Alternative Behaviours

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Wed, 2019-03-06 at 07:09 +0100, Volker Lendecke via samba-technical
wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 05:26:28PM +1300, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > On Tue, 2019-03-05 at 15:59 +0100, Volker Lendecke via samba-technical
> > wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 04:48:22PM +0200, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
> > > > FreeIPA implements a PASSDB module which is loaded into Samba. It needs
> > > > to get access to the same API other PASSDB modules have to use.
> > > 
> > > Ok, thanks. I've closed the bug as WONTFIX, so none of this is of interest anymore.
> > > 
> > 
> > G'Day Volker,
> > 
> > This really isn't a helpful way to resolve this.  
> 
> What's the alternative?

G'Day Volker,

I have written a bit more on the bug[1], and Alexander has filled in some
details, so I think the technical steps forward are pretty well
covered.  Alexander has some pretty reasonable requests and I don't
think that will be a major difficultly to handle.

However I do thank you for asking.  

Here are some suggestions about the alternatives actions that an individual, 
senior and experienced member of the Samba Team, could have taken in this
and similar situations.


It has long since past the time where the Samba Team should need to
avoid all criticism, requests or new requirements for fear that you
might react in this way.  It is not a reasonable behaviour for a
senior developer to close a real bug as WONTFIX in exasperation, and for
others to have to come along behind you to rectify the situation.

Sadly this has been such a pattern we wrote words in the 'How to do Samba: Nicely'
around this specific challenge.


With your decades of experience in Samba, your fellow team members 
should be able to look to you to work with other experienced developers 
for a way out of difficult dilemmas, not have to save you from them.

It is truly amazing to see how much can be achieved when experienced
developers make it their job first to up-skill, unblock and collaborate
with those around them.

So please instead lean on your wealth of professional experience to solve 
these problems, and so keep making Samba better.


On the flip side, if positive, collaborative Samba development with 
respectful but frank feedback is not possible for you or anyone else 
right now, then consider if you need a break from it.  I know how much 
better I'm feeling for taking a few days away!

We all have our good and less good days, and for so many of us Samba
is a massive part of our life, but it would be lovely if we as your
fellow developers were insulated from that.


Please take charge of your responses so the Samba community need not
develop under the shadow and expectation of your negative reactions. 
It isn't fun and makes Samba less rewarding for the broader community. 


My passion is for making the Samba project as easy as possible for a
new contributor to join, and as pleasant as possible to work in (hence
all the CI tooling).  Could you put your incredible passion into
improving the interaction of our community also?


Finally, I know this is a by its nature a reflection on you personally
and there are other less public places were you might have preferred this 
was done, but just as I've written publicly to others on how best to 'do
Samba' I think it is important for our broader community to see this
said.

Andrew Bartlett

[1] https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13813
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba