After governance breakdown, Node.js leaders fight for its survival | Hacker News Reader

After governance breakdown, Node.js leaders fight for its survival

zdnet.com

> The resignations followed a single event -- a vote that failed to remove a former director, a longstanding member of the community, from the leadership group.

This post (without taking sides, I haven't even read his post yet) is that individual's defence of himself, which doesn't appear to be linked from this post:

https://medium.com/@rvagg/the-truth-about-rod-vagg-f063f6a53...

This is pure fun:

"Some time ago I received notification via email that there are complaints against me. No details were provided and I was informed that I would neither receive those details or be involved in the whatever process was to take place. Further, TSC members were not allowed to speak to me directly about these matters, including my work colleagues also on the TSC."

The canonical source [1] on the Node side seems to have been fully redacted at this time, so here's the post in the community forum where people are discussing the issue [2].

Once again not taking sides (although this article seems to have dropped off the homepage).

[1]: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310

[2]: https://github.com/nodejs/community-committee/issues/111

> "What did Vagg actually do?"

The fact that we can't get any answer on this beyond Vagg's side is frustrating. From reading his side, it all seems incredibly minor stuff that would in no way need to end with a leadership change.

Can someone in the Node.js community enumerate the complaints fully, here or in some public place?

So - and please forgive the tone - when they couldn't get their way by the rules they put in place, they decided to pick up their toys and go home?

Can someone explain what happened? The article did a very poor job at it (or, at least, I didn't understand it), as it seemed to contradict itself or not shed enough light on things.

What did Vagg actually do? Why did other members leave?

I've heard he refused to use gender neutral pronouns.

Where did you hear this? Is there a source?

Could even have been Hacker News, when the same question was asked. Or maybe Twitter. I must admit I don't remember exactly. It is just what I said: "I heard" - no more, no less.

If I don't provide sources, and the accusers don't provide sources, who should we believe?

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw rvagg pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

The list of complaints seems to have been removed from the vote issue [1] on his removal 'at the request of several core collaborators who felt that listing the issues was not fair to Rod'.

He lists the issues himself in his response post [2] (see 'Response to the list of complaints'), where he also states 'Please note that I did not ask for this text to be redacted.' (although it's unclear whether he refers to the redaction of certain links in the list as copied in his post, or the whole list on nodejs/TSC#310).

So [1] seems to be the authoritative source on the Node side, [2] the authoritative source on the opposite side.

Disclaimer again, I'm not taking sides, I haven't read everything yet, I'm just gathering links for people to draw their own conclusions.

[1]: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310

[2]: https://medium.com/@rvagg/the-truth-about-rod-vagg-f063f6a53...

Thanks, I read those after I wrote the comment, and the things he did seem very minor. Of course, I'm only seeing his side of the argument, so I can't form a well-rounded opinion, but I can't see how the original list of complaints is enough justification to vote someone out of a council.

It is hard to find out what happened because it is more mundane than the titillation of vague code of conduct allegations and requires a little digging and neither of these make for good web stories.

The background context can be read here, https://web.archive.org/web/20170821222518/https://github.co...

The gist of it is that back in March the Nodejs board realized it was in non-compliance with its by-laws. The by-laws limit board membership to one employee per employer unless that company is a Platinum sponsor. Vagg and another board member were(are?) employed by the same company and that company was(is?) not a Platinum sponsor. Legal council had confirmed the opinion that this was in non-compliance with the bylaws.

The community did not appear to support changing the by-laws to allow the two members to continue to serve. Vagg's response in the linked discussion did not suggest any sort of path toward solving the problem.

--- Speculation follows

The by-laws did not provide a mechanism for handling this situation. Neither of the two employees resigned. The company did not become a Platinum sponsor. The board continued to be in non-compliance.

---Discussion

A person could make a plausible case that continued presence on the board that causes non-compliance is not an acting good faith and is therefore a possible code of conduct violation at the level of a board member. It is hard for an argument that non-compliance with the bylaws is acceptable to gain traction.

[OK, a bit more speculation] The Node Foundation's statement regarding removal is more likely to be related to by-law non-compliance than the code of conduct. Non-compliance with the by-laws is the level at which the Foundation is appropriately involved. Based on the archived discussion, the need to change the Board membership has been known for nearly six months. The failed vote to remove a member and neither conflicting member resigning means that the board is unable to resolve the problem on its own.

Wouldn't the right remedy for this be to remove him from the Board rather than from the TSC?

Who profits from this?

I mean this seems like a campaign to crush the node leadership, someone wants to get power over node, but who?

NPM wouldn't mind.

Could you elaborate?

Where can I find a list or overview reference for the events that happened? I'm completely out of the loop as I don't use Node.js at all.

Also, are there backup(s) anywhere for the "Many [...] complaints, since removed from the committee's pages"?

Another project bites the dust. Let the game of thrones commence!

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