Subject: APPEAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE/INVESTMENT - msg#00071

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Re: Disputes between developers - draft guidelines

>>"Ian" == Ian Jackson <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: Ian> I disapprove of the `wontfix' tag, in principle. It seems to me that Ian> there are three possible relevant situations: Ian> * There is a deficiency in the package, but perhaps the maintainer Ian> does not have time or expertise to fix it. The bug should remain Ian> open, maybe with `help'. Not a candidate for th wontfix tag. Ian> * There is no deficiency in the package. The bug should be closed. Also not a candidat. Ian> * The question is currently disputed. `wontfix' is not an appropriate Ian> tag here, since it implies a decisive outcome, rather than an Ian> ongoing process [1]. I wouldn't mind `disputed' tag; that would Ian> indicate the need for continuing discussion. No, the dispute resolution process has collapsed; and th person who does the work has determined that th bug shall not be acted upon. Disputed implies progress may still be made; wontfix means I WONT FIX THIS. There is a difference. Ian> Note that the BTS is not a good place to document commonly reported Ian> mistaken (or controversial) bugs. That should be done in package Ian> documentation in the usual way. If this is done correctly then Ian> repeated _useless_ bug reports should be generally avoidable - Ian> although you can reasonably expect (and indeed it would be Ian> appropriate for) people to file new reports if they have substantial Ian> new arguments etc. Utopia. In practice, if some idiot out there is ropening bugs, and there is no common ground, wontfix is a statement of intent. Ian> Be flexible; try to avoid categorical statements such as `I Ian> will never implement that'. There is no shame in being Ian> convinced, by good arguments, to change your mind, even if you Ian> have just been vigorously propounding the opposite view ! Oh, Jesus. manoj -- "Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are thousands of underground publications, a legal independent Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor. There is literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great cost by the Poles since 1944. David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a gateway from EARN (European Academic Research Network) to Poland Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@xxxxxxxxxx> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/> 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

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APPEAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE/INVESTMENT

FROM:DR.VICTOR PETERS TELEPHONE:-234-803-315-7926 FAX:-234-1-7592821 CHIEF FINANCIAL DIRECTOR INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION (INEC) LAGOS NIGERIA ATTENTION:-Sir, It is my warmest pleasure writing you this confidential business offer irrespective of the fact that we have not met before or done any thing that will re-impose absolute confidence but nevertheless,an adage says a day begins a story and it is in line of this strong perspective that I am very determined to communicate you with much conviction that you will give my proposal a second thought and consideration. As earlier stated I am Dr. Victor Peters a financial director working with Inec. My Agency is in charge of conducting all elections in my country Nigeria and by the virtue of my unique position in office as the Chief financial director. I was elevated by the commission to become the chairman of foreign contract tender board committee whose responsibility is to award and supervise foreign contract to ensure it is executed promptly. Consequently, I the chairman of the tender board committee in collaboration with two other top committee members over- invoice certain contract for the supply of electoral equipments needed for theforth-coming elections approaching around August 2003. The initial cost of the contract was pegged at US$50 million, but after the feasibility study was done, while submitting my report to the office of the presidency for final approval, we deliberately inflated the cost to an excess amount of US$ 30 million making the cost to be US$ 80 million. Right now, the gist of contacting you is we are constrained to claim the fund due to certain laws enacted by the government guiding civil service code of conduct Bureau which prohibits top civil servants working under Government establishment from operating offshore or foreign Account and this situation has kept us in a fix to openly come forward to claim the outstanding balance of US$30 million, hence after series of private meetings we decided to make contactin order to get a reliable foreign partner whom we will forward his or her credentials to claim the fund based on mutual trust and agreement. In a nutshell, we need your assistance and support to claim this fund so that at the later time convenient for us, we will come over to your country after the funds have been transferred to meet you and collect our own percentage while you will keep the rest as yours. For your support and total dedication to realize the objectives of this operation, you shall be entitled to 20% of the sum total, 5% for misslaneous expense like telephone bill, while 75% of the fund belongs to the three officials involved in the deal. Note, you are vividly assured that you will not be subjected to any kind of risk for your support and involvement in this venture hence we have piloted a good strategy to ensure the operations goes smoothly of which we have targeted two weeks duration to accomplished our Aim. Kindly treat this matter Absolutely confidential because the officials involved are still in service and some of us intend to resign our appointment immediately after the transaction is finalized. I look forward to hearing positively from you while further details will be given as soon as I get your response. Best Regards DR. VICTOR PETERS

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Disputes between developers - draft guidelines

I've noticed, mainly due to getting closer to disputes due to greater tech-ctte activity, that some disputes are getting really quite dysfunctional. So, I wrote the draft below. Let me know what you think. If people like it we can post it to d-d-a and I'll write it up for a web page, or we can put it in the developers' reference, or something. Ian. DISPUTES BETWEEN DEVELOPERS A *DRAFT* joint recommendation of the the Technical Committee, the Project Leader and the Bug Tracking System Administrators. 1. Motivation Debian is a very large project. We will inevitably disagree, and occasionally get annoyed with each other. To allow us to work well together a bit of give and take is needed, and we must be willing willing to present coherent reasons for our views, and to listen to and engage with counterarguments. This document gives some general advice about friendly interaction. It also says what you can do when this fails - if you are having problems working well with another Developer, or if despite talking to them constructively you cannot agree. 2. Distinguish flameage from technical disputes and procedural errors Distinguish problems working constructively due to an interpersonal dispute (`not getting along'), from technical disagreements about how software should work, or procedural disagreements about whether some particular thing should or should not be done. For Debian to be able to construct good software, we must be able to disagree with the way something is done or proposed in a constructive and useful way. The best designs result when all the issues have been considered. Useful technical discussions can become derailed by flameage. To help avoid this, please phrase your technical disagreements moderately. If you receive a heated complaint about some technical matter please try to respond to the technical, not emotional, content ! 3. Interpersonal behaviour If you are having problems getting along with another developer, firstly consider whether there's anything you can do to try to improve the situation. Send only moderate, reasonable messages; offer to talk in some other way, perhaps even by phone (it's much easier to give offence accidentally by email or on IRC than on the phone). Check that there is some purpose to continuing the dispute besides trying to extract an apology. If you just want an apology, and aren't getting it, then you will probably just have to put it down to experience and move on. Some people - particularly expert programmers! - are just a bit difficult, and it's usually best just to put up with them. If it's a technical dispute, try to talk only about the technical questions at issue. Avoid complaining to the other Developer that they are being unhelpful; that'll turn the conversation into a slanging match. If you really can't engage helpfully, for example because the other Developer refuses constructive discussion, you can refer the question to the Technical Committee (including, possibly, reassigning a bug report to them) or the Project Leadership. If you do this, be prepared to be told to go away and grow up ! 4. Procedural mistakes and disagreements The Project has many rules and conventions, written and unwritten, about when certain actions are appropriate and are inappropriate. For example, sending a non-maintainer-upload of another Developer's package, closing and reopening a bug report, and forwarding mail from one place to another, are all sometimes appropriate but sometimes not. If you feel another Developer has erred, by failing to go about things in the right way, you should of course tell them about it. But, please try to make your message helpful and friendly. Probably they didn't know about the rule in question, or understand it differently. If you can refer the other Developer to some documentation saying when they should and should not do something, do so. If the other Developer disagrees, you should seek guidance from the wider Project, so that everyone has the same ideas of how things are supposed to work. In the end, if a firm decision needs to be made, the Project Leadership will have to decide. If a Developer persistently flouts the Project's rules - written or unwritten - then you should consult the Project Leadership for advice; the Project Leadership will, if appropriate, warn them about their behavour, and in extreme cases may seek the Developers' expulsion. 5. Technical disagreements Most disagreements in the Project are technical; this is good. The vast majority are useful, and can be resolved by constructive discussion where all aspects of the problem are considered. All Developers should participate constructively in technical discussions where necessary. When you're short of time you should reduce the quantity, not the quality, of your contributions. Be flexible; try to avoid categorical statements such as `I will never implement that'. There is no shame in being convinced, by good arguments, to change your mind, even if you have just been vigorously propounding the opposite view ! In the case of a tradeoff between one good property and another, there are often value judgements to be made; these value judgements are usually best made by package maintainers, and other developers should allow the maintainer of a package some leeway. If discussing the issue with all the relevant people hasn't produced a conclusion and doesn't look like it will, the Technical Committee can decide. You can refer it to the Committee in the form of a bug report - see below; sending a summary of the situation to the Committee would be very helpful, too. 6. Bug report etiquette Sometimes bugs are reported inappropriately; likewise, sometimes maintainers close bug reports inappropriately. Bug reports are `todo list' items for the whole Project; they should be closed when there is rough consensus that the whole system is working as well as it could. For example, here are some examples of situations where a bug report should not be closed: * The bug was reported against A, reassigned to B, but the maintainer of B feels that B is working correctly (and by implication that the bug is in A). The maintainers should talk about it to decide which package needs to change, without closing the bug until it's fixed. * The bug was reported; the maintainer felt immediately that it was a spurious bug report of some kind, and closed it, but the submitter disagrees with the explanation and has reopened the report for discussion. The matter should be debated until both Developers are happy. While a situation is being discussed, any relevant bug report(s) should remain open. If a package maintainer closes your bug report, you may reopen it if you wish to continue the discussion. At no other time should you play `bug report tag' with anyone else. If someone makes a change to a bug report status which you disagree with you should *discuss* the matter with them but *not* immediately undo their action in the BTS, except to reopen the bug to stop it getting lost. If you are unable to reach a conclusion through constructive discussion, you should ask for outside help with resolving your dispute, as outlined above. Note that while the Technical Committee is also happy to help resolve disputes over individual bug reports, you should not refer a matter to the Committee until you have tried to explore the issue yourselves. When this has been done, the bug report logs should contain detailed description of the problem and records of your discussions, and you may then reassign the bug report to the pseudo-package `tech-ctte'. For more information about the committee, see http://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte. -- Ian Jackson, at home. Local/personal: ijackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/

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APPEAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE/INVESTMENT

FROM:DR.VICTOR PETERS TELEPHONE:-234-803-315-7926 FAX:-234-1-7592821 CHIEF FINANCIAL DIRECTOR INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION (INEC) LAGOS NIGERIA ATTENTION:-Sir, It is my warmest pleasure writing you this confidential business offer irrespective of the fact that we have not met before or done any thing that will re-impose absolute confidence but nevertheless,an adage says a day begins a story and it is in line of this strong perspective that I am very determined to communicate you with much conviction that you will give my proposal a second thought and consideration. As earlier stated I am Dr. Victor Peters a financial director working with Inec. My Agency is in charge of conducting all elections in my country Nigeria and by the virtue of my unique position in office as the Chief financial director. I was elevated by the commission to become the chairman of foreign contract tender board committee whose responsibility is to award and supervise foreign contract to ensure it is executed promptly. Consequently, I the chairman of the tender board committee in collaboration with two other top committee members over- invoice certain contract for the supply of electoral equipments needed for theforth-coming elections approaching around August 2003. The initial cost of the contract was pegged at US$50 million, but after the feasibility study was done, while submitting my report to the office of the presidency for final approval, we deliberately inflated the cost to an excess amount of US$ 30 million making the cost to be US$ 80 million. Right now, the gist of contacting you is we are constrained to claim the fund due to certain laws enacted by the government guiding civil service code of conduct Bureau which prohibits top civil servants working under Government establishment from operating offshore or foreign Account and this situation has kept us in a fix to openly come forward to claim the outstanding balance of US$30 million, hence after series of private meetings we decided to make contactin order to get a reliable foreign partner whom we will forward his or her credentials to claim the fund based on mutual trust and agreement. In a nutshell, we need your assistance and support to claim this fund so that at the later time convenient for us, we will come over to your country after the funds have been transferred to meet you and collect our own percentage while you will keep the rest as yours. For your support and total dedication to realize the objectives of this operation, you shall be entitled to 20% of the sum total, 5% for misslaneous expense like telephone bill, while 75% of the fund belongs to the three officials involved in the deal. Note, you are vividly assured that you will not be subjected to any kind of risk for your support and involvement in this venture hence we have piloted a good strategy to ensure the operations goes smoothly of which we have targeted two weeks duration to accomplished our Aim. Kindly treat this matter Absolutely confidential because the officials involved are still in service and some of us intend to resign our appointment immediately after the transaction is finalized. I look forward to hearing positively from you while further details will be given as soon as I get your response. Best Regards DR. VICTOR PETERS