Comments for Open sore on Planet GNOME at http://www.itwire.com , comment 1 to 15 out of 15 comments http://www.itwire.com Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:46:48 -0600 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-10028 I think this article is pretty on the spot, not "petty" or due to an "ax-grinding" wish. This Waugh guy is a problem for the Gnome community of developers, and as such he's a problem for Gnome users: I sure don't like titles like "open sores in Gnome" but surely you can't sweep the dirt under the carpet and hope for the best either. Jeff, please do the right thing: leave PGO maintenance to someone who is willing to actually do it, let devs get back to coding instead of wasting time with this kind of matters. GU - GNOME-user Fri, 02 May 2008 18:09:27 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9904 I like Jeff's reply to a claim of unprofessionalism. It clearly shows how professional he acts toward the community and public. But getting back tot he point, which Jeff just refuses to do, he seems to just want to divert any blame and avoid the problems, leaving them to be. He points to SVN logs as evidence that people do get added to Planet. What he fails to mention is that not everyone who asks to get added to planet, and deserves to, does not get added. The person I added, had sent several e-mails to Jeff asking to be added, with no reply, and after 18 months of silence, I felt it was appropriate to add him myself. As other primarily French speaking developers who have their blogs on Planet, his blog is also primarily in French. However, like those other developers, he has a GNOME specific category, which is primarily English. Of course, in the past week I've seen several posts on Planet, which have nothing to do with GNOME (US Economics in the Democratic Primaries), are in Portuguese, or are from a person who does not have an SVN account. So clearly, there is a lack of applied policy on the site. Though, perhaps not, as Jeff seems to be the only one who knows what the policy is. I also changed the nobody.png hakergotchi image which currently fails to comply with both the GPL2 and CC-By-SA 2.5 licenses, to a GPL only image directly from gnome-icon-theme, and that change was also reverted. Within the last 6 months that Jeff claims has been going smoothly, he's also updated the public site to an unstable version of the planet software, which caused several issues on the live site, in the process. Yeah, breaking a live site, and willfully failing to comply with license agreements for images used on the site, seems to be going quite smoothly to me too. - Rodney Dawes Thu, 01 May 2008 07:22:43 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9876 What's the bet that most of the comments in this thread are astroturfs from Sam and Jeff? ;) The fact is there's no one totally in the right here. Both Sam and Jeff have proven themselves to be recalcitrants. Jeff probably needs to be helped in or relieved of some of his GNOME duties. Sam has shown over many years (even while he was writing for Fairfax) that he holds an intense bias against GNOME, taking it out especially on Jeff and Miguel, but also occasionally on Ubuntu (being the leading GNOME-based distro). My advice to both of you: grow up. - nomdeplume Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:10:07 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9864 Ah, Sam's usual answer! Person who disagrees with him doesn't understand journalism, is unprofessional, must not understand English, etc. Hilarity. :-) - Jeff Waugh Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:56:45 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9863 This isn't a 'Jeff is too busy' problem. They guy plays favorites way too often and if you dare disagree with him, count yourself in the bad side column for life. He's got a god complex, is all too willing to abuse the power he's been given for negative things and he's a liar on a level you don't see from many. - Ricky Sha Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:54:51 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9862 Waugh is a jerk. A complete a$$. I wrote a program for GNOME that is still included with every distribution. Back when I was active with it, I had interaction with him and every one was miserable. Rather than make his points as a normal, rational person would, he would lash out and make personal attacks to defend the gibberish he was spewing. His involvement in GNOME led to my leaving the GNOME world and returning to Windows on the desktop. I still use linux exclusively on the server, but I don't want to be a part of a 'community' that calls him a leader. - Ricky Sha Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:49:22 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9860 Jeff Waugh's provision of facts is rather selective. He has not mentioned that the interview (for the link he provided) was solicited by him. I never asked him for anything on my own. Waugh saw this interview - http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/15/1042520666517.html - and then wrote to me at my personal email address (highly unprofessional behaviour considering he didn't know me at all - additionally there was an official email link to me at the bottom of the article for anyone who wished to respond) offering himself as an interview subject. He identified himself as the GNOME release manager, a member of the GNOME Foundation Board and president of the Sydney Linux Users' Group, apart from claiming to be an IT consultant specialising in free software. Let me quote part of what he wrote: "If you're looking for an interview subject sometime, or a response to this particular article, you're welcome to contact me." After that Waugh, a man who knows nothing about journalism even though he wears the title of "media spokesman" for the GNOME project, started complaining that he had been shafted. He has obviously never heard of the word chutzpah. And he's on a weak wicket trying to tie his rejection of questions about another issue to this article - the questions were rejected on April 28 at 4.44 pm (AEST) and this piece was filed on April 29 (AEST). There are no timestamps on our articles but if there were, it would be easy to see that this was filed at around 3.30am on April 29 (AEST) - that's when I get back from my regular job. If anyone thinks you can trawl through the entire mail archives of the GNOME foundation and then write 2000 words in that time, please be my guest. But then Waugh won't provide the little details - because that would have shown his argument to be worthless. - sam_varghese Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:44:03 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9854 @Linux FTW: Mostly because I'm comfortable defending others against Sam's idiocy, but feel somewhat conflicted defending myself (and thus, lending legitimacy to his ravings). Sam has a problem with GNOME, and uses Miguel and myself (among others) as a handy way to grind his axe. Plus, I'm not surprised to see a five page hit piece from Sam a couple of days after I rejected his combative interview questions about an entirely different issue (related to my work). :-) I'm sure you'll see the results of that in the coming week. Yay. With regards to the issue itself, there haven't been any real complaints for six months because maintenance has been humming along nicely. The "complaint" last week was from someone who had attempted to add a third party's feed to Planet GNOME. The third party wasn't a GNOME Foundation member, wasn't an SVN committer, usually blogged in French, and hadn't actually blogged about GNOME yet (they were planning to blog their thoughts about usability, and thought they should be on Planet GNOME so everyone could read them -- that's not what Planet GNOME is for). There was an attempt to paint this as lack of maintenance, and that Foundation members weren't being added. This is simply not the case, and you can see the evidence for yourself in the SVN repository. Yes, there's a governance issue that needs to be solved, but opinions differ as to how it should be done, and I haven't had a lot of time to sort that out. I'm very comfy taking the heat for that, but it needn't be misconstrued as something else. But then, it's not like this is unusual from Sam. :-) One can only ask questions. One can't dictate answers. -- Sam Varghese http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/21/1045638481419.html - Jeff Waugh Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:24:34 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9848 Obvious solution is to create a new GNOME community. What are ya waiting for?? - AdmFubar Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:25:10 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9836 Does GNOME have policies for potentially dealing with people that are getting in the way of progress? - PatrickH Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:28:53 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9834 Jeff seems to be too busy. He needs to be replaced for the good of the rest of the community. It shouldn't be this hard to replace or give extra hands to someone for their obvious negligence. Replace him, he's making too many people unhappy. - Gnome User Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:13:00 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9823 What are all these negative comments? Sam is just a journalist, who is telling it as he sees it. Ive read the story, it looks very clear cut to me - plenty of other people's legitimate complaints, all linked too. I've noticed that Jeff Waugh is quick to criticise Sam in other stories, but no word from Jeff this time. Where are you, Jeff? Do you have any response to the complaints, not from Sam, but Planet Gnome users? The complaints seem to stretch back for a very long time. Jeff was even quoted saying he's had 'Board' pressure. I wonder if, as a result of this article, a tiny bit more pressure will now be applied to Jeff Waugh. All I see from Jeff Waugh is deafening silence - just like the people who complained at Planet Gnome experienced, it seems. Jeff, will you respond, will you just say this is another 'personal attack' to try and distract from your own incomprehensible lack of action, or will you continue keeping silent? Linux FTW - Linux FTW Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:19:14 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9805 I've never met Jeff Waugh, I've read a lot of his opinion's over the years though, some of which I agree with and other's I don't. You don't like Jeff Sam? we get it. You don't like Gnome Sam, we get it, now why don't you get over it and behave like a grown up, perhaps there's still time to reclaim some credibility which at the moment you seem intent on throwing away. - Mark Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:06:51 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9780 Sam, this whole article is shamefully petty. This isn't news, this is an attack piece without any legitimate relevance. It hurts your credibility and makes me want to go elsewhere for open source news. - sp Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:10:13 -0600 http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17924/1090/#comment-9769 so did this guy kill your cat or reject your sexual advance or something? you write about him all the time as if thsi is news. surely there are more interesting things happening in open-source than FIVE pages on this? maybe you should get some counseling! im serious. - butbutbut Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:54:37 -0600