Quoting Obey Arthur Liu (arthur@milliways.fr):

> > (That said, THANKS!!!! for doing it, I imagine it's quite a bit of work and
> > I share your enthusiasm that it looks like many of the students will stay
> > with Debian even after the GSoC projects are "finished".)
>
> Thanks. We all hope they (you students!) do.


Yes. Thanks for the work you did for the GSOC this year, and the year
before, Arthur.

I think that these GSOC years have been a great success for Debian and
already gave great results, at least for the parts I witnessed in the
respective development lists (the two d-i releated projects, and
developments for apt and aptitude).

You really deserve tons of thanks for your work *including the report
you posted*. Without all this work, there wouldn't have been any GSOC
in Debian this year: I hope that many people in the project are aware
of this. And I certainly don't want to see you discouraged by an
inappropriate followup.

Quoting Filipus Klutiero (chealer@gmail.com):

> I must still thank you for sending a report. My first reaction was
> "Finally", I am just disappointed by the content.

I am disappointed by your followup and insistance.

To make it clear (sorry readers, you'll need a translation tool but I
need to use the words I want to use and not my usual approximative English),
let's do this in my native language which you do read as well as Arthur:

Je suis extrêmement en colère, Philippe, et c'est rare. Je trouve tes
messages dans ce fil de discussion totalement déplacés . Tu voudrais
démotiver un de nos meilleurs contributeurs que tu ne t'y prendrais
pas mieux.

Or, en plusieurs années de GSOC, je ne t'ai jamais vu participer à
celui-ci. J'espère donc qu'Arthur notamment saura faire la part des
choses et laisser tes commentaires à la place qu'ils n'auraient jamais
du quitter.

Je n'aime pas être en colère en public, mais je pense que là tu as
dépassé les bornes. Le travail du GSOC cette année a été un des plus
productifs pour Debian et Arthur a pris grand soin de
tenir le projet au courant. Il s'est notamment dépensé sans compter
son temps pour que les étudiants participent à Debconf et utilisent
cette occasion unique de parler de leur travaux. Et....ceux qui
étaient là à DC10....le savent très bien.

Aller suggérer un manque de transparence ou de la négligence est
insultant.

(no need to send private answers or IRC queries, they'll be ignored)

Hi,

On Freitag, 24. September 2010, Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Quoting Obey Arthur Liu (arthur@milliways.fr):
> > > (That said, THANKS!!!! for doing it, I imagine it's quite a bit of work
> > > and I share your enthusiasm that it looks like many of the students
> > > will stay with Debian even after the GSoC projects are "finished".)
> >
> > Thanks. We all hope they (you students!) do.
>
> Yes. Thanks for the work you did for the GSOC this year, and the year
> before, Arthur.
>
> I think that these GSOC years have been a great success for Debian and
> already gave great results, at least for the parts I witnessed in the
> respective development lists (the two d-i releated projects, and
> developments for apt and aptitude).
>
> You really deserve tons of thanks for your work *including the report
> you posted*. Without all this work, there wouldn't have been any GSOC
> in Debian this year: I hope that many people in the project are aware
> of this. And I certainly don't want to see you discouraged by an
> inappropriate followup.

Indeed, thanks Arthur and all others who did actual work on GSoC! And thanks
to Christian too, for finding proper words.


cheers,
Holger

Christian PERRIER writes ("Re: Re: Google Summer of Code 2010 Debian Report"):
> Aller suggérer un manque de transparence ou de la négligence est
> insultant.

I disagree, at least about transparency.

I think it is entirely appropriate to comment on a lack of
transparency (or to "suggest a lack of transparency", as you put it).

I don't have an opinion about the GSOC. I agree that Filipus's
messages could be more tactful, but it is not appropriate to react to
criticism of a lack of information by becoming defensive.

Ian.


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On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 03:36:03PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I don't have an opinion about the GSOC. I agree that Filipus's
> messages could be more tactful, but it is not appropriate to react to
> criticism of a lack of information by becoming defensive.

Let's be reasonable. We're all volunteer and Arthur, as others, has
volunteered his own work for the past 3(?) GSoC editions as a Debian
admin. I've been doing that too in the past and I can guarantee that it
is quite some work. My work back then could have been way better than
what it was, with Steve having to cover up for me way more than I
initially expected. Probably, Arthur's work could have been better too,
as there's often margin for improvements.

Criticism is welcome, as it's the first step to understand there's
something that should be improved. However, among volunteers, criticism
is much easier to receive (and hence useful!) when it's accompanied by
an offer for help. Criticism without such an offer might be useful too,
but usually needs a higher dose of tact. This is not because we "have to
be friends" but rather because, pragmatically, it maximizes the chances
that the criticism will have any useful effect.

Cheers.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Caposella .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams

Quoting Ian Jackson (ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk):
> Christian PERRIER writes ("Re: Re: Google Summer of Code 2010 Debian Report"):
> > Aller suggérer un manque de transparence ou de la négligence est
> > insultant.
>
> I disagree, at least about transparency.
>
> I think it is entirely appropriate to comment on a lack of
> transparency (or to "suggest a lack of transparency", as you put it).

If there is lack of transpaency, maybe. But that's just not true. This
is what I meant.

Quoting Filipus Klutiero (chealer@gmail.com):

> I must still thank you for sending a report. My first reaction was
> "Finally", I am just disappointed by the content.

I am disappointed by your followup and insistance.

To make it clear (sorry readers, you'll need a translation tool but I
need to use the words I want to use and not my usual approximative English),
let's do this in my native language which you do read as well as Arthur:

Je suis extrêmement en colère, Philippe, et c'est rare. Je trouve tes
messages dans ce fil de discussion totalement déplacés . Tu voudrais
démotiver un de nos meilleurs contributeurs que tu ne t'y prendrais
pas mieux.
I see you're in anger and reject some of my comments. I'm sorry, I can't
do much, but to promise I'll take note of your comments if you explain
exactly what maddens you.
It seems this is basically what angers you: "I almost feel ashamed to
see how modest the results have been so far"
Don't forget I immediately followed that by: "Note that I have not
extensively monitored the SoC. The results may be greater than I
imagine, but this is worryingly non-obvious."

Or, en plusieurs années de GSOC, je ne t'ai jamais vu participer à
celui-ci. J'espère donc qu'Arthur notamment saura faire la part des
choses et laisser tes commentaires à la place qu'ils n'auraient jamais
du quitter.
I did participate in the Debian SoC, and offered myself to take a
prominent role more than once. Unfortunately things outside my control
prevented me to enroll.

Je n'aime pas être en colère en public, mais je pense que là tu as
dépassé les bornes. Le travail du GSOC cette année a été un des plus
productifs pour Debian et Arthur a pris grand soin de
tenir le projet au courant. Il s'est notamment dépensé sans compter
son temps pour que les étudiants participent à Debconf et utilisent
cette occasion unique de parler de leur travaux. Et....ceux qui
étaient là à DC10....le savent très bien.
I was not at DebConf, and only watched a few talks. So it's possible I
just missed something. I don't know what happened at DebConf, but if you
say Arthur put a lot of effort in promoting the SoC results, I guess
there was too much emphasis on DebConf, and too little done outside.
Keep in mind most Debian contributors don't attend DebConf.

Aller suggérer un manque de transparence ou de la négligence est
insultant.

I'll rewind and explain how I came to intervene in a concise way:

For several years, I consider the SoC management poor, and I've given
signs that more transparency would be welcome at times. But this is a
volunteer project, so we can't complain for a lack of transparency, we
should be happy some work is done in the first place, right? Well,
Google does give 5000 USD for management, so this is not entirely true,
but given the amount, let's ignore.


What does make me fairly angry is to read a "Google Summer of Code 2010
Debian Report", with some elementary issues, calling our 2010 GSoC the
fourth when it was the fifth and announcing reports on 8 successful
projects but only presenting 7. No link in the mail explains what
happened to the 2 unsuccessful projects. Most importantly, even in the 7
projects described, most don't have a single word on the results, but
rather impressions on DebConf 2010 which are quite offtopic on d-d-a.
And all that proeminently sent to d-d-a, with a slightly optimistic tone
that seems to send the project the message "We're doing fine!".


Then, when 2 readers write very nice mails pointing out one of these
issues, what do I see in the answer?

don't worry
That makes me angry. I wouldn't care about transparency if I was seeing
GSoC results, but as I said, I'm not satisfied by the little I see, so I
do not have enough trust to accept being just told to not worry. If your
team has neither good performance nor transparency, at least don't act
as if things were fine.


If I'm suggesting a lack of transparency or negligence, please don't
take this as an insult, but as a challenge. Nothing here is personal,
Arthur is not the only one involved in the SoC, and the goal is to make
sure future SoC-s will also be "even" better.



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