Hello,
There was a recent port that was made to Libreboot for the Dell Optiplex 9020 MT, and I was not properly credited for the work that I did. I made a pull request on Codeberg with my patch (github basically) and labeled it as ‘WIP’. Leah and I were working on this together during that time, and I was told to wait a week, so I did. Time passes and guess what? They closed off my patch and added it themselves a week later with no credit given to me.
I made the .ROM files for the 9020 MT motherboard, I tested them, and they didn’t work until Leah came in and resized the IFD and GBE regions. That was all that they did. Everything else, I did on my own, I added the entries in /vendor/sources for MRC/ME, and added it to lbmk. Leah is now refusing to accept my patch that’s fixed.
I’m not trying to steal all the glory from them, they did help, I just want partial credit for utilizing the port from coreboot gerit. This port was originally made in Coreboot by someone, so work mostly goes to them, but as for adding support for Libreboot, my name is completely left out. I just feel wronged because now they’re saying that I don’t deserve to have my name on this because I was too slow when I was only given a week and was literally told to wait during that time period, so I was kind of manipulated into waiting so that Leah could get the board herself and add it without ever including my name.
I spent a week working on this, and I let them know how significant this was to me, only to have my work shitted on and not properly credited. I’m now banned from IRC and Libreboot for talking about this on Mastadon. I’m just ranting because I feel like my work was just stolen. This is the most powerful desktop supported by Libreboot and now I’m left in the back pages where no one can see my name, which says ‘Provided testing hardware for the 9020 MT’ when I did much more than just testing. I was the one who made this port.
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Libreboot is actually not a GNU project anymore due to a dispute between Leah Rowe and the FSF.
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Leah has said some dumb stuff but I think this particular separation from the GNU project was the correct decision. The dogmatic no blobs approach wasn’t working, it is better to reduce/minimise the binary blobs and support more devices imo. Don’t agree with their previous actions though.
Ironic
Best comment. Rowe has a lot of toxic history, and it is best to work in a separate lane rather than bolstering something like this.
OP’s testimony should serve as a lesson and a record for other firmware developers.
“let’s just forget what happened and move on” is easy for them to say when they’re the one who benefited from your work.
I can understand a miscommunication from their part, but the latter treatment on Mastodon is not an attitude that a large FOSS project should have towards another person.
While I won’t pretend that I was ever going to contribute to Libreboot, if a project I loved treated contributors this way, at best I would never contribute, and at worst seriously reconsider using said project. Leah absolutely needs to apologise for this, and Libreboot needs to update its community standards.
What a fucking rollercoaster. I don’t see why someone would ban someone that added a lot to a project. Stealing credits is incredibly low and sad.
I’m sorry this happened to you :/
I don’t see why someone would ban someone that added a lot to a project
No, exactly. Someone wouldn’t, and there is not a lot to show that OP added more than a lot of code that didn’t work. 🤷
It was a WIP, I submitted it to show where I was at so we could work on it together. We went through what was wrong and I corrected it in my next patch which didn’t get submitted because Leah had closed off my patch and added it themselves.
Exactly. According to their replies to you on Mastodon, Rowe found a fix of their own that solved the problem faster than going through the process with you.
Your work wasn’t stolen, it wasn’t even used
There is an obvious disconnect between your perception of the work process and Rowe’s, and that probably led to the miscommunications. You saw the collaboration as an informal deal that your work would be nursed through debugging to a workable version. Rowe, being the project lead, wanted any solution that would run on the device; found one and wrote it themself. To them the focus is not on helping make your personal contribution work, it’s on shipping LibreBoot with device patches that do.
I’m not a developer but I’ve been in both positions as a volunteer, a freelancer, and as a project manager. Sometimes you get passed over, sometimes you have to let contributors go who either don’t deliver the expected results or don’t deliver on time.
And yes, I’ve had to field long conversations, sometimes public ones, with people frustrated that their work has been rejected. Frankly, that’s not the reason anybody gets into project management. It drains energy you’d rather pour into the actual work.
The way you’ve brought this to Rowe on IRC, then on Mastodon, and now to Lemmy as a public grievance after they made it clear that they wouldn’t engage with your complaint any more — I don’t blame them for blocking you. It’s clear that you’re more concerned about your bruised ego than about the larger project, its importance to open computing — and the fact that there is now a functioning patch for your device.
I’m trying to put this nicely because, as I said, I’ve been in your position too (or similar), but I wouldn’t work with someone who reacts this poorly to rejection. Coming out with baseless accusations against Rowe about stealing your work is a huge red flag to potential collaborators that you’re the problem in the equation.
Yes, but the patch that I made after that didn’t go through because they closed off my original patch. I don’t think I have a bruised ego for just wanting proper credit. How are you going to tell me its okay for someone to just make someone wait a week, close off their patch, and take all the credit? This was intentional from Leah and it’s pretty obvious. I do care about the project and open computing, the only reason I said I wanted this to go on my resume is because I literally have no job and am looking for a career in IT.
I do feel sorry for you but not for the reasons you seem so obsessed about. I’ve been unemployed and trying to make opportunities for myself that didn’t come through. I’ve felt like I burned my one and only chance, several times. It’s rough pulling yourself up by the small hairs and trying again, but trust me. This isn’t the way.
This was intentional from Leah and it’s pretty obvious.
It’s obvious to you in your current situation, I’m sure, but take a breath and distance yourself just a moment. You’re clearly hurt but this is the makings of a paranoid delusion. Is the lead of an open source project intentionally persecuting and exploiting random volunteers, or just you specifically? Is that lead of an open source project with us in the room now?
Look, counterpoint: It’s fairly clear to me that you put a lot of expectation and hope on this opportunity to ship a working patch, and you saw the collaboration with Rowe as a sort of mentoring relationship where they’d coach your patch through to a working state. And after that you’d have that on your CV and all the doors to employment would open.
However, your work was (not stolen but) rejected — and you have been given clear explanations why the project lead chose not to use your work, not least that it bricked the device it was made for.
You need to acknowledge two things, both of them starting with “this isn’t all about you”: 1. Rowe had a different understanding of your collaboration, where they as a project lead were more concerned with shipping a working patch, any working patch, than with tutoring your process; and 2. The fault is with you for expecting Rowe to delay shipping and not use a fix they came up with themself in favour of your work. You handed in a patch that didn’t work and Rowe looked for other solutions as any good project manager should. End of.
You’ve seen an opportunity fall away and, although that is always a blow to someone starting a career, you need to move on. At this point you’re just tilting at windmills and making up reasons that somebody else is to blame. Nobody stole your work (not in a way that you seem willing to prove), you were given credit to the extent that your work was useful to the project.
Now do what you would have done if your work had been accepted: put the credit on your resume, keep looking for work and — I hope — more voluntary software work.
They made me wait that’s what the problem is, I had a functioning patch, and they closed off my original patch and added it themselves. I just really don’t think its fair for someone to do that. I mean, them telling me to wait a week just so they can close off my patch and take most of the credit? I think that’s wrong.
Yes, I saw the lines you repeated over and over again. I’m starting to see why Rowe blocked you.
Your next big project should be to step away from the keyboard and get the fuck to work on yourself. Your egomania is the problem here, nobody owes you anything.
Almost all of the code I can find around the Optiplex 9020 seems to be based of this coreboot patch from a few years ago. I find it difficult to see the code you added, though, as the tar.gz on Codeberg seems to be a complete copy of libreboot.
Do you have a side-by-side of the code that you contributed versus the code Leah contributed?
So far, it seems:
OP made a patch, it was bricking a system and was told to fix it, but was slow to submit a fix. Leah then got the board, made her own patch, and then tested it without any bricks. OP is still listed in the credits. https://libreboot.org/contrib.html#lorenzo-aloe
Leah told me to wait a week during that time frame, so I waited for them. They then ‘accidently’ closed off my patch and added this themselves. I was told to wait for them on two separate occasions, so I basically waited two weeks. I don’t know why they expected me to submit a patch if I was basically told to wait for them.
It appears as if the original developer was told to wait for weeks
Brother, that’s where the beauty of open source shines, if you wanna continue then fork their code and build upon it, remember tachiyomi or newpipe or vanced situations, they were just forked and continued, yeah, it’s not proper comparison since libreboot is still active but examples was discontinued, well… I have better example then, cataclysm: dda and it’s fork cataclysm: bn
I personally think that this merely a miscommunication on Leah’s part. If I were you, I would just let it go. From what I understand, Leah remade the patch herself so no work was stolen?
Sure you might feel wronged for being told to wait for a week and that’s natural! But as I stated, this was just a miscommunication in my opinion.
This situation is not worth stressing yourself over. You’re salty over Leah calling your work “shit”? Work/study harder and improve upon yourself. If I were you, this is what I would gather from all this.
Also, Leah saying “Accepy my authority” is pretty ironic for someone in the FOSS community.
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Its pretty easy to remake a patch when a rough draft was previously created by someone else; so I’m not sure the point is valid in stating Leah didn’t steal any work. Can you prove that claim?
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As easy as it is for them to “let it go” it would be just as easy for Leah to add them as a contributor…
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Some maintainers on large open source projects really think credit is not a big deal and sometimes apply the changes sent to them as their own commit if they think it’s not too significant. I think this is wrong though. Even small contribution should be properly attributed or it’ll discourage future participation.
I just feel wronged because now they’re saying that I don’t deserve to have my name on this because I was too slow when I was only given a week and was literally told to wait during that time period.
This is very concerning if true.
I was literally given one week:
Yikes.
Yeah, looks like she think your work is not a big deal and aren’t worth the fuzz about it. Sadly this attitude is pretty common. The maintainer didn’t think they do anything wrong (it’s just a small config!), not realizing the work they think was easy and not worth the credit might not actually that easy for new contributors and perhaps warrant some credit or acknowledgement to encourage future contributions.
You deserve credit for work you did do, it’s especially important yet all too easy to overlook in the FOSS space.
Sorry to hear this happened to you.
I understand the frustration get how annoying it is but I also can see it from leah perspective. Honestly I think this is a misunderstanding and I don’t think anyone is trying to be toxic (at least not initially. The your work was shit comment is rude af)
This may not be what you want to hear but I think you should consider whether all this argument and feeling bad is worth the potential upside. What happened was shitty but you shouldn’t let this ruin your day.
I’m not, I just want to publicize this so other people don’t get their work stolen. This was my first port, and just to have it taken from me like that, is just unethical. I mean, I’m not denying that you have the right to do that in FOSS, I’m really just showing people what Leah does to people who object to take that kind of shit from them.
I’d be pissed too. Not really anything I can do but let me know if I can help.
I’m sorry to hear about this, do you have some links to your GitHub and the interactions?
Feel like this should be included here. I’m pretty sure I found the original pr. I couldn’t find an associate issue so I’m not sure where the miscommunication about waiting happened.
Argument on Mastadon:
https://mas.to/@libreleah/112001644769069823
Leah posted the IRC chat logs, claiming that I was harassing them, when I was really just frustrated:
when I was really just frustrated
Buddy that all reads as harassing. The IRC logs are especially a bad look for you, because you said:
im looking to add this board to my resume
And now that entire chat log is tied to it.
I’m not sure why you thought hounding someone and harping about it for nearly eight hours on IRC was a good idea. But now you’ve come to the Fediverse to find some absolution or something.
You can be frustrated, that’s fine, but when that frustration turns into that long of a hanging on the bell that’s evident in that chat log and then two hours later you came here with this, that is past frustration.
Leah also indicated:
if i give in to you now, you will try to harass/abuse me again in the future.
And Leah has a point. You’ve shown no sign of taking a moment to collect yourself. I get you are upset. Sometimes the best way to handle upset is to just shut up for a day or two. And trust me, I struggle with doing that myself.
Like everything you’ve done in your frustration, I’ve been down that road. And I’m pretty sure in your head you are telling yourself, but the difference is that… because that’s exactly what I’d say to someone telling me this. That my situation is different somehow and that I must rectify this injustice immediately!
and if it was bullying, I apologize then.
What you need to do is two things. One, learn from this so that in the future you can do… Two, chill out. I think you’ll find in more professional environments sorry is okay, but I have learned from my mistakes and will do better is more preferred.
This whole thing could have been max three messages on IRC. “Why wasn’t I credited? What was wrong with my submission? How do I improve going forward?” The end.
I think the biggest thing here for me is that in open projects, leads are fielding multiple people and working on their stuff. Every message you send is “Hey stop what you are doing and pay attention to me!” So you really want to be respectful of their time by really trying to be succinct on whatever is bugging you.
And you are on the contrib page.
All round good guy, an honest and loyal fan.
And I think you’re wondering how “testing” vs “developed” looks on your resume? But that chat log is now going to be front and center no matter what’s said on the contrib page. It really doesn’t matter if you got “developed” pasted on the contrib page.
All of this Mastodon interactions and IRC logs isn’t a good look. It’s not the end of the world. I think everyone has felt frustration like this before, like there’s some magical set of words to say that’ll fix everything. But you’ve got to let it go. You’re just digging down with posts like this. And you don’t have to let it go forever, just you’ve really added a lot of friction to have this go surface of the sun warm. You need to let it cool, come back refreshed, and maybe see if you can repair the relationship you have with the team.
But you’ve got to understand. Your post here paints one picture and your interactions with Leah on Mastodon and IRC are something else. And that difference between the is especially not good as it comes off as a lot of sour and bitterness on this “slight” that you perceived as such an injustice.
And hell’s bells. If you sit on this for seventy-two hours and you still feel massively wronged, go fork you a project and call it FOSSITboot or whatever and show everyone your prowess. If you’ve got skills to pay the bills, then if you build it they will come.
Lots of love for you, but just take a moment from everything. I assure you, it’ll do you wonders to decompress.
I appreciate your response. I want to clarify that, on two separate occasions, I sought guidance on when to submit the patch, and I was instructed to wait for a week. The understanding was that Leah and I would resume work on it in the following week. However, the patch got accidentally closed during that time, which was unexpected.
In the IRC logs, my frustration was evident, and I acknowledge that my approach could have been more composed. I recognize the importance of clear and concise communication and will certainly work on refining my skills in this aspect.
Regarding Leah’s comment about being ‘too slow,’ it seems there might be a misunderstanding. I adhered to the guidance to wait for their input during the specified timeframe. The assertion that I don’t deserve credit due to being ‘too slow’ contradicts the circumstances.
And just so we’re clear, I’m not saying everything Leah said is golden. Humans are human and say things that don’t jive 100% of the time. It’s entirely possible for something to have both folks handle a situation in a manner that is less than ideal. All I’m indicating is for you to step back for a second. It will absolutely help you out here.
Ideally you can perhaps look at this from Leah’s point of view. But that’s solely up to you. Best thing for you though is to just bring it down a notch. That’s the only thing that I’m pretty sure is a good idea right now. What’s past that, I think only you can best determine that. But I honestly think some deep breaths are what’s immediately needed.
I’m pretty sure post that you’ll have it handled. And I don’t know how old you are but I’ll say that panicked hyping a situation only gets worse as you age. So developing ways to deal with it is just part of growing up for 30 to 50 year olds. This notion that we’re done “growing” at some magical number is bunk.
I had my car start stuttering on the highway once and thought for sure that I was going to die. My brain just spiraled a situation where I needed to just pull over and see what was wrong into a flight or fight response. Ultimately, it was just a loose hose and I fixed it. But for a moment there I was panicking myself way past a point of being reasonable.
It just happens and sometimes we just need to force ourselves to take a pause. That’s all the advice I think I can give you here. I think once you chill for a bit, you’re smart enough to figure out the what’s next part.
I know nothing of coding.
From pictures, I get that you submit a code, which didn’t work. You were told that you have a week to fix the code, and in the meantime they closed your patch and a fix was used.
Issue here is that you claim the fix was still your code … and they said its their own code.
How to prove that?
I wasn’t told that I had a week, I asked Leah for help and they told me to give them week, so I waited. Then my patch was closed off ‘accidently’ where they then just added it themselves and took all the credit.
Yes, you mentioned that multiple times in your communication with Leah.
However, we have no way of confirming the patch they use is the same one that you submit (have you submited? from communication it sounds like you have a week to provide a patch and then they just patch it themselves).
They recreated my patch from scratch and submitted it
From what I’ve read so far your code was too buggy, Leah then rewrote it (from scratch, as you just said) and then submitted her own code. What’s the problem? You even got a “All round good guy” on the contrib page (Also: Hi Brodie :))
Yes, but I was told to wait a week, and then once I waited they added it themselves. Which I think is wrong because telling me to wait just allowed them to commit there own patch before I was able to. OH GOD PLEASE DONT TELL ME BRODIE ROBERTSON IS REPORTING THIS?
You are? I doubt you did this work
I didn’t create the original Coreboot port, Mate Kurki is the main author of this port. I just added support for it to Libreboot utilizing his patch from coreboot gerit.
If what Leah writes is correct, they didn’t steal your work because they created their own patch from scratch.
It seems they wanted to get the 9020 working as quickly as possible, probably because they seem to be selling these machines with Libreboot pre-flashed on their minifree.org website.
But Leah could’ve just fixed whatever didn’t work yet with your patch if they didn’t want to wait for you to get around to fix these apparent issues yourself. That’s how I usually experience how contributions go. Make a pull request, and if something is still blocking it from getting merged, someone (either the PR author (you in this case), a project maintainer (Leah in this case) or whoever) fixed outstanding issues so it can be merged. Both authors usually get credited in this case.
If your code was so messy - and I’m in no way trying to say it was, I didn’t even look at it, but if it was - that redoing the work was easier than fixing your work, then it isn’t actually your contribution that’s in the production codebase after all. So, technically, you’d be correctly credited.
You should let it go either way to be honest. It’s not a good look for either of you. You’re harassing them via IRC and Mastodon (not personally attacking them, but constantly nagging), and Leah eventually writes they’ll ignore you, but then just straight up starts to insult you or your code like it was worthless all along.
I wouldn’t work with them again. Move on.
They told me to wait a week, I waited, and my patch was closed off and they had added it themselves and gave me basically no credit. That’s the main issue, I was told to wait, and I had a functioning patch, but due to Leah’s miscommunication, all the work I did is now meaningless. Why was I expected to submit another patch if I was told to wait?
Reading Leah’s comments, you’ve been credited for what you did, testing. Your patch didn’t work, she didn’t use it and wrote a solution herself.
Nothing was stolen because she didn’t use your patch.
The patch was a WIP, we were going over it to see what was wrong, which I fixed in my next patch. Leah had ‘accidently’ closed off my patch and added it themselves. I was told to wait, hence why I didn’t submit another patch.
okay, still, she didn’t steal anything from you. She didn’t use your patch, that’s all that happened. That’s not stealing.
My credit was stolen though, they closed off my patch after telling me to wait and they’re basically I don’t deserve any credit because I took too long, when the reality is that they’re the ones who kept me waiting.
There are countless patches that are never merged for one reason or another, sometimes just because the maintainer doesn’t like the implementation even if it works, so they implement it themselves.
If no code was used, no credit is necessary. She did credit you for testing, which a lot of projects don’t bother crediting. So take that and continue with your life.
I literally had a patch that was functioning but again, I was told to wait so why was I expected to submit the patch during that time? I was waiting for Leah but they held me up twice, and then closed off my patch for ‘being too slow’ when in fact, they’re the ones who told me to wait.
Having had my work appropriated by others before, I can feel you. I’d like to hope that this is all a big misunderstanding, but that would be naive of me. Hopefully this doesn’t stop you from contributing to other things in the future.
Since the content on codeburg is user owned and managed I’m afraid you don’t have much recourse there.
Just know that you are heard.
