I am afraid that I have to reply to this note from Klaus Birkenbihl (which was
originally sent to LSTSRV-L, although some of the replies made afterwards went
to EARNTECH). Since people on EARNTECH and DEAR-BOD might not have sent it, I
am including the entire original message, even though I will only comment on a
fraction of it.
'>' = Klaus, and '>>' = Jose Maria.
>By chance I got a copy of Jose Maria's note LISTSEND V1.1 and I there is a
>need to make some corrections:
>
>> Please note that the availability of LISTSEND V1.1 makes obsolete the
>> previous version of LISTSEND, which I will no longer support, fix or
>> distribute. Following the new policy for volunteer software, LISTSEND is
>> NOT available to EARN users, but only to BITNET and NetNorth. I've moved
>> the EARN AFDs to LISTSEND EXEC to a separate file, which I may restore
>> later if the EARN situation betters.
>
>1. Jose Maria is not an EARN volunteer! It is his Job to contribute to the
> operation and development of EARN and DFN. He is paid for this by GMD.
I find this statement extremely shocking, and I was deeply disappointed to
realize that other people like Alain Auroux share this opinion.
Jose Maria is a human being, not a slave or a chair. He has been contracted to
provide service to GMD for a specified amount of time per week, in exchange
for money and according to some contract that he and GMD have signed. He has
not been "bought" by GMD, and therefore whatever he does outside his working
hours is not the property of GMD. Of course, if he uses the computing
facilities of GMD to do this work, GMD might (or might not - I am not a
lawyer) have some kind of legal right on the work that was done in this
fashion. However, even if GMD had rights on Jose Maria's work, it would still
be volunteer work - work for which he has not been paid, which he has not been
asked to do, and which he could perfectly decide not to do. In other words,
this extra amount of work is something that GMD cannot demand from him - at
least, not without paying him for the extra time spent on the machine.
Jose Maria works more than 12h a day on DEARN, including weekends. He is
probably paid to work 8h a day, 5 days a week. I find it grossly unfair to say
that he is not a volunteer. Although I am equally shocked to hear the word
"nazi" used to qualify Klaus's behaviour, such a lack of consideration
definitely does NOT befit an institution which is supposedly a network
research centre. GMD should be thankful for Jose Maria's FREE collaboration to
the network, and should encourage him in this behaviour instead of treating
him the way they do.
>2. Although GMD isn't allways in favour of EARN decissions GMD does not not
> support any strategy of imposing pressure on the EARN administration by
> selectively distributing technical solutions everywhere but within EARN.
> This is not a way to improove EARN, it is destructive.
>
>3. Since Jose Maria is employed by GMD and since the developments he
> announced where on base of GMD-owned ressources he is not authorized to
> give any statements on the availability. This is especially true for
> strange and unjustified statements that do not agree to GMD policy.
>
>So the best thing to do for now is to ignore Jose Maria's quoted paragraph. I
>guess better news are to follow when Jose Maria is back from hollidays.
>
>Klaus Birkenbihl
This is exactly the kind of statement that makes us volunteers (or rather,
non-volunteers - after all, we all have a job, don't we?) feel like EARN is
not worth spending our free time on. After all, why should Klaus bother to
discuss the matter with Jose-Maria beforehand? He is an employee of GMD, and
Klaus is his boss, so Jose-Maria doesn't have a say in the whole story.
I cannot speak for Jose-Maria of course, and I don't know how he will react to
Klaus's public aggression. However, you can be sure that if *my* boss were to
make such a statement publicly, he would have a letter of resignation on his
desk 5 minutes afterwards, and I would show EARN what "not being a volunteer"
means by getting a real job in a bank, insurance company or suchlike, and
completely forgetting that 'EARN' can be something else than an english verb.
It is likely, at this point, that Jose Maria will be really pissed off at EARN
and at the way volunteer support is acknowledged and encouraged. I doubt he
will accept to work as a full-time EARN technical staff, as he had been
offered. He may even decide to leave EARN and move to greener pastures. If he
chooses this approach, I may well restrict my collaboration with EARN even
more and bring it down to absolute zero, out of solidarity with him.
Bravo, mister Birkenbihl. This was a very clever move, both from the human and
managerial points of view. And a nice Christmas present to Jose-Maria.
Eric
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