Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 10:41:24 -0800 (PST) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: "John L. Utz III" <john@utzweb.net> Cc: Brent Verner <brent@rcfile.org>, freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, rwatson@freesbsd.org, calvin.austin@sun.com, brian@collab.net, bod@freebsdfoundation.org, (Hui) <billh@gnuppy.monkey.org> Subject: Re: patchset 2 report (billh's resignation) Message-ID: <XFMail.20030206104124.jdp@polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <863cn2nf6g.wl@utweb.net>
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Folks, There have, not surprisingly, been quite a few follow-ups to this thread. In this mail I would like to answer the main questions and issues that have been raised by various people. I'll start with the easiest one. Some of you have taken me to task for putting private e-mails on the web page. The fact is that Bill's public attack on me stems from those e-mails. They contain the history of this issue. In transforming a simple, everyday hiring decision into a public attack on the FreeBSD Foundation and on me personally, Bill threw the rules of etiquette out the window. If Bill wants this to be public then it is _all_ going to be public. Some will disagree with this, but I can live with that. The e-mails will stay on the web page until I no longer feel the need to defend my actions in public. One person criticized the title I put on the web page. His point is well taken. The whole day yesterday was so utterly surreal that I guess I needed a small dose of comic relief. That was inappropriate, and I have changed the title to "Mail". Among several of you there seems to be some confusion about the obligations of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization such as the FreeBSD Foundation with regard to contracting. A 501(c)(3) is not a branch of the US government; it is simply a corporation which, under the rules laid down by the IRS, has qualified as a tax-exempt charitable organization. While departments of the US government have many hiring regulations involving public bidding processes, civil service points, minority preferences, incentives of various kinds, etc., those rules have nothing to do with 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. Furthermore, it is not standard practice among 501(c)(3)s to put out public bids for contracts. At the Foundation we hire pretty much the same way any other tiny corporation hires, and that is the standard practice among non-profits. Now I will go over the history of this particular hiring decision. As most of you know, the Foundation finalized a license agreement in December, 2001 with Sun Microsystems to allow us to distribute a FreeBSD version of the JDK and JRE. As part of that agreement, Sun requires that the distribution pass the full suite of tests in their Technology Compliance Kit (TCK). That sounds simple, but in fact it is a very difficult process and I am told that it typically takes a year or more to complete it. Now fast-forward about a year, to some time around the end of 2002. We at the Foundation were feeling a bit embarrassed. We had announced the license agreement with great fanfare a year before, and it naturally raised expectations that a release of the software was imminent. I can lay claim to some blame for that, as I myself thought that the software would be released very quickly. I did not understand at that time what a challenge the TCK was. So, some time in the final months of 2002 I asked the other Foundation board members if perhaps we could help move things along by funding somebody to work on getting the JDK and JRE to a point where it could be released. They agreed that it would be a good use of Foundation funds, and so we started working on it. Throughout the process of getting the license with Sun, we had had two contacts within the FreeBSD Java team: Greg and Nate. We had (and still have) a good relationship with both of them. We asked one or both of them (I don't remember for sure, and I doesn't seem worth digging through the mail archives to find out) whether it might help progress if we funneled some funding into the effort. The reply was affirmative, and we asked for recommendations. Both Greg and Nate agreed that Alexey would be a good person for the job. (This turned out to be a valuable recommendation, and we couldn't be more pleased with his work.) We initiated discussions with Alexey, worked out the contractual details, etc., and he went to work on it full time. Since then he has made great progress, and he has kept us up-to-date with status reports. That was the state of things at the beginning of this week. Now let me make something perfectly clear. When we asked for recommendations, Bill Huey's name never came up. He wasn't mentioned. As far as I know, I had never even heard his name before -- certainly not in any context that would cause me to remember it. Then, out of the blue, we received his first e-mail on Tuesday. It was absolutely baffling to all of us at the Foundation. Here was this profanity-laden flame from a perfect stranger, demanding an explanation for the fact that we hadn't hired him! The rest of the history is documented in the e-mails, which most of you have already seen. To re-iterate: msg01.txt was the first I had ever heard of Bill Huey. How would you feel in my position? Frankly, my first reaction was, "Thank GOD we didn't hire that guy!" Some of you have criticized the terseness of my replies to Bill. I hope this context will help you to understand it a little better. My very first contact with the fellow came in the form of a flame from him. This was followed 18 hours later by a second mail which contained an explicit threat. I don't think anybody knows for sure how to deal with a person who's in that state of mind. It seemed to me that the least harmful approach would be to avoid escalating the situation. So I sent him the briefest, most emotion-free reply I could manage, and in the subsequent mail I tried to keep things strictly on a professional level. We could talk all day long about whether that was the right approach or not. I did my best, and I am proud of the fact that I didn't let Bill drag me down to his level of discourse. On to a related topic ... Some people, Bill included, took offense at my statement, "Bill, there are easily a hundred people who could have done this work, but we could only hire one of them." This was in no way intended to be disparaging toward any Java developer; nor was it meant as any kind of insult. I am sorry that some people took it that way, and I'll try to learn how to express myself better in the future. The point I was trying to make was simply that if we hired one person, there were going to be a whole bunch of other qualified people that we _didn't_ hire. Bill was one of those. For whatever reason, he's the only one who took it as a personal affront. I actually am fairly confident that there are a hundred people in the world who could do the job. I mean -- come on, people! In the whole world? Of course there are! But honestly, the number doesn't matter for the point I was trying to make unless you think the number is 1 -- in which case you'll get nothing but a hearty belly laugh from me. I have just one other thing I'd like to say as I end this lengthy e-mail. We at the FreeBSD Foundation are volunteers who are simply trying to do something for the benefit of the FreeBSD Project. We don't get paid. In fact, we donate money as well as time to the Foundation. It is a rewarding job, at times, but frankly it isn't much fun. The Internet is a big place, and there is always somebody out there who can manage to view just about anything as a conspiracy. There is really nothing I can do about such people. I just try to keep my cool and do my best, knowing full well that I can't please everybody. Well, that's about it. I think I have said just about everything I can say on this topic. I am most likely not going to write any more about it. I just don't see the point of writing if there's nothing new to say. As I said at the very beginning: draw your own conclusions. John To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
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