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from the apparently-sysvinit-on-debian-works-now dept.
https://lwn.net/Articles/786593/
An April Fools joke that went sour seems to be at least the proximate cause for a rather large upheaval in the Devuan community. For much of April 1 (or March 31 depending on time zone), the Devuan web site looked like it had been taken over by attackers, which was worrisome to many, but it was all a prank. The joke was clever, way over the top, unprofessional, or some combination of those, depending on who is describing it, but the incident and the threads on the devuan-dev mailing list have led to rancor, resignations, calls for resignations, and more.
Quick summary:
- Nicosia (a core dev) posted to the mailing list saying Devuan was compromised.
- Nicosia kept up the joke for some time.
- Nicosia admitted it was a prank later.
- Mike Bird suggested legal action against Nicosia and auditing/rebuilding the affected servers.
- Nicosia stepped down on April 11.
- Roio (a core dev) accused CenturionDan (a core dev) of causing Nicosia to step down.
- Reurich (a core dev) commented on the divide between people who want to use Devuan professionally and people who use Devuan for fun.
- Roio objected to Reurich.
- Reurich considered stepping down.
Some facts (?) gathered from the comments:
- Many core devs were unaware of the joke. They thought the compromise was real, as everyone but Nicosia was blocked from logging in to the affected server. They worked to shut down their infrastructure and isolate it from the supposedly compromised machine.
- The Devuan continuous integration server is apparently still down.
Related: Devuan Site Possibly Hacked
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @08:41AM (2 children)
What a load of horse radish.
Professionalism doesn't necessarily mean what you said. But you know what it does mean?
Taking your actions into account.
You wouldn't have an April Fool's joke, where the person might DIE because of your joke, now would you? And you sure as HELL would NOT scream FIRE!!!! in the middle of a crowded room, because yes people DO get trampled to death in such situations.
And you wouldn't be in the military, on patrol in the middle of a war, and yell GRENADE!!!! either.
Because these things have a phrase for them, called "Taking things too far".
So professionalism is often about this very concept. And this practical joke was NOT a reasonable April Fool's joke.
April Fool's jokes are ended typically when people get a really, really concerned look on their face -- and say "Really? Are you sure? For the love of god, please tell me.. IS THIS REAL?? This is REALLY REALLY BAD!", and then take immense steps to fix that April Fool's "problem".
Like with this "joke", where everyone worked tirelessly taking servers offline, disabling functionality, giving up personal time, breaking commitments and on and on and on.
Not to mention all those outside of the Devuan team, whether "corporate" or "at home", immediately worried about compromised packages, taking their own hardware offline, examining what packages were installed when, and on .. and on.. and on.. because, "NO REALLY REALLY IT IS NOT A JOKE!", and "The Entire Devuan Team is TRYING TO FIX THIS!"
Jokes are one thing. But this wasn't a joke. This was the equivalent of a women running into a police station on April 1st, tears running down her face, yelling "The Mayor Raped Me!", and protesting again, and again that it wasn't a joke. That when the Mayor arrives, and lawyers show up, still says "IT IS NOT A JOKE!!!". And after the Mayor is arrested, the newspapers print the story, the TV has an interview with her...
Then hours AFTER everyone in town sees and hears this, and the Major is crying in a cell, his wife and kids ashamed for hours, then the woman says "IT WAS JUST A JOKE, haha, GOT YOU GOOD!"
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED!
And if you can't "get this", if you don't understand that joke was taken WAAAAAAAY too far, you really shouldn't be doing anything important. At all. Ever.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday May 05 2019, @10:44AM (1 child)
Most of your examples are much more extreme. I don't accept your reductio ad absurdum is effective here.
I accept that someone anxiously working for hours and maybe even screwing up their own system as a result of this unfortunate and pretty unfunny. At the same time, the timing of the joke should have been a big clue to most people that it was more likely an April Fool's joke than not so where possible not to act too prematurely beyond maybe shutting the system down at worst. One would hope no-one would be running anything safety-critical on Devuan without fully verifying well in advance that any updates are stable.
Was the joke miscalculated? Sure. Was the backlash disproportionate? You bet!
I will not and would never want to work on developing any safety-critical system. If I had to, I wouldn't use it as a medium to deliver jokes. If by important, you mean that at worst some businesses might lose a couple of hours' productivity, then I don't care--and neither will anyone else when the Earth is absorbed by the Sun.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 05 2019, @12:08PM
The safety-critical systems were never affected. That said. lots of people didn't *know* that.