[Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> You are very right, Virgilio. The body of work, of the Project, is quite
> salvageable; as well as ultimately sustainable. But it is quite clear that
> the present management doesn't have the slightest clue, nor apparently, the
> vaguest interest in learning, how to work with people, beyond their own
> hubris-driven circle. That's where the change needs to begin if sustainable
> is the goal.


I disagree; the project is internally very tolerant of criticism.
It's not tolerant of abuse.

Kohs is both a critic and abusive.

His criticism includes disagreeing on commercial / paid editing, use
for promotional purposes, and management style of the project; he has
contrarian but discussion-worthy points there.  They have been and
will undoubtedly continue to be discussed.  It also includes a
contrarian internal audit approach, which I feel has been somewhat
sensationalistic but at least indicated we had someone who was paying
attention to details I for one don't have time to.

I won't go into details on his abuse, other than to note that he got
blocked and banned off the projects repeatedly and has been moderated
and criticized for abusive behavior on the mailing lists repeatedly
and over a multiyear period.

There are internal critics, and will always and necessarily be
external critics.  To be an internal critic, one must both be
interested in sticking around inside (Kohs was) and willing to abide
by reasonable internal behavior standards.  At the very least, Greg
was pushing the envelope or borderline on the latter.

If that behavior is a defining factor of your interaction with the
community - and Greg was rarely able to suppress it for long - then at
some point the community has a right to redraw the line of who's
inside and who's outside.

Greg can continue his critical functions and policy discussions just
fine from an external position.  I am sure he will.  I encourage that,
to the degree that contrarianness and having a critic willing to look
at programs and budgets is useful.  I always have read what he's
written, on that basis.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com