Update #4 on “Stepping back”

Edit to add this set of links to the posts in the series

Have you seen Paddington 2? I realise I'm a little late to that particular movie, but it really is a delight. The whole production nails the tone perfectly, and never wavers. It would be so easy to drop an overly large knowing wink to the parents in the audience and risk breaking the spell for the kids, but they never do. They've constructed a world on film that works exactly how I imagine an 8 year old thinks the world works, and it's marvellous.

However, you're probably not here for the one paragraph film reviews, so, onward. In Update #2 on “Stepping back” I alleged that some of the public statements by the Tusky project, prompted by Stepping back from the Tusky project, were lies.

It is my responsibility to present evidence for that. This is one of a collection of posts that do that, or otherwise respond to the public statement by the Tusky team.

And if elzoido is reading, this one is dedicated to you. Only 48,567 words missing.

The “Admin Changes & Transitions” section

People stepping down

In June 2023, first Maloki, then Conny stepped down from the project.

This is partially false. Conny stepped down, Maloki did not, but planned to by end of the year.

This is confirmed by the project update posted to Some changes going forward – Open Collective (2023-07-28) which says:

As it stands right now, Conny is resigning entirely from working on Tusky, and maloki is still on in an advisory position and as an admin until the end of the year.

In July and August Maloki was still:

That's all consistent with someone who is winding down their responsibilities and hasn't transferred all of them yet.

She also said (in the Tusky Contributors channel, 2023-08-17, 15:12)

And honestly atm, I'm contributing about the same amount as I always have. 😅 Minus the stress from feeling I should be doing more. 🤷‍♀️

After the meeting, when I posted some initial results from my research in to possible legal structures for the project, Maloki was the only project member who responded, saying (2023-08-21):

I think you can gather up relevant information. If you feel like it.

I think part of the problem is often that we don't have anyone with time or energy to look into these kind of things, so it's good to at least have the research

Finally, the project had three Open Collective financial admins, Conny, Maloki, and Tak.

When I asked the initial question, and through the remainder of the discussion, Maloki was the only who replied.

I did not expect a reply from Conny, he had already stepped down. I was not surprised to see replies from Maloki, as I have explained, my understanding was that she was still engaged with aspects of the project. I am surprised that there was no reply from Tak.

To summarise; Maloki had definitely announced an intention to step back. She may have been in the process of stepping back.

But to say she had “stepped down from the project” is a lie.

Transitioning responsibilities

Conny's tasks, such as releases, were handed off to Nik; Maloki's tasks were split between Nik and Andi Mcc because they volunteered. 

Partially true, but misleading. The release process “hand off” went like this:

Connyduck: – Who wants to be responsible for the next release and follow our release process? https://github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/blob/develop/Release.md @nikclayton I think you were interested? Nik: Happy to. My schedule for the next couple of weeks is reasonably free, so I've got the time.

(“couple of weeks” turned out to be woeful underestimate on my part. The 22.0 release was rocky, but eventually successful, in no small part thanks to a handful of users who were happy to try out some test builds while I found and fixed some longstanding account corruption bugs. If you used Tusky with multiple accounts and sometimes discovered that posts from account A were showing up from account B, or you thought you were posting from account A but you were actually posting from account B, they're fixed, you're welcome.)

I was also, like some other contributors, given access to the Tusky repository so that I could approve and merge PRs from other contributors. This happened in late April 2023, long before Conny announced that he would be stepping down, and definitely not as part of any handoff.

I can't think of any other of his responsibilities that were handed off only to me, formally or informally. I am happy to be corrected on this point.

Collectively, we did add more people to the GitHub organisation so that they could help manage the queue of issues (e.g., closing them), or be added as reviewers to PRs.

I believe “Maloki's tasks were split between Nik and Andi Mcc because they volunteered” is partially incorrect. I didn't explicitly volunteer to pick up any of Maloki's responsibilities, and was never asked to.

This might be a reference to the fact that as part of managing the 22.0 release I was given the password to the @tusky@mastodon.social account so I could post information about the new beta versions and the final releases there, and respond to questions from testers.

That was part of the release process work, it certainly wasn't part of formally picking up any of Maloki's responsibilties.

The entirety of that discussion with Maloki (2023-04-26, well before any suggestion that she was stepping down, and so part of the period when posting release announcements could reasonably be expected to be part of her role) was:

Nik: Hi – do you want to post the 22-beta.1 announcement from the @tusky account, or ship the credentials to me and I'll do it? Maloki: Talk with Conny about that.

Again, this was before Conny had announced his decision to step down. And as noted earlier, there were some tasks (like adding new users to the GitHub repository) that I couldn't do, and asked Maloki to do on my behalf.

I can't speak to whatever specific responsibilities Andi picked up, except to note she definitely took over responsibility for organising and chairing the team meetings, and did so admirably.

The next three paragraphs:

As we tried to adjust... [...] At our August 15, 2023 contributor meeting... [...] In line with the responsibilities he'd been given...

Are broadly accurate, but also omit some colour that I think is important.

First, the need for a formal legal entity for the project was not first broached at the August 15th meeting.

This was first discussed in the team meeting of 2023-05-09, over three months earlier, as part of discussing the draft expense policy. The conclusion was to take no action at that time, but keep the idea in mind.

10 days before the August 15th meeting, after Conny had announced he was stepping back, I collated my thoughts in to Open infrastructure problems, shared it with the “Tusky Contributors” channel, asked for feedback ahead of the meeting, and added it to the agenda so we had an opportunity to make an informed decision on next steps.

Second, “assigned the task” and “responsibilities he'd been given” suggests a considerably weightier process than actually happened. During the meeting I volunteered to contact SFC and other organisations, as they had already come up in my research, and no one objected / wanted to do the work themselves.

Being added to the OpenCollective account

Around this same time, Nik was given member access to our OpenCollective account, with the intent of admin status being transitioned to him down the line.

For the record, I have no recollection of ever being told about this, asked if I wanted the responsibility, or given the opportunity to decline.

I have searched through discussion archives and private messages, and can find no reference to it.

If I have missed one I am happy to be corrected, but this statement from the project is the first time I am aware of this.