robmen

Once again, someone else is far more pithy than I. +1

The title came from a comment from one of the maintainers of the WiX Toolset. I called the initial missteps a "maintainer kerfuffle" and he responded, "As long as it doesn't turn into a brouhaha".

Now that I think about it, I didn't write the blog post for the uninitiated. If you didn't understand what was going on, that was fine, it was content for you.

I don't know how I ended up here on Hacker News. :)

As far as I can tell, Jon and Scott are Microsoft dev evangelists. It really isn't their place to step into .NET Foundation issues.

It might be even more weird if they did try weigh in.

Yes but I never had the copyright in the first place. This isn't about the copyright. I know I don't own it. This is about control of the project.

You should raise that feature request with GitHub. It's a good idea.

Meh. Other people here have pointed out it sends email to the people in the GitHub Enterprise. So, they probably missed a place to add auditing.

To that point, I've had GitHub people tell me they never imagined the feature I used to get out of GitHub Enterprise to be used that way. I got lots of emails (since I owned the target organization) but maybe the GitHub Enterprise did not?

Hah, hah, hah, that's actually pretty good.

No.

Rodney is closer to many things than I but my experience shows these are the root issues:

> does too little to help its member projects, and lacks a strong sense of mission or purpose.

That's on the .NET Foundation, not Microsoft.

Sure but I'm most interested in the project as a whole. And:

> And there are advantages to a legally well protected entity holding the copyright.

I might agree with parts of what you are saying but when the channel to communicate back to the "powers that be" is broken and you face (what feels like) an existential threat, the public forum is an enticing, sometimes effective but very messy option.

You are exactly correct here. This isn't about Microsoft or GitHub. It is solely about the .NET Foundation's actions.

This may have nailed the issue most closely yet.

It took you a lot fewer words than me too. :)

Something is really wrong right now that's why they might be meeting every day.

Your experience with the Eclipse Foundation is very different from how the .NET Foundation has interacted. On top of that, communication has been very poor for a long time. I believe those two differences are at or near the root of all of these issues.

No worries. I disagree with a couple parts of your position but that doesn't mean you are wrong. :)

I also happen to agree with the bulk of it.

Those are all possible futures.

Because they are separate. Have you wanted the .NET Foundation and Microsoft interact?

You are exactly correct. It isn't necessary to drag GitHub or Microsoft into the conversation.

They aren't involved in this situation.

Not in my case. The article explains how the copyright transfer was executed.

What? Code of Conduct says stuff like, don't be mean to other people. It's a lot like: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, the .NET Foundation also holds the copyright and provides the CLA bots. But the great bulk of your point is correct.

My case is a little special because I developed the WiX Toolset when I was an employee at Microsoft. I never owned the copyright (Microsoft did). So, I wouldn't be asking for the copyright back... I'd be asking for it for the first time.

And there are advantages to a legally well protected entity holding the copyright. One for example: my company (FireGiant) is "firewalled" from certain legal issues.

So I'm still contemplating the future and don't have a real answer for you yet.

Repeating myself but it's applicable here too:

I'm curious about this too. I was told (by someone at GitHub) that the features I used to do the move are brand new and were not expected to be used the way I did. It is very possible pieces are missing in the audit trail GitHub creates.

Meh. I might be more interested if I actually had a GitHub Enterprise myself.

I'm curious about this too. I was told (by someone at GitHub) that the features I used to do the move are brand new and not expected to be used the way I did. It is very possible pieces are missing in the audit trail GitHub creates.

Meh. I might be more interested if I actually had a GitHub Enterprise myself.

Someone else noted that it may only send emails to the person that kicked the process off.

I don't know, I don't own a GitHub Enterprise to try.

No problem. I'm really just trying to keep the story straight.

The only issue I have with the timing is that I told them I was not comfortable with them as admin on the repo yet as soon as they were made admin (to fix the CLA bot, which happened to be only a week or so after my email) this happened. No social engineering necessary but really poor timing on top of non-existent communication.

And here we are, sadly.

I don't think you've seen the .NET Foundation and Microsoft interact then.

Yes, exactly. Thank you.

You are correct about communication being the core of the issue.

I understand what you are saying with "If they ask you for X permission, you cant just say no, sorry but you are part of an organization and it doesnt work that way". But I didn't say no to the requirement from the .NET Foundation. I was happy to enforce the Code of Conduct. Where I drew the line was granting admin access to an alias. The .NET Foundation owns the copyright but they don't own me. I'll also argue they don't own the issue tracker and other non-source code things in the project. And opinions on that could differ so conversations could be in order.

Also, I didn't spend a lot of time in the blog post discussing the evaluation of repercussions but Bob and I did talk about the for a while. In the end, I decided that those of us that work on the WiX Toolset would be in a better place to communicate if our organization was in "public". I take responsibility for that decision and I'm transparent about what and why I did it.

But, in the end, I agree with you. Communication and transparency will help to avoid similar issues in the future.

Why? Were you planning to contribute source code to the .NET Foundation?