[notacoward]

Perhaps you're right that he should be gotten rid of, but redirecting criticism of him toward Red Hat is precisely not the way to achieve that. Red Hat won't care if you criticize them as a company. Why should they? However, effective community leadership/stewardship is part of the job description for someone like Poettering. If a person's conduct is poor, criticism should remain focused on them individually. If there's enough such criticism, then the project's own community should act to resolve the situation. It's both less optimal and less likely for an employer or sponsor to take action, but even then it would only be due to criticism of the individual and not themselves. One of the nice things about open source is that it's resistant to such political "get you in trouble with your boss" backstabbing. Address the individual directly and honestly, or forget it.

[notacoward]

Since HN won't let me respond to uuoc directly, I'll respond here. I wasn't saying criticism should only be directed to its target. That's not the kind of "redirection" people seemed to be suggesting. What I'm saying is that the criticism should remain about that person, not displaced onto some third party. Believe it or not, it's possible to see how someone's behavior is affecting a project, without relying on that person to convey such information themselves. We've all done it here, after all. Anybody who thinks it's reasonable to blame individual behavior on someone's employer should consider whether they'd be comfortable with the idea when it's their behavior and their employer involved. I doubt it.

[uuoc]

> However, effective community leadership/stewardship is part of the job description for someone like Poettering.

If this is true, then this is exactly _why_ the criticism should be directed towards Redhat. Because in his arrogant world view, he can do no wrong, so he will not report to his bosses that he has ineffective community leadership/stewardship. The only way his bosses will know of his ineffective leadership/stewardship is if the criticism is directed towards Redhet, and therefore, his bosses.

I.e., the criticism has to go around the roadblock, Poettering being that roadblock.