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Bug 66339 (genstef) - Retire: Stefan Schweizer (genstef)
Summary: Retire: Stefan Schweizer (genstef)
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: genstef
Product: Gentoo Developers/Staff
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Retirement (show other bugs)
Hardware: All All
: High normal (vote)
Assignee: Retirement Admin
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-10-04 13:00 UTC by Daniel Drake (RETIRED)
Modified: 2021-02-03 08:33 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


Attachments
releng log snippet (atemp,3.20 KB, text/plain)
2005-01-29 11:39 UTC, Daniel Drake (RETIRED)
Details

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Description Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-04 13:00:55 UTC
Name: Stefan Schweizer
IRC nick: genstef
Email: sschweizer@gmail.com
Primary mentor: me
Secondary mentor: Tim Yamin (plasmaroo)

Interested in becoming maintainer for various kernel modules that build externally from the kernel sources. We have a few modules like this currently unmaintained, and there are some user submitted ebuilds in this bugzilla which need a maintainer.

Has good general knowledge of bash and ebuilds and the other aspects relating to this task. Past bugzilla and bugday contributions show a more general interest, may also get involved with desktop, laptop, releng projects in the future.

Training starts: 4th October 2004
Comment 1 Tim Yamin (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-04 13:09:48 UTC
[ Removing myself from the CC so I don't get mailed twice about updates ... ]
Comment 2 Deedra Waters (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-07 13:23:11 UTC
His mentor needs to approve his quizzes
 I'll take this one.
 
Comment 3 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-07 13:26:59 UTC
Recruiters:

I have been over stefan's quiz answers with him. His answers are generally of good quality, no major omissions except from one question he forgot to answer in the end-quiz. Please could you review this application.
Comment 4 Deedra Waters (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-07 13:59:49 UTC
Dsd, this is why I said I'd take him, because I'm now getting to him :)
 
 Dsd, one of the reasons he was put off for so long was because you did not mark the bug stating that you approved his quizzes.
 Part of the new recruiting policy requires that mentors must approve their new dev's quizzes.
Comment 5 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-07 14:54:29 UTC
Thanks for clearing that up, perhaps we should amend the recruiters page to point this out?
Apologies for the delay, but as Stefan was on holiday for the last week there wasn't much that could be done at that point.
Comment 6 Deedra Waters (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-11 09:03:48 UTC
His ebuild quiz passes recruiters, though, I suggested that he should reread the ebuild docs again to make sure that he knows them. His answers were ok, though there were a few things he needs to become more familiar with
Comment 7 Jason Huebel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-11 12:25:18 UTC
Taking care of this one right now...
Comment 8 Jason Huebel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-11 12:55:38 UTC
Everything is done except the new dev announcement. I'll take care of that this evening when I get home.
Comment 9 Jason Huebel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-11-14 14:57:16 UTC
done
Comment 10 Jon Portnoy (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-02 16:39:39 UTC
Reopening and moving
Comment 11 Jon Portnoy (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-02 16:49:25 UTC
This bug has been reopened and restricted to devrel for incident tracking purposes.

Specifically, genstef has had significant issues with Gentoo's releng team and especially Chris Gianelloni. To quote:

"I've had a few problems with Stefan Schweizer (genstef), mostly relating
to Release Engineering.  This started with him badgering me about the
keymap support on the LiveCD, which I had explained to him was a
function of genkernel, and technically not under my control.  I really
wish I had some logs on this, but I pretty much had dismissed it as him
just being annoying.  After this, he made similar comments in bug
#67886, which I found to be a little more than slightly annoying.               

Now, Stefan has expressed interest in joining Release Engineering, so he
has been hanging out in #gentoo-releng demanding that I give him
constant updates on my work.  Even this was merely an annoyance, and
something that I could live with, though it was becoming increasingly
difficult to remain friendly towards him."

Chris' complaint to devrel was prompted particularly by http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71950 in which genstef, using his @gentoo.org address and therefore representing Gentoo on a public forum, made disparaging comments about the quality of the Gentoo LiveCD and instructed users to use "KANOTIX" for installing Gentoo.

Currently genstef's mentor is expected to speak with him about this issue in the near future. An update will be posted at that time.
Comment 12 Deedra Waters (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-02 16:52:13 UTC
He currently has 12 days left of his probation period.
 I've extended his probation period for an aditional 30 days.
Comment 13 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-04 15:12:05 UTC
I have spoken to him and he accepted my feedback. I suggest that we reevaluate after the extended probationary period has ended.
Comment 14 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-01-29 11:37:39 UTC
His extended probation period is ending soon if it hasn't already, but I am in two minds about him :(

While he hasn't actually done anything wrong, he doesn't seem to be picking up the "Gentoo Philosophy" too well. I expect this is normal for a new developer, while they learn how we do things around here, but Stefan doesn't seem to be making much progress.

To give an example, we were recently working towards removing a package called "lufs" from the tree. No upstream is happening on lufs, and there are numerous problems with its implementation. There are better alternatives available.
We did the usual of sending a heads-up to gentoo-dev and didn't recieve any good reasons to keep it in. But one user replied saying that he used lufs and Stefan wanted to keep/update it.
I warned him that updating the ebuild effectively makes him the maintainer, and this would mean that he has to support it. I demonstrated that about half of the  lufs modules don't work at all and advised that broken software is not the kind of thing that I would choose to support. He continued anyway, and is now seeing the consequences. Moreover he doesn't even want to support it, see bug 78790

He is also sometimes too quick to finish a job without paying enough attention to detail (he sometimes cuts corners). For example, he asked me to look over an updated ebuild (with a patch) that he was about to commit. I pointed out an obvious problem in the patch, and also pointed out the simple solution. He did not want to fix it, but said he would if a user was to report a bug on it. I managed to change his mind and get him to fix it, by explaining how we don't commit things with known problems, and how we try to provide a high quality of packages in our tree.

There is also the problem that he is too blunt. After I gave him my feedback after the last incident, he showed a big improvement, but I feel that as he has become more involved this has detoriated. [ This is actually the 2nd time this has happened, I approached him about this in his initial recruitment stage, he showed improvement, but it then detoriated to prompt the situation in comment #11 ]

He sometimes has communication issues - maybe being non-english is responsible for his blunt tone, but he has trouble understanding why people reject his ideas. I am going to upload an IRC log here, maybe Chris' tone was also a bit out of line, but it demonstrates Stefans inability to take "no" for an answer...

John Mylchreest (kernel manager) is also getting a bit irritated, as Stefan has recently bugging John to include a minor improvement to an eclass (the change doesn't solve any problems but makes the process a bit more efficient), even though John has already stated he has bigger things on his plate and is waiting for me to give him feedback about other eclass changes.

John said the following to me in private:
18:03 <johnm> The issues which concern me are:
18:03 <johnm>  - if there is  a problem, look at the best fix with the person owning that code. and compromise not force a solution
18:03 <johnm>  - Expect that this is a volunteer effort. people do this mostly out of desire, and always in their spare time.
18:04 <johnm>  - Trivial changes should be logged as bugs. Bugs should be valid, and major changes always get priority.
18:04 <johnm> re: the time thing.
18:04 <johnm> If people choose to not commit something when he asks, then he should just accept that.
[snip]
18:08 <johnm> I'm willing to give him, as his TLP manager in kernel@ another month.
18:08 <johnm> all i expect is more patience, and less abruptness

What I'd propose to do is to extend the probation again, and give him a final warning that we aren't pleased with his progress. I guess if it continues we'd have to remove his status, although I wouldn't like to see that happen while he hasn't really done anything wrong...

BTW. I hate to sound so negative. On the up-side he is doing his development tasks mostly fine and has shown dedication to it.
Comment 15 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-01-29 11:39:07 UTC
Created attachment 49854 [details]
releng log snippet
Comment 16 Deedra Waters (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-02-05 14:04:10 UTC
Personally, I'm not much for giving him another month. He's been here for going on 2.5 months, and the general feeling I get from reading this bug, is that he seems to be a general annoyence, and doesn't want  to finish the work he starts, and doesn't listen to his mentor or other devs who try to guide him. While he's not openly done anything wrong, I do think that this now involves more then just keeping him on probation.
 
 Comments?
Comment 17 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-02-05 14:50:18 UTC
Deedra and I (on IRC) have decided to give him 2 weeks more. Final warning this time.
Comment 18 Alex Howells (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-05-12 12:40:59 UTC
Last comment suggested further action would be taken mid-February. I've caught up with Daniel (dsd) regards the current situation, he thinks Stefan is doing okay since then and has picked up the 'Gentoo Philosophy' to a satisfactory standard. He's agreed the bug should be closed, and will reopen if necessary in future.
Comment 19 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2009-01-07 15:00:26 UTC
 - Last (viewable) bugzilla activity:
   224297: 2008-05-31 08:02:39
 - Last CVS activity:
   3.11 months ago at 07:47 on Oct 06, 2008

On .away since 2008/05/01 21:11Z.

First retirement mail sent today.
Comment 20 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2009-01-20 15:52:09 UTC
Stefan decided to increase his number of commits and stay in the project.

Bug closed.
Comment 21 Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto (RETIRED) Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev 2010-04-27 00:29:52 UTC
Reopening as Stefan is inactive and as an away set for more than 1 year.
Comment 22 Stefan Schweizer (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2010-04-27 08:58:49 UTC
Sorry, I have not used Gentoo much lately and my free time has diminished. Other stuff has come in and I am just no longer interested in hacking away.

In case you need to reach me, my alternate E-Mail is in the "Description" of the bug: sschweizer <at> gmail (dot) com

Go ahead with the retirement, please.
Comment 23 Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto (RETIRED) Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev 2010-04-27 09:58:37 UTC
Stefan, thank you for all your contributions to Gentoo.
Let's proceed with the retirement then.
Comment 24 Robin Johnson archtester Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev Security 2010-07-04 21:37:55 UTC
All infra processing done.
planet, overlays, forums: yours now.
Comment 25 Theo Chatzimichos (RETIRED) archtester gentoo-dev Security 2010-07-04 22:13:06 UTC
For planet: removed planet/universe configs
For overlays: moved from devs to exdevs group in gitosis.conf
Comment 26 (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2010-07-05 06:41:52 UTC
Forums done.
Comment 27 Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto (RETIRED) Gentoo Infrastructure gentoo-dev 2010-07-16 02:54:24 UTC
Retirement processing:

 * gentoo-dev access removed and requested for gentoo cloak to be removed
 * no metadata.xml entries
 * no herd membership
 * no project pages entries
 * no bugs assigned to
 * no group membership on cvs.gentoo.org