

The project has been in a stand-still again since he kicked me, except
for pushing some changes in early march about the same time, that were
actually developments from these old branches which he was trying to
integrate and release in unstable.

Over the history of the projects after Daniel Burrows stopped, there
were many good bugs fixes and minor internal rewrites of some areas, but
nobody made any really significant improvements to aptitude in terms of
radical improvements or new features.  Still, Daniel Hartwig believes
that he's a long standing maintainer, and that's why he acts as he does.
I dispute that fact, because it's not been maintainer for long (scarcely
1 year of real activity) and not for a long time, because he stopped
doing effective maintainance for 1.5 years now, except the few weeks of
minor activity around the time when I resumed development.

I do not believe that the current situation is good for Debian, and I
don't think that these attitudes should be tolerated among fellow
developers.  Thus this request.

Keeping him as member and contributing is completely fine for me; admin
is also fine as long as somebody takes the responsibility for acting
*immediately* if he starts doing the same things again (with me or
somebody else).  I also think that it would be good if other people also
contributed to this important project.

What I am not happy is for Daniel to act as the sole person to decide
who should collaborate or not, or how, because by doing this he's been
preventing collaboration and development of aptitude.  Also, as a Debian
member, I do not trust him to be a good project admin or maintainer of
the project, when he acts in these arrogant and whimsical ways, keeps
development in private (or claims to, the outcome of his private
development seems to be very meagre, if exists at all), and because he's
IMO completely unjustified in setting himself in this managerial
position in aptitude, when been inactive for more time that he's been
active, the total time of activity is about 1 year, and the project was
not of his own creation, to start with.

Finally, some pointers...

Removing my permissions:

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/aptitude-devel/2014-March/004371.html

Hartwig complaining about my commits and wanting to act as boss after 1+
year of inactivity (and less than 1 of activity):

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/aptitude-devel/2014-February/004139.html

Uploading to mentors (when both Axel and me can sponsor, and I had made
a few releases on my own earlier this year) a release without any
consensus or discussion at all, just to mark the territory, when I was
still working actively and wanted to fix some more issues:

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/aptitude-devel/2014-February/004265.html

I can provide more information as required, but this is already quite
long.  It will maybe take me a bit to reply or limit my replies to only
one or two messages per day, I am a bit busy at the moment.

Cheers.
--
Manuel

2014-06-01 12:57 Debian Bug Tracking System:
>Processing commands for control at bugs.debian.org:
>
>> noowner 647474
>Bug #647474 [aptitude] aptitude: When piping, stdout doesn't include "RECOMMENDED but will not be installed"
>Bug #587676 [aptitude] --give-me-the-same-output-even-though-you-think-i-am-not-on-a-terminal
>Bug #720074 [aptitude] aptitude: Can not redirect part of information of aptitude
>Removed annotation that Bug was owned by "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>.
>Removed annotation that Bug was owned by "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>.
>Removed annotation that Bug was owned by "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>.
>> tags 647474 - pending
>Bug #647474 [aptitude] aptitude: When piping, stdout doesn't include "RECOMMENDED but will not be installed"
>Bug #587676 [aptitude] --give-me-the-same-output-even-though-you-think-i-am-not-on-a-terminal
>Bug #720074 [aptitude] aptitude: Can not redirect part of information of aptitude
>Removed tag(s) pending.
>Removed tag(s) pending.
>Removed tag(s) pending.
>> # Using XDG_CACHE_DIR is complicated by su, sudo interaction.
>> tags 671780 - pending
>Bug #671780 [aptitude] Please move ~/.aptitude/cache to $XDG_CACHE_HOME (default ~/.cache)
>Removed tag(s) pending.
>>
>End of message, stopping processing here.
>
>Please contact me if you need assistance.
>-- 
>587676: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=587676
>647474: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=647474
>671780: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=671780
>720074: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720074
>Debian Bug Tracking System
>Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems
>
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