[maemo-community] maemo.org infra safety - HiFo action URGENTLY needed.

[From: woody-groups]

Joerg,

I find great humor that not two month ago you were claiming that Nokia had no
say in what happened to the servers.  When I stated that Nokia could pull back
on the servers if talks were not finished, you accused me of using fear tactics
and spreading lies. (IRC logs and forum posts are easily searchable for proof.)
Yet now you claim HiFo does not own the servers, but that Nokia/Nemein does?

You change your story to suit your current argument, reality be damned.

While I appreciate all that you've done, your actions of late have been
irrational and potentially dangerous to the community.  You demand everyone
follow rules, which is great until you start making up your own rules and then
breaking them yourself.  You have become more focused on your own control of
things than on what's best for the community.  You have convinced yourself that
your view of things is reality, even when it can be shown clearly that your
belief if wrong.

You have been the main reason for most of the aggravation caused over the past
year or so.  First you claimed it was Rob, and to some degree it was.  But one
could work with Rob IF one handled him the right way, until someone did
something childish or pissed him off.  Once Rob left, you claimed it was Me, and
started butting heads with me.  Now that I'm gone, you claim it's Chemist.  Do
you see the pattern?  How long will it take for you to look in a mirror?  Ever? 
I see now why you are the last man standing in all of your past projects.  King
of old hats...

We've lost more administrators and volunteers because of your harsh nature and
immature antics than because of anything HiFo related.  This latest rant,
"ironically" threatening to stop being an admin is not the first threat you've
made.  I recall one just a month ago where you threatened to "ironically"
format/shutdown the servers.  I recall a month before that you threatening Board
members with legal action for asking clear yes/no questions in private.  I
suggest to the Board on my leaving that were I them, I would boot you on the
spot.  I repeated that when you threatened to format the servers.  Most groups
wouldn't put up with that type of behavior, even from an older community member.

Play the victim card all you want.  Maybe a noob or two in the forum will take
up your banner and route for you still, until you turn on them as you have on
most who have dealt with you.  How many friends do you have?  I'm betting most
of them are recent, and the older friends are all strangely enemies these days.

To be clear:
Your antics, and the possible legal repercussions to Board members because of
them, was one of two key factors in my leaving the Board when I did.  I didn't
want YOUR next childish tantrum, stupid act, or inability to understand basic
business practices, to wind up costing me money and time in a court or jail.

To be bluntly clear:
+ HiFo is in contact with, and working on legal issues with Nokia, not you, not
TechStaff.
+ Nokia has provided hardware to HiFo, which has *delegated* administration to
TechStaff.
+ HiFo (and currently still Nokia) has the right to rescind or change those
delegations at any time, for any reason.
| Hifo would only do so for the sake of the community (ie. someone threatening
improper behavior and acting irrationally).
+ Until the final resolution of negotiations, Nokia *CAN LEGALLY* pull back the
servers and all rights to their contents.
+ After resolution, the signing legal body (be that HiFo-US or the e.V.) will be
the legal owner, not you, not TechStaff.

At no point does TechStaff, or you alone, or Council, have *legal* standing on
ANY of the above mentioned.  Techstaff is not a legal group, having no legal
entity that can sign for or stand accountable for anything.  The only liability
you face is for your own intentional actions, and those would still first land
on the Board who may then turn to you, if your acts were intentional and
malicious.  If you *could* be held legally liable, as you claim, *you* would be
the one signing contracts with Nokia, not HiFo.  What contract did you sign with
Nemien?  None?  I thought so.

HiFo came into being to have a legal entity that could take ownership of
property on behalf of the community, be that severs, software rights, trademark
usage licenses, etc.  It was done so that no *one person* would be the sole
owner/operator/fail-point, which is what you are (wrongly) claiming you are now,
as self-proclaimed "King of Techstaff".  Were you to be hit by a bus tomorrow,
the servers would still continue to run, as would the community, as it should
be.  Nobody is irreplaceable: Not you, not me, not anyone on Council, Board, or
in the community.  That you seem to think otherwise is your own failure to
understand the nature of what's going on here.

Right now I hold a lot of pity for those on Board & Council that have to deal
with your lies, manipulation and deception.  My advice to anyone listening would
be to drop kick you away as far/fast as possible before you do any real damage,
or follow up on threats you've already made.

-Woody(14619)
Past Techstaff, Council, Board member, and co-founder of HiFo, for those who may
not know.


> On March 6, 2014 at 8:19 PM joerg Reisenweber <joerg at openmoko.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu 06 March 2014 03:42:09 Andrew Flegg wrote:
> > On 28 February 2014 06:57, joerg Reisenweber <joerg at openmoko.org> wrote:
> > > OK, you say HiFo is doing system administration on maemo servers now,
> > > either you or some proxy? Fine, I'm pondering to step down from that
> > > position then,
> Maybe you missed the irony tags? Or did you purposely edit them out by picking
> this quote without giving context?
> For the record: I'm NOT fine with HiFo doing system administration. See below
> for reasons, why.
> And obviously 2/3 of council and all of core techstaff isn't as well. Core
> techstaff (see below) actually isn't happy with how HiFo acted and still does
> act, and mood is to rather stop volunteering in maemo than to participate in
> what HiFo seems pushing to establish here. You already managed to alienate a
> few maintainers and supporters who actually drew that consequence and
> resigned.
>
> >
> > Joerg, on behalf of the Hildon Foundation Board, I'd like to thank you
> > for your efforts in the continued operation of maemo.org since Nokia
> > stepped back. Without your work, we wouldn't be here today; nor have a
> > tech staff who has been able to pick up where Nemein left off.
> >
> > There has, unfortunately, been an air of aggravation between the
> > Foundation and you for the past few months, something for which I
> > don't want to ascribe any blame. The Board recognises that the
> > relationship has degraded,
>
> well, any good relations between me and HiFo never been a part of my job
> description for the position as maemo administration manager. Regardless of
> the lack of any 'official' mandatory relations between maemo admin manager and
> HiFo, see below.
>
> > and thinks the immediate and ongoing
> > assistance you've provided with regards to maemo.org system
> > administration has run its course,
>
> You're free to think that. It's however neither relevant nor correct. See
> below.
>
> > as the tech staff team is now well
> > established.
>
> That's a severe misconception.
> 1) there is no "well established techstaff team", basically techstaff team
> consists of three people: Xes, Falk, and me. Then we have a (much too small)
> number of subsystem maintainers, like chemist (tmo) and Ivaylo (builder
> complex) and Christian (repos), who are considered wider techstaff. It seems
> this lack of understanding about such facts showing in HiFo's move and
> statement here tells a lot about why HiFo shouldn't interfere with techstaff
> duties and infra maintenance (which it nevertheless does *second* time here
> and now, during a few weeks)
> 2) any such techstaff team basically doesn't have *any* business with HiFo -
> thus *my* relation to HiFo as member and organizational lead of techstaff team
> is absolutely irrelevant.
> 3) my role as maemo administration manager/coordinator is not only to lead
> techstaff and to find and introduce new maintainers and sysops and coordinate
> their activities, I'm also the one point of responsibility for "keeping the
> keys", read: deciding and overseeing who gets access to maemo infra on which
> level, and thus securing integrity of maemo.org and defending it from any
> threat. This task isn't one that eventually is accomplished.
>
> From a maemo community organizational perspective HiFo (or rather council and
> you) once were responsible to find somebody for all those tasks, Ivan
> "shanghaied" me and I got installed to take care of that. The agreement been
> that only council and HiFo unanimously can accept any new position of core
> techstaff (excl the subsystem maintainers which maemo admin coordinator can
> appoint without their prior approval, basically because HiFo has proven own
> inability to handle any such task, despite me initially insisting in them
> taking responsibility instead of me), and both HiFo and council on their own
> can reject appointments at the time they are forwarded to those entities for
> approval, and after that they can suspend any techstaff member any time, based
> on clear rationale and reason for belief made publicly accepted that a real
> threat is coming from such techstaff member.  When I shall step down from my
> position as maemo admin manager, then regarding "how maemo works" there must
> be a successor agreed upon by both HiFo and particularly council, otherwise I
> CANNOT step down. (see below why not even that might suffice, regarding
> unclear
> state of handover from Nemein to maemo community).
> Even while I'm tempted to retire, considering the uncooperative and actually
> incorrect and culpable behavior of HiFo, particularly Chemist, alienating and
> bewildering all techstaff and rest of council by ignoring our rules for
> maintenance, our concerns, and doing an unassigned sneaky stealth job
> tampering with techstaff responsibility domain without discussing that
> publicly
> or at least in official techstaff admin channels beforehand, so that at very
> least techstaff could relax and delegate their duty of e.g. securing
> uninterrupted backup (though again, this responsibility can't get easily
> delegated). Rather HiFo comes to techstaff at large with a "don't worry"
> catchphrase and abuses their position and the liberal maintenance management
> to do "secret" negotiations with parts of techstaff, here talking Falk into
> something he didn't even consider that it might not already have been
> discussed in a normal way with rest of techstaff and council (according to
> what
> Falk reported to me). In the end it been up to me to do the right thing to
> heal this mess and ask Falk to send a info mail to all techstaff and publicly
> report about that skunk work done by Chemist, in last Thuesday's council
> meeting, so council and community are finally officially informed. While HiFo
> (as
> usual) left techstaff, council, and thus community without any notice about
> what's going on, denying all best common practice of teamwork and peer review
> and blatantly ignoring the agreements between them and council and techstaff,
> the maintenance rules, and the democratic structures in maemo community at
> large.
> There's been a clear agreement between HiFo and council that HiFo does NOT
> deal with any technical and/or organizational aspects of infra maintenance.
> Seems current HiFo and particularly Chemist doesn't care or is willing to
> violate such agreement, thus putting the carefully balanced maemo
> organizational structure at peril.
>
> The communication failure and trespassing of responsibility domains is clearly
> on HiFo side in this case, and I conceive this request of yours regarding my
> dismissal inappropriate and in line with this communication failure of HiFo,
> smelling like targeted towards a shift away from long established and
> community-approved democratic structures and towards an almighty HiFo that
> thinks it has the power to control everything on own discretion and not being
> obliged to search for support/feedback/approval from community in their
> decisions, something that community been concerned about regarding HiFo from
> very beginning of discussions about HiFo foundation.
> This together with recent efforts to abolish HiFo and replace it by an e.V.
> that's not even been elected by community and outright denies any authority of
> well established maemo council actually rises severe concerns on my side and I
> can't and must not support this.
>
> >
> > Please can you work with the tech staff to complete any handover, and
> > disable your access.
> (I *am* part of techstaff, see above)
>
> "*Complete* handover"? To *whom*? I didn't even know any handover started yet.
> I don't even know of any *planned* handover. Neither do I see anybody fit for
> the task (yes, a sad situation I tried to relieve but couldn't find anybody
> willing to dedicate the needed amount of learning and working hours and
> availability/visibility by community [and yes, acceptance in community] to it)
> "Disable your access"? So you want to dismiss me not only from role as maemo
> admin coordinator, but also from role as one of the techstaff sysops (and
> implicitly maintainers)? That's great¡<-irony tag!>  Please deliver rationale
> for that step. (Not implying I'd acknowledge any power in HiFo to do so,
> without public discussion)
>
> And for the record: de jure, maemo.org still is handled by Nemein who granted
> root access to Falk and me, to help in administration (soft assets). Also the
> server hardware been transferred to IPHH by Nemein and with support of Nokia
> (who paid for the shipping) but afaik the server isn't property of HiFo yet
> since it never been handed over officially to HiFo, it either is owned by
> Nemein
> still, or by Nokia, or maybe even by Falk who received it at IPHH.
> I'm just saying this to make clear that my role as admin coordinator got
> suggested by former HiFo member Ivan and _got_accepted_ by Nemein. With
> accepting this duty I also accepted legal responsibility for the soft and hard
> assets, and thus I can't simply hand over this role to whomever and shrug it
> away, my liability for maemo safety would stay.
>
>
> > We hope you'll find other ways to continue to contribute to the
> > community, for which you've done so much, and - on a personal note - I
> > hope we can work together in future.
>
> Well, I dunno if you find ways to work together with techstaff in the future,
> I
> don't even know what's been your problem in doing so during  the recent past.
> Anyway please note that no "working together" between techstaff and HiFo is
> supposed to be part of how maemo works. HiFo is responsible for money and
> contracts (to put it simple), techstaff is responsible for securing and
> maintenance of the infra, and council is responsible for decisions about all
> that. Any HiFo cooperation is with council. Any techstaff cooperation is with
> council.
>
> >
> > Many thanks again,
> You'll excuse my refusal to thank you for that.
>
> >
> > Andrew
>
> /jOERG
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