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[mjordan at digium.com]

Open source projects survive on freedom of communication. Such
projects are diminished when a community member can no longer
participate, as the project no longer benefits from their opinions and
insight. However, one of the few things worse than this loss of
participation is to have a hostile environment where people are afraid
to voice opinions. If we cannot discuss ideas – even radical ones –
openly and freely without fear of recrimination, then we are dead as
an open source project.

In the Asterisk Developer Community, we often have disagreements about
technical decisions and the direction of the project. Sometimes those
disagreements are quite passionate. That's a good thing. We are all
only human, and sometimes we all make mistakes. The only way we can
keep the project moving forward in the best manner possible is if we
allow for disagreements and conversation.

However, there is an acceptable way to disagree with each other, and
an unacceptable way. Repeatedly denigrating others in the community,
refusing to listen to their opinions and explanations, and continuing
to attack those who disagree with you creates a hostile environment
where productive conversation is impossible. Paul Albrecht repeatedly
chose to communicate in this fashion and refused to change his
behaviour.

In light of his recent e-mails, which came after I privately warned
Paul that he was in violation of the community code of conduct [1], I
felt Paul had no desire to change his rhetoric or his language and
have thus removed him from the Asterisk project e-mail lists and other
project resources.

This was not a decision taken lightly. This is the first time I've had
to do this as the lead of the Asterisk project, and I sincerely hope
it is the last.

I'm sure this decision will not sit easily with everyone. I understand
that, and my desire is not to create a place where passionate opinions
cannot be expressed. What I do hope, however, is that we can have a
community where we all have a basic level of respect for one another,
such that when we do disagree, we can do so without resorting to
insults and derogatory comments.

To quote Jeff Atwood [2]:

“At the risk of sounding aspirational, here's one thing I know to be
true, and I advise every community to take to heart: I expect you to
act like a group of friends who care about each other, no matter how
dumb some of us might be, no matter what political opinions some of us
hold, no matter what things some of us like or dislike.”

Hopefully, we can move past this as a community and continue to
support and improve the Asterisk project.

Matt

[1] https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+Community+Code+of+Conduct
[2] http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-if-we-could-weaponize-empathy/

--
Matthew Jordan
Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org

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