Open sore on Planet GNOME

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 28 April 2008 22:15

Opinion and Analysis

Nothing happened in October. On November 26, a bombshell was dropped by senior developer Murray Cumming, who, in a post about candidates for the Foundation board, squarely took aim at Waugh. And while some saw the post as overtly personal, Cumming had specific complaints against Waugh which he ventilated in detail. He saw the same attitude which Waugh brought to Planet GNOME being duplicated all over the project, "the release team, the web team, the Gnome mobile group, the marketing team, and his management of Planet GNOME."

"Jeff Waugh’s only aim is self-publicity and any responsibilities in GNOME are just a way to achieve that," he wrote.

Strangely, when Waugh responded to this post, using his own blog as the medium, he did not refute any of Cumming's specifics - in fact, he acknowledged that there was some truth in the accusations. He then tried to paint Cumming's entire post as a personal attack and solicit sympathy.

The issue of administration of GNOME Planet was raised on the mailing list two days later - November 28 - by Mena Quintero, who asked if there had been any progress on the drafting of guidelines. He also pointed out that Neary's suggestion about having a second person with full editorial control of the Planet was worth discussing. And he offered to be the co-maintainer.

Waugh did not respond until December 14 and, when he did, there was no mention of documenting the guidelines: "I've spoken to potential maintainership team members who already have direct experience with pgo maintenance, and have been working on sucking guidelines out of my head and into publishable form. What you're asking for is already on the way."

When Mena Quintero tried to push the issue, asking 'Who's on the "potential maintainership team' for PGO, so that we may inquire them (sic) about the progress?", Waugh got a bit ratty, writing: "Sorry, but I'm not going to get caught up in pointless crap like this. Some folks may think it's okay to treat me differently as a result of attempted character assassination, but you should know better Federico. I've already said - before your emails and after them - that I'm writing down the guidelines and will have a maintainership team in order to resolve the minor maintenance issues with Planet GNOME. The potential co-maintainers have already had experience doing so, and were asked months ago."

Later in the same thread, Mena Quintero wrote: "I just find it funny that this (the drafting of guidelines) has been going on since September. That's three months to write a few guidelines and give the OK to some co-maintainers. So either the list of guidelines is horribly long, or the co-maintainers are not doing their job. I'd like to know who they are, if you please, so that I can help :)."

Since then there has been no discussion about the administration of the Planet on this mailing list. After 15 months, there are no guidelines for the Planet. There is a list of do's and don'ts for the hackergotchis, period.

Until Dawes ventilated his grievances nine days ago, there has been silence both on the mailing list and on the Planet about what obviously is a festering sore.

The irony? If you ask anyone involved in an open source or free software project how it operates, they will insist that it operates as a meritocracy and that the cream rises to the top!