Mastodawn

mcc Aug 30, 2023

Hi. You may have seen a boost from Sunday going around containing allegations from a former contributor about financial mismanagement by the Tusky project.

The Tusky project has just posted a response from the project contributors, written by twelve of us working collaboratively. The post's quite long, and I apologize for that, but the allegations were detailed so our response also needed to be. You can read it here, if you want:

https://opencollective.com/tusky/updates/tusky-contributor-response-to-nik-clayton

Or a TL;DR:

https://mastodon.social/@Tusky/110980432313299809

Tusky Contributor response to Nik Clayton - Tusky

TL;DR: Our OpenCollective policy has always been that we will use our budget to enable contributors who would otherwise not be able to contribute. In one case, this meant that there was no publicly visible work, because the...

Grath Aug 30, 2023

If you read the Sunday/Monday posts by Nik Clayton, please read ours also.

I want to be clear both I, and the project, have no desire to escalate any conflict with Nik. In the interest of that, we tried to stick to the facts and left out almost all of our own emotions about the subject (I've got some!), as well as trying to omit anything that could be construed as a counter-accusation.

Our goal is to prevent any inaccurate narratives from circulating. We do feel Nik's post contained some.

mcc Aug 30, 2023

The context, from my own perspective: Tusky is currently run by a consensus process of all contributors, not any one person. I participate in that process as the organizer/moderator of our bimonthly contributor meeting.

For the record, I have never been involved in our financial side of Tusky, nor received money from the project. I was involved in the post-Nik investigation and I feature in (and wrote parts of) the OpenCollective post, and I stand behind everything in that post.

mcc Aug 30, 2023

This thread is long, as our (and Nik's) post is long. My Mastodon reach exceeds Nik's, and by posting about this I'm probably spreading the dirty laundry here to people who previously hadn't heard about any of this. Sorry about that. I don't think this is the best use of our OpenCollective blog, or my Mastodon account, or frankly the time I've put into the incident response here. But I care *very* much about Tusky, both the app and our community, and I think it's important to correct the record.

mcc Aug 30, 2023

In conclusion: Imagine that in lieu of this post, I screamed for thirty-six seconds nonstop and then collapsed unconscious.

Raven Onthill Aug 30, 2023

@mcc is there going to be an independent audit? I think that's probably the only way to resolve this; an opinion from a neutral third party.

How big is the collective? What is its formal organization?

mcc Aug 30, 2023

@ravenonthill Raven, before I answer this question, did you read the post?

EDIT: The one on OpenCollective, I mean.

Raven Onthill Sep 1, 2023

@mcc I have now. It doesn't sound like an independent audit is going to be helpful.☹️

Clairement crevée

blob_cat_sleeping

@mcc thank you for your work on Tusky, technical and otherwise, and thanks for the response

David P Aug 30, 2023

joël Aug 30, 2023

@mcc Thanks a lot for the post and your work on tusky in general.

@mcc the respect (and restraint) clearly shown in that post speaks volumes. Knowing OSS work and communities, I can viscerally feel all the time, emotional energy, and hard work that's been sunk into this conflict. I'm sorry this was a thing for you all!

kouhai, of the health issues Aug 30, 2023

@mcc 💙

Jason Petersen (he)Aug 30, 2023

@mcc I knew nothing except “some dude is mad about what they consider an invalid payment and is taking their grievance public”

This OC post was the first long thing I read about it and… well every one of my preconceptions about what sort of person might do this was validated. Sorry you’re dealing with this.

Jason Petersen (he)Aug 30, 2023

@mcc like, I even thought “if they’re mad about payment when a deliverable doesn’t result, what must they think of organizational and social work”

WELP.

Nik Aug 31, 2023

@jason @mcc I think organisational and social work are fantastic, thanks for asking, and not rewarded nearly as often as they should be.

I also think people doing organisational and social work can still be held accountable, and if they fail to do the thing they are supposed to do, the project should be able to learn from those failures.

Not try and shut down the discussion.

Jason Petersen (he)Aug 31, 2023

Paul Bernhardt (moved to [email protected])Aug 31, 2023

@mcc I had not heard of these issues, but Tusky's position seems very reasonable and well considered.

I only started following you because someone else I followed kept boosting interesting posts from you. What I'm taking away from this thread and article is that in addition to being interesting, you are ALSO a developer of the (excellent) app I'm using, which is very cool. So from my perspective it's a win!

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc Despite the posts being carefully written, they're a bit hard for outsiders to decode.

Trying to reconcile Nik's post with the OC post, the leadership structure is hard to decode - Connie and Maloki have stepped down, but are still OC admins, which I guess means they're financial admins? Presumably they aim to drop these roles at some point, or is financial admin separate from maintainer? It looks like they're still active, maybe as regular contributors? 1/n

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc Understanding the leadership structure seems really helpful to get what's going on, as you say most decisions are by consensus (not unusual for projects this size), but you'd not been involved in the finances & Nik's take was that admins told him to stop asking qs, as only admins needed to care - which is all the more confusing as the OC post suggested he was being lined up to be an admin. Nik makes it sound like the financial side was very silo'd, at odds with the consensus approach.

2/n

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Will respond when I get back to a computer

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc Cheers, really appreciate you putting effort into a reply, given how emotionally taxing it must have been so far.

I'd prefer not to shove more questions onto you, given all that, but I'm really trying to understand the gaps between the posts, and I think a lot stems from the different views of leadership/decision-making. ICBW, and if I am I'd be glad of a correction!

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc it's still unclear to me exactly how financial decisions were taken in the past and now, whether the person (or people?) telling Nik to drop it was representing an overall policy of this information only being available to financial admins etc., or simply being tired of Nik asking annoying questions.

And all this seems core to Nik's unhappiness, since he seems more concerned by the response than the original issues (https://mastodon.social/@nikclayton/110967552417825519).

In fact... 3/n

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc The more I read of this, the more it looks like a personal beef between Nik and Maloki, with Nik taking Maloki as the official face of Tusky financial admin, even though Maloki had stepped down.

And all this is an outsider trying to read between the lines, because everyone's trying to keep their emotions out of this and (understandably) write their posts extremely carefully.

Sorry it's a big mess, stressful for everyone. 4/4

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Okay. There are several issues you've raised.

First off, I think your read, in post 4/4, is absolutely dead on. This is why I believe the issue was actually resolvable, and I am sad that I, and L.J., were not given a chance to step in and try to unwind the conflict. Sunday was the first day I started trying to get involved— I didn't participate in the argument during the week (I couldn't, I had work), and on Saturday, I was waiting to hear from L.J. It's just all very unfortunate.

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Second off, it's very clear that Nik was frustrated. I could definitely imagine a narrative where from Nik's perspective of the same events I saw, that frustration feels legitimate. But honestly, there's not anything I can do about that right now. It's just too late.

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Finally. Your question about financial leadership. It's at no point this week been completely clear to me in his posts exactly what Nik means when he says "Admins". If you look on our OpenCollective page https://opencollective.com/tusky/ (under "our contributors", click "team") you will see that "Admin" is a specific account status on the *OpenCollective site*, and our admin accounts at this exact moment are Conny, Maloki, and Tak. (1/)

Tusky - Open Collective

Tusky is a beautiful Android client for Mastodon.

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Conny and Maloki did resign. If you look at the resignation announcement post re:Tusky and https://opencollective.com/tusky/updates/some-changes-going-forward It states Maloki was planned to stay on as "admin" (this could mean at least two things) until the end of the year. However this has been a bad health month for Maloki (and stressful) and by mutual agreement with the project, her final billed day as project staff is August 31. (Some things I may need to seek group approval before saying, but I think I can say that much.) (2/)

Some changes going forward - Tusky

We don't update on here very often, but this one is important. For a long time there's been a very small team of people who've headed Tusky, with more responsibility on their back than they could carry, but because of circumstance...

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Conny was on sabbatical *before* he stepped down, so he's not been involved in anything project related for some time. He stepped down as lead; my understanding was he left open the possibility of individual contributions.

So for several months, our financial admins have been Maloki and Conny., and as of Sept. 1, Tak is our sole remaining active financial admin. But as described in the post, all OC activity has been voluntarily halted since July 28. (3/)

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf Why is this not explained in the post? Because it is *complicated*, and frankly, because no one, including me, has clear answers *yet*. We've been too busy. Last week was taken up by trying to figure out how to de-escalate the Maloki-Nik… discussion, this week the *entire project* has been *very busy* compiling this post. & currently, we usually don't make big decisions except at our meetings. The decision last meeting? Investigate SFC/Verein, then make a decision once that is scoped. (4/)

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf It's not clear to me when Maloki and Conny, having resigned, will have their OC admin status removed. One of my project tasks for this week is to make a full list of who has the keys to which project accounts, which is step one to giving more people keys. I think it would be unwise to reduce the number of OC admins below 3. Conny might be called on to do OC tasks later, as he's the most trusted member of the project. But Maloki we wouldn't ask that of her, we've asked too much already. (5/)

mcc Aug 31, 2023

@sgf So to summarize:
- We clearly have a lot of work to do in terms of rationalizing this stuff. We're working on it.
- Forming an "entity" would be the most straightforward path to rationalizing, but might take too long, so research is needed.
- The lack of clarity could have easily added to Nik's frustration, or possibly put him in a position he felt legitimately powerless. And that could have guided his decisions. But again: It's too late for me to do anything about that. I did try. (6/6)

Simon Frankau Aug 31, 2023

@mcc I've just woken up in Europe and: Thank you for such a detailed response, it's blown me away to see how much you've written, and how well you've answered my questions. It's clarified so much to me, including the gaps in the remaining contributors' understanding that makes this so much more complicated.

Good luck with getting to a good outcome. (Insert appropriate emoji here - I couldn't find one that was "positive vibes" enough without being a bit weird coming from a stranger).

Nik Aug 31, 2023

@mcc @sgf Sorry, I could have made that clearer.

You're correct, when I refer to "Admins" or "Financial Admins" that means the three people listed with the "Admin" account status on Open Collective.

Nik Sep 25, 2023

@mcc @sgf Yeah, sorry Simon, the project is lying to you. https://write.as/nikclayton/update-5-on-stepping-back

Update #5 on "Stepping back"

In Update #2 on "Stepping back" I alleged that some of the public statements by the Tusky project, prompted by Stepping back from the Tus...

nikclayton