Clement Lefebvre: The Man Behind Linux Mint (2013)(staging.computerworld.in) |
Clement Lefebvre: The Man Behind Linux Mint (2013)(staging.computerworld.in) |
I'm still bitter about this, and I think this experience has been traumatic. On their private Slack workspace they harassed me, later banned me from their Github organization, used social media to defame me, and continued to attack me in Github issues for some time afterwards.
During this time I also got a job with a reference from Clement praising me, but was later laid off after he wrote a blog post attacking me while being increasingly harassed in private by various Linux Mint team members. I wish I still had that reference email I let him send directly to my previous boss, so people could see how quickly he will turn on people within a three month time period.
Needless to say this has spoiled my appetite for being an open source contributor. Maybe I will eventually find a project that interests me, but every time I try to get back into the Linux desktop userland these experiences come back to haunt me.
Edit: It seems people want proof, but all I can show is a public figure who has done irreparable damage to the way I look at FOSS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/bzbomd/comment/e...
I'm not the first person they have ostracized. I have seen other anonymous post-mortems describing experiences similar to mine from earlier time periods. I did so much work for them, it still feels unreal that someone could be that vindictive.
Perhaps this belongs on a Glassdoor equivalent for FOSS projects, but since one doesn't exist and this thread appeared in my feed, I think it's important I'm able to voice my perspective since he tried to assassinate my character.
Makes me really wish people in FLOSS had better memories about stuff like this, it would make it easier to discern context when revelations like this come out. People who know the history can more easily answer questions like 'does this sound like something that person would do' when they remember past events where they acted out like this.
Let me repeat this, because it seems warranted: criticism of Israeli government (its policy and actions) isn't antisemitism, and isn't calling for Israel to cease existence. Mixing those two is especially dangerous, because this would lead to conclusion that periodically killing 1500 unarmed Palestinian civilians is a necessary price to be paid for continuing Israel's existence, and further discussion if this is a price worth paying.
Nowadays I'm using Manjaro for 3 years running. There's no 6 monthly release cycle, but a continuous stream of rolling releases. An upgrade has never broken my system to the same extent as it did with Ubuntu. It's closer to the Win and Mac experience for me.
Caveat though: Manjaro is not as beginner friendly as Ubuntu or Mint or Pop!_OS.
Anyway, I've never used Manjaro, but my daily driver is Arch. I remember around the upgrade to Linux 5.16 and gstreamer 1.20 (not 100% sure of the version) the sound on my laptop went to hell.
Pipewire would die and while the system was still more or less usable, it wouldn't turn off. It would hang indefinitely trying to shut down pipewire. Apps that didn't need the sound would work OK, but others would hang at launch, like Telegram. Firefox worked as long as it didn't try to play anything. As soon as it did, it would become unresponsive. I could work around it by disabling pipewire, and I could get back to work by installing the LTS kernel, which was still at 5.15, and the sound worked (I need to be able to make calls with Teams).
My laptop is AMD Zen3 based, but on my (older) Intel boxen everything was OK. However, on the laptop, sound wouldn't work with external sound cards or BT headphones, either.
This was quite shocking to me, since I'd been using Arch since ~2011 IIRC, and this was the only time when an upgrade was this terrible.
Counterpoint: somewhat recently, a Windows update permanently disabled my wireless headphones. They still work with any device that isn't running Windows. They won't work with other people's devices that are running Windows.
Do people really care if their docker containers run Ubuntu? Debian? RH? Not really
Also 90% of the pain in (traditional) distros seem to be the UI stuff (Window Manager, drivers, audio, etc). Not saying the other parts are not complicated, but upstream does most of the work there.
> Also 90% of the pain in (traditional) distros seem to be the UI stuff (Window Manager, drivers, audio, etc).
For a second I thought you're completely missing the point but then you say this lol.
> Also 90% of the pain in distros seem to be the UI stuff
Is it only me who see a contradiction here
That post was made 3 years ago. People change, and it does not invalidate the way I experienced what happened, even if I failed to articulate it effectively at the time. I only shared it to provide proof of the dispute, not to win sides.
I see that thread also contains people asking for, and not receiving, proof of (now-deleted) allegations.
If lots of other people really agree with your impression of working with Clem, point us at these other, similar opinions you mention. So far this is just “the lurkers support me in email.”
Here are the red flags: - Lack of context. Why is all of the evidence hidden/deleted/tucked away?
- Speak for “everyone”. Was it really consensus? Why not take direct ownership of a decision, instead of hiding behind a collective?
- Pulling in a snippet of private conversation as a evidence of being reasonable.
- Naming and shaming.
It may well be that the OP deserved the ban, but a single snippet of a measured response doesn’t address the questions that said action raises. Without more evidence, I say it suggests there’s more to this.
This particular piece of evidence is not conclusive, but neither is it in your favor.
That doesn't matter though. The fact he is retaliating in public over a post that only references public information, using private information, is inherently bad faith acting. The context is what makes it unprofessional.
Also other posts in this thread seems like victim blaming. Just because someone is famous doesn't make him a good person.