kubuntu-council team mailing list archive

[Valorie Zimmerman <valorie-zimmerman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Simon Quigley <tsimonq2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Kubuntu Council,
>
> I would like to start by apologizing. I would like to apologize not only for
> not being here for the past couple of weeks, but for my conduct the day
> before leaving. In this email, I would like to explain what I did, why I did
> it, what I think of my actions now, and what I would like to do going
> forward.
>
> Here’s what I did. I staged KDE Frameworks 5.30 after being told not to
> (while not explicitly, if I recall correctly). The day that I left, I wanted
> to give them a “going away surprise” (this is what I labeled it as). I
> wanted to start the initial staging process of getting Frameworks 5.29
> prepared a few weeks before that, but we had hit some issues getting
> Frameworks 5.28 in the archive so we decided to wait. I was frustrated that
> Rik had staged Plasma 5.8.5 without saying anything in #kubuntu-devel. So my
> reasoning for this was half assuming it would give me someone to point at
> when people realized this and half assuming it would fix some issues that
> Frameworks 5.28 had.
>
> Let me just say this with bold and underline: _*THIS WAS NOT RIGHT. THIS WAS
> STUPID.*_ It was 10 PM and I was getting ready to go to bed when I pushed
> this. It was a long day and I wasn’t feeling right, and it felt mischievous
> and wrong. I fully acknowledge this was one of the more stupid things I’ve
> done in my life. It’s not a mistake I can learn from, it’s not a mistake
> that I can correct now, it was stupid, late night, ill-conceived thought.
> It’s not like I planned each of the three screwups for weeks and weeks
> before and decided to ruin everyone’s day. It was an impulsive decision.
>
> It’s not the first time I’ve done this, and I’m frustrated at myself. I
> really am. Sometimes I make late night decisions and facepalm at it the day
> after. I find myself trying to explain myself, and I can’t even find a
> justification to justify it to myself (I was grabbing at straws when I was
> explaining above, let’s be honest), which frustrates me because not being
> able to explain my actions to myself makes me feel like I have a Chaos
> Monkey[1] running in my head (no, not a chaotic monkey, it’s a program :P).
> Most of the time I make rational, smart, thought-out decisions, but when I
> get tired enough, the lack of development in the prefrontal cortex of my
> brain really shines in the worst of ways. It causes me to burn bridges
> instead of build them. And that’s what I feel happened this time.
>
> After I saw that my ninja status was revoked, I was frustrated. My little
> internal Chaos Monkey had gotten the best of me again. This turned into
> anger at myself then sadness. I was really sad that this had happened, but
> it was justified. I did something bad, and I was going to have to face the
> consequences. And it hurt, it really did. It still really hurts, now when I
> want to go to the channel and do something, I have to remember my stupid
> mistake and go through others to complete tasks, which reminds them of it
> to. That really hurts, but I have to suck it up and deal with it, just like
> every time I’ve done it before.
>
> All I can do now is ask for forgiveness. I am really really sorry. I
> apologize to Rik for having to clean up the mess I made, and I apologize to
> the Council for having to make this decision. But I would like to move
> forward from this, and hopefully be able to start anew. I hope to be able to
> prevent this from ever happening again by getting better sleep and getting
> offline earlier in the evening. I will try my best to ensure that my bad
> late-night judgement doesn’t get the best of me when working with Kubuntu
> for a long time.
>
> Moving forward from this, I would like to propose a short-term plan as to
> what I do in Kubuntu from this point on until my ninja access is restored. I
> would like to work on the following projects, using pull requests/merge
> proposals when necessary:
>
>  1. Get some solid development documentation. Something Valorie could follow
> and understand (:P). This includes complete documentation describing how to
> use KCI (I’ll need people to get me screenshots as I don’t have access to do
> anything but read-only tasks…), development tools, our workflow, and any
> other relevant documentation.
>  2. Reorganize kubuntu-automation so we know exactly what does what and we
> have some solid documentation as to how to use everything. I would also
> finish writing unit tests and any other automated testing we could use to
> ensure that everything always Just Works.
>  3. Figure out what in the KCI code does what, either rewrite the majority
> of it in a more efficient and readable language or get some solid
> documentation for what code does what and documentation on contributing and
> editing code. After I do this, I want to make sure once and for all that we
> have kubuntu_stable branches working and buildable images (maybe even
> autopkgtests to ensure that nothing breaks when we upload it to the
> archive). One more thing for this item, we need to find a way to leave notes
> on each one of the jobs and/or ignore it in KCI to finally get ALL of the
> jobs working or bugs reported to get them working.
>
> Those are three elephants in the room that I really think we need to get
> going to make the most use out of our tools. This will really help us in the
> long run if this is documented very well.
>
> Again, I apologize. I realize what I did was a terrible decision, but I look
> forward to working in the Kubuntu team for a long time to come, and I would
> like to be able to make things right and solve any issues I may have caused.
> Please let me know if there is anything specific I can do to earn ninja
> status back besides knocking out those three big tasks and doing other
> miscellaneous packaging tasks that may arise.
>
> Thank you for your time.
>
> [1] https://github.com/netflix/chaosmonkey
>
> --
> Simon Quigley
> tsimonq2@xxxxxxxxxx
> tsimonq2 on freenode and OFTC
> 5C7A BEA2 0F86 3045 9CC8
> C8B5 E27F 2CF8 458C 2FA4
>
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