Re: About savannah, KLog and KMeter

[Jaime Robles]

Dear all,

After this email, when I dedided to give another opportunity to 
Savannah, I reviewed again the hosting requirements and did all the 
changes I identified to be done before applying again for a hosting in 
Savannah.

It seems that I left something out and it was not fulfilling the 
requirements, I understand, no issues, I was decided to follow the 
process and improve whatever had to be improved.

Even if the information was right, when I ask for help to the 
administrator of a project that is supposed to support free software, I 
am not expecting such an answer[1], even more after an incident like the 
one I had with Savannah & KLog where the admin broke the rule of 
Savannah to remove the software when it is written in Savannah's website 
that you do not delete software.

I  think that I should not have to remind that your admin created a 
potential catastrophic damage to an old free software program.

I am expecting help from Savannah, not unpolite or emotional answers.

I have been developing and supporting free software for many years and I 
know that I am not only coding but sometimes also managing with 
difficult personalities and egos but honestly, I don't have any need to 
be in Savannah and if the Savannah admins don't like KLog to be in 
Savannah, I don't need to beg for their support.

The time I spent with you was a good one but I think you need to improve 
how you manage your users. Please remember that you will be nothing 
without users and you have kicked me out of Savannah.

When I first wrote to you it was because some other Savannah staff wrote 
me in private, suggesting to do so. Stating in an email that they did 
not understood the way of act of the admin but thet could not help. I 
would recommend to train your admins on "user management".

I will keep coding in my free time, I do it for fun, no need to spend 
one single second where my software is not welcome.

Thank you for the hosting and for the support and good luck with your 
volunteers.

Jaime

[1] https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15941


El 07/04/2021 a las 7:30, Jaime Robles escribió:
> Dear all,
>
> Thank you for your time managing this issue.
>
> I need to say that there are some lessons learned from this incident 
> on both sides.
>
> On Savannah, in my opinion, you can't afford acting like in KLog and 
> removing a project like this, you may, for instance, disable any 
> writing rights and users would not be so affected and history of free 
> software would not lose so much code.
>
> I personally had some copies of all the sources and the mailing lists 
> are not really containing such a big amount of information so nothing 
> "catastrophic" happened to KLog  but this may not be the case in other 
> projects.
>
> IMHO, that was not an action of a reliable partner... and you are not 
> like GitLab, GitHub, Sourceforge... you represent free software.
>
> On the other hand, as I was saying, lessons learned are on both sides 
> and I will apply mine.
>
> However, I still think today that hosting KLog in Savannah is for the 
> community,  better than not doing so even if KLog is an small project, 
> so I will send a new submission to Savannah with the hope that we 
> don't go this way again, at least during the same amount of years than 
> the first chapter of KLog with you ;-)
>
> Thank you for your time.
>
> Jaime
>
> El mar., 6 abr. 2021 12:45, Jose E. Marchesi <jemarch@gnu.org 
> <mailto:jemarch@gnu.org>> escribió:
>
>
>     Hello Jaime.
>
>     Thanks for your patience.
>
>     So we have carefully looked at the issue.  What happened, in a
>     nutshell:
>
>     1) The KLog project has indeed been hosted in savannah.nongnu.org
>     <http://savannah.nongnu.org> for
>        many years.  The group was registered in 2002, and you imported the
>        sources in a SVN repository in 2011.
>
>     2) In 30 April 2020 you submitted an application for another
>     project, to
>        be hosted in savannah.nongnu.org <http://savannah.nongnu.org>:
>     KMeter. During the evaluation of
>        the submission the savannah hackers found some problems that
>     violate
>        the savannah hosting requirements, and they reached out to you in
>        this savannah task ticket:
>
>        Savannah Administration - Tasks: task #15622, Submission of KMeter
>     https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15622
>     <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15622>
>
>        As you can see in task #15622 they tried to get in touch with
>     you in
>        three occassions:
>
>        - Fri 08 May 2020
>        - Sun 31 May 2020
>        - Mon 15 Mar 2021
>
>        With no answer from you.  You are supposed to get email
>     notifications
>        from Savannah when somebody replies to you in a forum, so maybe you
>        want to check your savannah settings?  Maybe you have an email
>        address there that you no longer use?
>
>        In any case, in these messages the savannah hackers told you that
>        they had also found similar problems in the existing project KLog,
>        not just in the submission of KMeter:
>
>          "Please be sure to fix these issues in this package and in other
>
>           your packages hosted in Savannah."
>
>        And then almost a year later after no response:
>
>          "No further interest?  Should I cancel this submission and delete
>          your package from Savannah?"
>
>        We reckon we should have been more explicit in that
>     communication in
>        that we were talking about removing the KLog project.  We apologize
>        for that.
>
>     3) We proceeded to discard the KMeter application and to remove
>     the KLog
>        project from savannah, due to these policy violation _and_ because
>        the maintainer/submitter appeared to be missing in action for the
>        good part of a year.
>
>     Good news is that we finally managed to reach you! :)
>     So, what can we do now?
>
>     - Regarding KLog, the group has been removed from savannah.
>     However, we
>       have backups of the VCS, download area and the mailing list
>     archives.
>       If you are still interested in hosting the KLog project in savannah,
>       we invite you to start a new submission.  The savannah hackers will
>       then evaluate it and guide you in fixing any problem that makes
>     it not
>       compatible with the savannah policies.  Once approved and a new
>     group
>       gets created, we can then restore the VCS, download areas and the
>       mailing list archives.
>
>     - Regarding KMeter, the application has been closed due to lack of
>       response.  So if you are still interested in hosting it in savannah,
>       please start a new submission and work with the savannah hackers to
>       make it compatible with the savannah hosting requirements.
>
>     Again, we apologize for any inconvenience, and we look forward to work
>     with you :)
>
>     Salud!