April 24, 2020
Notice
This article is being actively edited and amended for both grammar andto answer new questions as they come up.
12:05 PST - Feedback from IRC for English, clarification of thetimeline of xtraeme’s resignation and subsequent ban.
12:17 PST - Correct innaccuracies in the musl section. Myunderstanding of the bug was incorrect (@the-maldridge).
2020-04-27 - Correct xtraeme’s pronouns, spelling/grammar cleanup
First a disclaimer. This is written from my point of view(@the-maldridge), and while it may contain views and opinions of theproject, you should assume these are my views. This is posted hereand in the official name-space of Void Linux as questions have askedthat demand answers. I hope that in this post I can provide someanswers.
To answer the immediate question of the day, Juan RP (xtraeme) haschosen to leave the Void Linux project.
There will be no noticeable disruption to users, and the project willcontinue as before. We appreciate your support of Void and continuingto advance the state of the void. To any maintainer or contributorthat was on the receiving end of one of xtraeme’s recent posts, Iwould like to extend the my apologies for this and those of theproject. Void is a project we intend all to be involved in, and thatmeans treating others with respect.
I’d now like to answer a few questions that came to my mind as thissituation developed. I’m on the West coast of the US, so I woke up toa lot of this already in progress, but I also have a lot morehistorical context than what is easily find-able. Keep in mind thatout of respect for Juan’s privacy, I am deliberately not revealingsome information they chose to reveal to project maintainers. Theymay have left a sour taste with me, but they still have a right toprivacy like anyone else, and if they wish to share details of theirpersonal life, that is their decision and theirs alone.
How will the project survive without xtraeme?
Short: Like we have before.
Long: This is not the first time xtraeme has left Void. I wrote aboutthis on my personal site back in 2018, and you can read that fullarticle overthere. Running a project like Void means ensuring that there is nosingle point of failure. We have a healthy pool of developers, andshort of perhaps some folks wanting to take some time off to recoverfrom the events of the day, I fully expect the project will continueas it has.
The thread on GitHub mentioned xtraeme has broken things in the past?
Being rolling release and not breaking things involves a lot ofcoordination. Some of this coordination is baked into the software.For example, you can’t update your system while large rebuilds are inprogress because that would install incompatible versions of somelibraries (we’re working on improving the user experience around thisthough).
Some of the recent changes that come to mind in no particular order:
Pushing a musl update with no coordination. For context aroundthe change, seethis link.
This is something we’re planning a lot of work around becauseupdating the C library will involve recompiling almost everythingon musl against it. Normally there’s ABI compatibility, but forreasons far beyond the scope of this article, musl is different.There is an ongoing dialog in #musl on freenode with some Alpinedevs as well trying to determine the best way to do this upgrade.
Updated: The original version referenced 1.2 of musl. This wasincorrect as the interactions that caused this problem are notunique to this version.
Pushing a glibc update with no coordination. We saw the troublethat befell Arch when they did a glibc update that temporarilybroke bash. We’d hoped to avoid this same fate, but whilediscussing the change, the package was merged without discussion.
General problems related to single points of failure. Thoughthis is not an issue now, there was a time where xtraeme was thesingle point of failure. Through their personal inaction we lostthe voidlinux.eu domain. We had a lot of trouble getting theproject back into a stable state, but through a significant amountof effort, we recovered. Though newer maintainers probably don’tnotice this, there are a lot of older developers and users whoremember when xtraeme was all that Void was. The project hasgrown significantly since then, and this is a change I’m not surextraeme ever fully adjusted to.
I feel like you’re not telling a lot of stuff, where can I get that context?
For better or for worse, a lot of discussions happen behind closeddoors. We don’t feel it is our place as Void Linux to air the dirtylaundry of maintainers and contributors. What goes on in yourpersonal life outside of Void is not our concern, and we have no rightto tell others your secrets. That being said, all factors areconsidered when evaluating granting or removing a commit bit. Notethat according toInfraDocs almostall of the initial discussion of onboarding and offboardingmaintainers happens on private forums. These discussions are prettymundane, usually along the lines of “have they broken anything?” or“wow, this person does a lot of work really fast”. The discussionsaround xtraeme unfortunately have been of the form “their conducttowards others really isn’t great, but I’m not comfortable approachingthem.”
Does Void profit from xtraeme’s work?
While Void and its usersbenefit from the work of all developers,including xtraeme, no profit is derived from this work.
Void is an Open Source project, it always has been and will continueto be one. You are free to use the code within the confines of thelicense. Since Void is permissively licensed, you are welcome to useit commercially as well, though please be a good citizen of the FOSScommunity and upstream your patches when practical.
Should xtraeme wish to change the license of their copy of XBPS, wewill evaluate the situation.
Void does not accept donations. We appreciate the efforts of thosethat reach out from time to time wishing to support the projectfinancially, but our expenses are minimal. If you want to contribute,you can help by updating packages, reviewing issues, or generallybeing a part of the community. If an individual maintainer chooses tosolicit or accept a donation for their work, this is done separatelyfrom the project. International tax law is a complicated beast, andas a project we’re not comfortable accepting donations until we havethe infrastructure in place to show where the money goes, and provideyou with appropriate documentation.
Did xtraeme resign, or were they banned?
Timing is everything. The ticket which expressed xtraeme’s desire toresign was opened first, then over the next hour they lashed out atseveral project members. The resignation was processed per theirwishes, and per their conduct torwards others, a ban was applied atthe organization level.
I want to talk to someone about this.
Sure, we live in interesting times, and talking to others is a greatway to cope with unexpected change. Feel free to chat on Void’sofficial IRC channel#voidlinux on freenode. You can also find usatr/voidlinux on Reddit. We also maintain a mailing list which youcan find on the website.
What happens now?
Remember these are my words (@the-maldridge) not necessarily those ofthe project.
This is a really uncomfortable place to be in. None of us want tostart a Twitter war, and at the end of the day, Void is about workingon software we all believe in.
Void will continue. We do appreciate the work that xtraeme did to getus here, projects like Void need someone to have an idea and run withit, then convince others to join you. xtraeme was that early personwith an idea, there’s no denying this. It’s sad that thiscollaboration had to end this way. I would be lying if I said thiswas a surprise to me, but I truly did not in my wildest imaginationexpect it to play out like this.
Enough of Politics, Diplomacy, and speaking as a project, what do YOU think about all this?
The last 8 months since xtraeme showed up again have been a rollercoaster. It’s been a stressful time and I’ve come very close toleaving the project several times. I’m one of a handful of people whodirectly maintain the day to day infrastructure that builds and servesVoid, and that made me the receiving end of more than one rant. I’mgoing to take a step back and think about if I want to continue thisproject or work on one of my own more. When I started working on VoidI was in college and employed by a university that was running Voidinternally (sadly, they no longer do). I had a lot more free timethen, and Void was a lot less stressful to work on.
xtraeme is a talented C developer; there is no denying this, and Irespect their work on XBPS. It is certainly not without bugs, butno one’s code is. I am personally upset that this is how this had toend. I expected at some point xtraeme would part ways with theproject, as their goals and those of the project have diverged. I amupset that they felt the need to take out their frustration oncontributors and maintainers, and that is why the decision was made toban them from the organization.
