Re: "Why I am retiring from contributing to FreeBSD"

>The opposite of valor isn’t cowardice. It’s dismissiveness. They can’t
help but be opaque. That comes with the territory of being thought police.

From a psychological standpoint, you can do better than remain silent.
Assertive
communication is better than ambiguity and strategic silence. You can
concisely explain the situation from a technical perspective if you wish,
but not this fundamental one. The key is to empathetically express your
disappointment if decisions have been made that are different and unwelcome
from those desired, as well as for the loss of a valuable resource. All
this assuming that nothing can be done to keep the valuable resource who
wants to leave on the team. Here, a flexible attitude is crucial. On the
one hand, firmly affirm the validity of your choices, on the other, show
some glimmer of openness toward those who have helped you so much over the
years. Knowing how to communicate is like composing a beautiful work of art
whose focus is human feelings, not the heat emanating from CPUs.

Mario.

On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 5:53 PM Joe Schaefer <joesuf4@gmail.com> wrote:

> The opposite of valor isn’t cowardice.
>
> It’s dismissiveness.
>
> They can’t help but be opaque. That comes with the territory of being
> thought police.
>
> On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 10:14 AM Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> >Edward Tomasz Napierala :
>>
>> >The problem, as I see it, is that core@ has learned, consciously or
>> not,that they can just ignore the developer community altogether.  They
>> don’t even bother answering emails at this point.
>>
>>
>> Is this a good attitude ? Maybe he only wants to have a constructive
>> dialogue with them. Just for the sake of my curiosity. If they don't want
>> to talk,isn't this a negation of the A denial of the democratic spirit,
>> because they deprive him of his freedom of expression by countering their
>> freedom to remain silent. It would seem democratic, because everyone has
>> exercised their right. However, the denial of constructive dialogue
>> among themselves deprives the community of some of the founding
>> characteristics of democracy. One: the possibility of growth and
>> improvement. Two: transparency: the ability to bring to light any
>> fragile positions taken by someone, always with a view to collectively
>> safeguarding the project. Furthermore, I would like to know what other
>> space he has to express his thoughts if the primary one is denied. Don't
>> the rules establish the possibility for someone to escalate unresolved
>> issues by bringing them to the attention of an external council ?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 30, 2025 at 9:59 AM Edward Tomasz Napierała <
>> trasz@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I’m trasz@; over past two decades I wrote the iSCSI stack,
>>> and autofs(4), and rctl(8), and ZFS ACLs, and reroot, and some other
>>> bits, working for FreeBSD Foundation and now University of Cambridge.
>>> Currently I’m in a weird situation where FreeBSD core team (likely)
>>> won’t kick me out until I release the email archive documenting their
>>> mishandling of a certain incident, including them lying to my face
>>> to discourage me from speaking up about it.
>>>
>>> Or, they could kick me out for protesting against genocide in a way
>>> that hurt core team member’s income streams.  Or because a YouTuber
>>> they like asked them to.  We’ll know the official excuse once it
>>> happens :)
>>>
>>> This email is about something else though.  Normally this would barely
>>> raise any eyebrows, but given current circumstances it deserves closer
>>> look: seems like core@ scared away another long time contributor:
>>>
>>> https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=50102.0
>>>
>>> The background - record of someone’s hurt feelings - can be found at:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://web.archive.org/web/20250616201452/https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=280701
>>>
>>> Note that I don’t know the situation and so I’m not definitely claiming
>>> core is in the wrong here - just that it would be naive to blindly trust
>>> they are still doing the right thing, given recent history.
>>>
>>> The problem, as I see it, is that core@ has learned, consciously or not,
>>> that they can just ignore the developer community altogether.  They don’t
>>> even bother answering emails at this point.
>>>
>>> Another committer declared that “the proper way is to elect better core
>>> team next time”.  And so there is this fundamental problem that we grew
>>> attached to larping democracy with core elections.  Real democracy
>>> depends
>>> on being able to criticise the elected team, which in FreeBSD is not
>>> currently allowed; any discussion on this topic gets immediately
>>> squashed.
>>> Democracy also requires transparency, which is something that we used
>>> to have, at least betwen core and developers, until the current core team
>>> “forgot about it”.  This whole mechanism is fundamentally broken, yet
>>> we refuse to acknowledge that and instead continue the cargo cult.
>>>
>>> So, go read the links above, then ask core@ what happened there.
>>> Sorry I have to do it like this in public, but my previous, more private,
>>> attempts have all been ignored.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Mario.
>>
>

-- 
Mario.