[iajrz]

> That kind of disruption is at odds with every value FOSS devs claim to hold-- meritocratic, decentralized, etc.

You're mixing things here. :) meritocracy and decentralization are completely orthogonal to free software. They [edit: s/are/could be construed as a/] part of the open-source ethos as explored in CATB & explained by esr, not a sine-qua-non of free software.

[jancsika]

The problem in this case is an unspoken governance model where a participant from decades ago showed up, made public accusations about the trustworthiness of the other participants, then declared a time schedule of his own choosing during which he would consult his own private council to judge the veracity of all the public arguments given.

Whatever we want to call that, and whatever the origins of the problem, it is a bad thing.

Edit: clarification

[iajrz]

Hey, I've been thinking and talking in another thread; I just made a comment that is completely relevant for this convo, too; the people in the discussion, as well as you, are looking at things from a different value framework as rms, the gnu project, and the fsf. Here's the relevant comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26809646

We can agree the discussion could be handled better, and the accusations were unwarranted in context; I happily chalk that up to a misunderstanding (rms not seeing other people's lack of awareness of value framework incompatibility as a massive obstacle to conversation, instead assuming interlocutors had better information than they seemed to, in which case their behavior could have been construed as being in bad faith) - which implies 2015 rms should probably dial it down in the strength of his accusations among other adjustments. Communication is _not_ easy.

If a farmer and a forest ranger go into a patch of land, they will see the same scenery, but may have heated discussions about what to do with it. Unless they understand that one of them wants to produce food, and the other to protect the forest. And if one of them has decision-making power over the terrain, even if they have not been in there personally for a while - the argument about how what they want to do fits with the decision-maker's values needs to be made.

Of course, nobody is stopping the developers from going and doing the stuff they want to do in the first place, distributing it and, if the change is as technically important as it seems and the cards are played just right, even becoming the de-facto standard distribution of a piece of software; their changes just won't be merged into the main product for the foreseeable future.