Plugins: Not Your Circus, Not Your Gold Mine

My friend Andrea M. once told me “Not my circus, not my monkeys” about a problem that was outside her purview, and I liked it so much, I kept using it. I’m sure someone else came up with it, but that’s where I learned it.

Perry (not his real name) had a big problem understanding when something wasn’t his business, as well as when to accept the L.

Authors and Managers and Committers

Perry had an interesting history. He started out by emailing Plugins to complain about the language used on WordPress.org plugin pages. Specifically, he didn’t like that the pages say “Plugin Author” and thought it should be “Plugin Manager” and his reason?

Being authorized to commit code and release versions does not make a committer an author.

Now, the plugin team didn’t agree. As Otto would say “If you’re not capable of writing the code, then you should not have access to change it for the users.”

Perry …

[…]

Moreover, the authorship claim that you are forcing on your benefactors kills inspiration. You are not allowed to impose your own rules on people committed to make WordPress usable. We’re not your slaves, not your servants, not your employees. We’re forced to contribute because WordPress is the only game in town, and most people are likely to not want to publish otherwise.

I’m asking you nothing but to be consistent: […]

In response you sent me lies. And added insult over injury.

[…]

There was a bit of a laugh held over ‘slaves’ and Plugins sent back that (a) we’re not going to change it and (b) if you really want to die on that mountain, here’s a link to META TRAC where you can open a ticket.

Perry sent back links to academic discourse about authorship and concluded:

After reading these articles, you’ll be able to understand that a maintenance programmer is not an author.

As it happens, performing maintenance programming on code, where authorship is conferred by … wait for it … writing code means the person is, in fact, an author. This was something mentioned in those links.

All plugins said was basically “Thanks but no, here’s Meta trac, knock yourself out.” Perry replied with some legal brouhaha, and pity was taken asking “Dude, do you want to file a legal complaint or a request to edit?” He apparently missed the links to meta in the previous two emails, but then said Meta was broken. Turned out his browser was so out of date, it was banned by WordPress.org to prevent bots.

But that seemed to mollify him.

On to the Circus!

Two years later…

Oh wait, no, there were a couple more weird moments. In one, he was upset someone used his real name on the forums. That was totally fair and we did clean it up for him, but pointed out that you have to give the forum moderators time. We’re all volunteers, after all.

Finally we get to the story. It began with him asking us to merge accounts. In general, that gets you a finger waggle and a talking to about why multiple accounts are stupid with you’re one person, but this one went off the deep end real fast.

He realized that having two accounts that shared code might make him run afoul of taking code without credit (i.e. copyright violations). I was happy for that level of self-awareness and honesty! And he was right! That is a part of why two accounts is stupid. But … Perry went on to explain that he used to be a part of a plugin (fake name “Gold Mining”, I’m watching Gold Rush right now) and left that project due to ‘ethical reasons.’

Sure, I get that. I’ve done the same. I rage quit using a plugin when I learned the creator was angry WordPress had an ‘all female’ release (nb: That should have been an under-represented persons release, and they corrected the name in the second one, but that first one had a bad name).

Perry’s email was mammoth and included layers and layers of quotes.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Perry happened to be a support rep (not a developer) on “Gold Mining.”
2. He emailed the people who actually owned the code to complain about how they ran things, and said he was going to work on other projects neener neener.
3. The owner of the “Gold Mining” plugin accepted the resignation with a no-take-backies addition of “And if you aren’t quitting, you’re fired.”
4. Perry accepted this, with a bit of vitriol .
5. Perry emailed plugins to explain he was both AlsoPerry AND Perry, and his plugin was a legit fork and had code he write, he wasn’t stealing, but he was still helping out in the “Gold Mining” forum.
6. Obviously his fork was closed because of confusion of above.

If you’re wondering about the surprise of “his plugin was closed,” so was I. I looked into it and a reply was sent:

1. Plugins literally does not give a shit about that interpersonal drama that happens in a group outside to WordPress.org (we do care if it’s people following others home to harass, but this was clearly not the case).
2. Plugins has now documented he was both people, though, for his and our protection.
3. If he really was fired/quit/left the “Gold Mining” project, walk the fuck away from their forums.
4. His plugin was closed because he broke his email on his alt account and it bounced, which he actually knew!

He replied with “Oh, I thought I was banned because of (all the reasons above) and not what you said.” And it went on for a long time … Okay? Who gives a shit. He could just say “That explains it, I’ll fix my email.” But no, no, it’s gotta be Dickensian.

1200+ words.

Plugins closed that rant email without reply. But you’re getting the idea here right? Every. Single. Email is this long.

Important note: See how plugins said to stop helping the plugin? Yeah, remember that. It’s important later.

Oh and he never fixed his email so his plugin remained closed.

Stop Poking the Bear

Another 18 months or so have passed. I’d forgotten about this whole mess because, after all, I was processing hundreds of tickets a day, and anything that wasn’t active within a week fell out of my head. But also I kind of assumed he’d properly realized “I owe Gold Mining nothing!” and moved on.

Oh. I can delude myself sometimes. Otto calls me an optimist.

Perry emails and asks if we can transfer his version of the plugin from AlsoPerry to Perry and reopen. And I started to think “Sure, why not” and read the rest of his long email, which explained he was still helping out in the original “Gold Mining” forum and answering PRs on their GitHub!

I wish I’d never taken psychedelics, I’d never drunk coffee and cocoa, I’d made no mistakes, and I’d always got at least one verse of the Bible each day.

I would be very sad if I never had cocoa or coffee again, but to each their own.

Plugins Team checked out the plugin, saw it was a 100% copy (not a fork) and explained that no, Perry, you cannot have it back unless you make it a real fork. Perry explained he didn’t have the technical chops to do that but we should let him have his own version anyway.

The answer was no.

So then he asked if he could have the original “Gold Mining” plugin, which the original authors (who were not him!) had closed on their own a few months before. Oh and he felt like a failure because it was closed.

Our reply?

1. No, you cannot have someone else’s plugin without their permission. Sometimes we’ll hand it over, but in this case it was patently clear the original owners didn’t want Perry to have it.
2. The plugin was closed by the owner, we always respect that.
3. “Gold Mining” was not Perry’s plugin. It never was. He never committed code, he never wrote a single fucking line. It was. Not. His.
4. There was nothing Perry had done that was a ‘fail’ (except continuing to help in a place he knew he wasn’t wanted, and that was really only a ‘fail’ because he was hurting himself).

Three days of emails followed.

There was a weird claim that the original owners were asking Perry to support, and we asked if that was really the case. If so, we would go hit them with a fish on Perry’s behalf, because that’s abusive. But it transpired that no, no one had asked Perry to do anything at all, he just felt obligated.

See I was stressing that we wanted to protect Perry. Right now, though, we had to protect him from himself, and he really kept hitting himself. The Catholic Guilt on this guy was massive and I couldn’t figure out how to get him to understand that the plugin was not his, and he needed to walk away for his own sanity.

Perry replied with a Catholic Guilt ridden EPIC length email with quotes from emails years past which boils down to:

• The Original Owner was doing this from revenge (‘this’ being leaving Perry’s access as a support rep – I removed him to settle that matter).
• People still used the plugin (… yes? That happens).
• Perry was obligated to help those people (FFS NO, how many times do we have to tell him this?).
• Perry didn’t even know he was still a support rep until we told him in December when we had removed him.
• Plugin closures can be reversed (yes, but not by someone who quit/was fired, buddy).
• “So everything I do for [Gold Mining] now is both a sacrifice and a punishment.” (… God is in the tub).

Plugins repeated “Walk. The fuck. Away.”

It’s Monkeys All The Way Down

A lot more emails followed.

Like a lot, a lot.

Perry kept arguing he had commit access and, in fact, I found out he did have access … five years ago. His access had been removed at least three years ago (we didn’t track plugin access being removed at the time).

He also argued his removal was a mistake. Since all the devs were removed a day before the plugin was closed (by the owner, remember), we told him no, it was not. Clearly the owner knew what he was doing.

Perry sent a lot more bible quotes.

Finally he got an ultimatum.

1. Perry was not permitted to host any plugin even remotely related to “Gold Mining”
2. Perry was not permitted to post in the original “Gold Mining” plugin forums

If he attempted either of the two, he would be banned.

And that, my friends, is when it ended. He didn’t reply to that ultimatum, but at least he stopped emailing us daily.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

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