So you are either looking at files distributed by SMGL and are wondering who the "foo" person is, or it hasn't happened yet and you are wondering who I am and why I am petitioning to have my name and email address removed from those files.
My name is Hamish Greig, I started using SMGL when it was still sorcerer, later volunteered to help and was an active SMGL developer for the best part of a year, until April 2004. I had titles, if that sort of thing matters to you. I started as an ordinary guru in the games section, which became the games grimoire after my recommendation. I was the defacto assistant grimoire lead (I did the work but twice refused to take the official title). I founded the Nomadic Guru's Association (NGA), ended up accepting the Assistant Grimoire Lead position and soon after became the ISO/Cauldron Team Lead. I had a small cluster of machines running Andrew Stitt's Prometheus testing program for several months until sorcery problems (read between the lines!) caused me to turn the program off. I later worked on sorcery's and the grimoire's CROSS_INSTALL and INSTALL_ROOT feature to aid in my ISO building/production then restructured the installer and added a few features, the end result being the 20040414 2.4.X and 2.6.X kernel ISO releases. It was directly after that release that I quit the project in protest. None of those details are particularly relevant to anything here, they are not provided to provoke comparison against any other individual, they are just background information. I left the project because of problems I encountered with some individuals during my involvement. Not because of the actual problems, but for two ancillary reasons. I quit because some of the people involved didn't ever acknowledge the problems and secondly because there was no evidence in either deeds or words, that anything had been learned by the people making those mistakes. Making mistakes is a part of life, we all make mistakes, they are often unavoidable but teach valuable lessons. If you do make a mistake, you learn something from it, adjust your methods, thinking or attitude and that same mistake won't happen again. It's such a simple idea that most children can tell you about it. I am accused of trying to humiliate people, of denigrating them, of being unable to forgive and forget and of being unable to let bygones be bygones, so I'll explain myself before I go any further. People aren't humiliated by facts, details, or the truth about their involvement in mistakes or problems. People are only humiliated by a mistake or problem they are trying to hide or are unwilling to address. Denigration is like humiliation, you can't blacken or sully someone's name if they have nothing to hide and are honest with everyone around them. The last two are perceptual. Forgiveness is a nice Christian ethic and letting bygones be bygones can be a good way to solve simple disagreements and problems, but perception enters the equation when the question of profit and loss is asked. Do you profit when forgiving someone, if they don't think they have done anything wrong and would do it the same all over again ? Do you lose when you won't forgive a recalcitrant "sinner" who will continue making the same mistakes? In the real world, forgiveness is earned by recognition of problems or mistakes and letting bygones be bygones is a worthless idea if the "bygone" in dispute is going to occur again and again because no-one learned from the original mistake. I know the things I have to say are painful to some people. I have repeated them again and again, not to continue the pain, but because I never saw acknowledgement of the problems by the people involved, I didn't see indications that they had learnt anything from the mistakes and so you can only expect the same problems will continue to reoccur. I asked to be corrected if the facts I was reporting were false and for people to report any evidence that adjustments or changes had been made as a result of my reporting them, later, I was told on the sm-discuss mail list that no formal or official acknowledgement or statement needed to be issued, because all the problems and facts had been reported on the public mail list and the people involved were no longer in any leadership positions. If these problems had been acknowledged, admitted, dealt with and solved, why use "a new job" and "starting a family" as the reason for stepping down from the team lead position they held? Why didn't they step down from the Project Lead position when it became obvious they were not representing the wishes of the other developers? If it was only pride that stopped them from admitting these problems, then at least we would see that they had learned from mistakes in some other way, from their actions. The actual problems are in the mail list archives, repeating them all here isn't necessary, a single example will do. The Project Lead wasn't subscribed to receive the review notices for all the developers work. This was integral to so many problems, so why did he never change his review list after it was discovered ? Not for the end of his time as Project Lead, not for the end of his term as Sorcery Lead, not during his time as an ordinary member of the sorcery team and not when he stood down from the sorcery team and took over the libs section in the grimoire team. Was this just an oversight? Was it just a bad decision, to not monitor the efforts of the developers he had volunteered to lead? Did the other developers efforts not matter at all? Is he "above" the day to day activities of the fifteen active developers? Was he just too busy in real life to properly fulfill the leadership role he had volunteered and been elected for? I don't know the answer, I wish I did, but no response has been given. If any response had been given, or if changes had been made quietly then I would now have no reason to make my request, and there would be nothing to support it. That summarizes the primary reason why I could not continue to contribute as a volunteer for SMGL. I couldn't support any person or organisation that refused to admit and learn from it's mistakes. When I left after releasing my ISO's I was told the old Project lead was no longer in any lead position, that he was leaving smgl development and that the problems I had brought up didn't need to be addressed, unhappy about that I left SMGL but didn't see a need to remove my name and email from all the files the project was distributing. Months later I found Schabell (the old project lead) had not left development and the same mistakes were still happening. One bad apple spoils the whole apple cart, so I asked for my name and email to be removed(or modified), in order that I won't continue to be associated with the people whose actions I couldn't abide. It is a simple thing, reasonable considering how much I contributed and how much I tried to discuss all the problems before leaving, but so far it has not been done, so I created this page to petition the removal.
Anyone reading this who blames me for the disruption to smgl, who considers my request childish or assinine can direct their anger at the people in smgl who don't know how to admit problems and learn from mistakes. It is due to their actions, or lack of action if you prefer, that I request this removal. Once my name and email address have been removed or replaced the project will not hear from me again.
Hamish Greig
ps. I need to make it clear that several things are not being said or requested. This is not a single minded attack against Eric Schabell. I would not withdraw this request if Eric Schabell now made any statement relating to the problems, it is too late for any statement or action to be sincere. Nor am I requesting Eric Schabell be kicked out of smgl or that he exile himself. Even if Schabell left or was asked to leave for some currently valid reason, I would still need this request fulfilled, for the same reason, it is too late to now attempt to deal with year old problems. Apart from this accountability, people not learning from mistakes and the project communication issues I am not making any negative comment about the current progress of smgl, I don't know it's current status and I am not actually disputing or refuting any changes or progress made in any single product since I left. I am only addressing the issues that made me leave in protest, and asking that the unqualified distribution of my name and email address ceases.