Update : I’m putting this update at the start so people can see it…

I’m tired of repeating the same thing over and over again, so I’ll make this clear once and for all : I *never* said that Alvaro is a bastard.. the title of this post is an answer to the hundreds of people who told *ME* that I’m a bastard for doing what I’ve done.

Secondly, we *never* stole anything from Alvaro, his work is still credited to him, he still appears as a developer and the founder, the only thing that we’ve done is to remove him from the “list of currently active developers” because he’s not active anymore (and hasn’t been for over 3 years). He abandoned aMSN, and I see no reason why he would have to be mad if aMSN ‘abandoned’ him in return.

He’s saying it was a “coup d’etat”, which is over-exagerating, it makes it feel like he was the most active developer, and then he gave me admin privileges and I kicked him out right away… no, that is not true, and he never said that himself (but people seem to understand it like that), he left aMSN years ago, and I’ve been managing aMSN for over 7 years now, while he’s been the project leader for maybe 2 years (he would need to confirm that, as I’m not sure when the roles switches from him to me).

The only thing I believe was a wrong doing was to not notify everyone of that cleanup that I did in the list of active developers, and for that, I already apologized, and I don’t know why he had to blog about this story and harm aMSN’s reputation (and mine specifically).

And here is a copy/paste of a discussion I had with Alvaro back in 2007 (3 years ago) after he was accidentally deleted from the list of active developers :

Álvaro : i don’t mind being removed
Álvaro : do what you want, really
KaKaRoTo : btw, you’re not in amsn project anymore
KaKaRoTo : you want me to add you ?
Álvaro : yes i know
Álvaro : i’m not doing anything right now
Álvaro : so i don’t see the point
Álvaro : if i want to code in amsn again, i can be readded then
KaKaRoTo : you’re back :p
Álvaro : thanks

And finally… We told Alvaro from the very beginning that if he wants to code for aMSN again and be active, he just needs to tell us and he’ll be immediately added back to the ‘list of active developers’ and have full SVN access. But he said that he doesn’t have time and doesn’t want to do anything. He’s welcome to join us anytime, he was never kicked, it was never a “coup d’etat”, it’s a simple matter of whether or not he’s an active developer now or if he’s not, and he currently isn’t.

I don’t know what more I need to say for people to actually understand what happened….

End of the update: Back to the original post…

Wow, what a shock…

This post is a reply to Alvaro’s blog post. To those who don’t read spanish, there’s always google translate..

Basically, what happened is that I did a cleanup round on every inactive developer a few months ago (almost a year ago) and Alvaro realized that only recently and asks why, to which I explained that inactive developers were removed, and since he was inactive for over 3 years, he also got removed from the team members, as I want to keep it minimal to reflect the real status of the project. He did not like it, and he requested he’d be added again. to which we ALL (admins) responded that it wasn’t justified and that he was being childish (because of how he kept answering), then we added him again as team members, but he then told us to remove him again … you can read the whole thread here.

Now, Alvaro decides to post on his blog (in spanish) and put it on meneame (digg-like equivalent for spanish people) in which he says that I’m a bastard who prepared a “coup d’etat” to exile him, and that we started insulting him and stating me specifically, he says it’s “no surprise coming from that person”, trying to make me look like a bastard…

So here’s my answer to Alvaro :

First, aMSN is aMSN, it’s not “Alvaro’s Messenger”. It was called like that back then, when you were alone in the project, then you said that it didn’t deserve the name because it wasn’t your work anymore, it was the work of everybody involved and it belonged to the community now, and so the name was changed to be only “aMSN” with no particular hidden meaning, that was maybe 5 or 6 years ago. So why do you now state in your blog the name as being “Alvaro’s messenger”? Oh, is it because you want to generate even more sympathy towards your cause (troll) ?

Then you decide to explain your version of what happened.. some kind of ‘summary’ , full of false advertisement towards you.. did I “stab you in the back” like you said? no, I’m sorry but that’s not true, when you’re inactive from a project for that long, it is expected that you’d get removed from it, that’s normal. Yes, I probably should have notified you (and the 30 other people who got removed), but it wouldn’t have changed anything. Also I remember quite clearly that you told me yourself (before these events) to just remove you from the project because you were inactive, and I told you that it wasn’t necessary, that I might do it later, but that you could stay (at that time). For your information, launchpad automatically removes membership status to inactive developers every 6 months.. the system does it, not the project leader.. I wonder if you’d be insulting the machine too if sourceforge worked the same way…

And no, all you got wasn’t just a bunch of insults and shouts, we tried to reason with you, but you just wouldn’t listen, you were just being your childish usual self, a real crybaby. If you take that as an insult (you will, since that’s all we said to you that you considered being ‘insults’), then too bad, it’s just the truth, not my fault if you don’t like the truth. But how can you say that it’s really not a surprise coming from me? what, you want to make me look like a universal bastard who just insults everybody with no reason? Did you decide to make this your personal vendetta against me? You should know that this decision (and those ‘insults’) were not mine alone, *everybody* said and agreed on the exact same thing, but I’m always the one in the front lines, because I’m the project leader right now.

The aMSN development isn’t closed, and like we all said a few times already : It doesn’t matter what you did in the past!!!! Do you think that Bill Clinton can just go and yell and post on his blog how the security at the white house refused to let him move in there, and how they didn’t let him authorize the launch of a nuclear missile? Even after he told them “how about my past contributions”? No, the world doesn’t work like that, we were quite polite towards you, we said that we respect your work, we acknowledge what you’ve done, but if you’re going to be inactive and not do a thing, then you have no reason to be part of the team… We said that if you give us a reason to add you to the team, if you were going to become active, then you’d get your status back, but you just wanted to have your name up there and not do anything.. nope, it doesn’t work like that. You have to respect democracy and what everybody thinks, and you have to respect the rules that were being used by the team since day 1 (your own rules).

After some more whining on your part, You were added again to the members list!! But then you denied that, and said that you didn’t want it, so I removed you again (this time telling you that I removed you).  So don’t come making us look like bastards here!! Why did you fail to mention you were re-added at your request ?

No, I don’t like your blog, I don’t like how you make us (and mainly me) look, and I don’t like how you deform reality, I don’t like how you say we stabbed you in the back, how you said that we’re not giving you credit for your past work, and I don’t like how you think you’re some kind of God or something, and that you are in your absolute right to ask us whatever you want after disappearing for 3 years! You could have been dead for 3 years for all we know, you weren’t giving any sign of life, and you still dare come and say that you were “active” for all that time?  You say that I did a “coup d’etat”? I’ve been project manager of aMSN for a lot longer than you were, your last commit was maybe 3 years ago, but your last real contributions as a project manager was 6 years ago, that’s more than the life of the whole project.

Your blog has just proven to us once more what we’ve been saying from the start… I won’t say it, but let our readers decide on how you acted…  You decide to post a story about what “we did to you”, giving your own story of what happened, completely manipulating the facts to suit your ego, and you post it in spanish and post it in meneame, as if you thought we don’t know how to use google translate… You try to catch all of the spanish people’s patriotism, making them think “one of our own got stabbed in the back”.. and all you did was send us a few people to our IRC channel, who come and insult us, bastards, motherfuckers, then leave the channel.. yep, that’s the way a “leader” acts…

If you want to fork aMSN and rename it back to “Alvaro’s messenger”, then have fun, go ahead, do it and good luck with that, the more users you take from us, the less support we’ll give to people who don’t know how to use a computer.. But like I told you before, and I’ll tell you again, you are more than welcome to join the aMSN team again, you just need to be active. If you do have time to spend on aMSN and work on it, and you have patches for us, then you will be added. If you don’t want to send us your precious patches, and want to act all high and mighty and fork aMSN, then do it, but it will be your own loss.

But let me tell you one thing… although people say “don’t feed the troll”, I don’t care, if you want to talk trash about me, then bring it on, you’re not the only one who has a blog in this world, and I can make people see the truth, where you try to deform it.

Good luck with your life, and I hope I won’t be hearing from your anymore.

Update: Alvaro commented on meneame saying that he uses amsn but only to connect (never chat) and uses pidgin.. he also says : “I do not need nor do I have time or inclination (increasingly less) to continue with the project AMSN.” And that’s the reason why he’s not part of the team, it’s because he’s not active and doesn’t plan to be. Like some other people said, the status and lifetime of an open source project is unrelated to the original founder of the project. And I believe that’s what people must understand. I don’t like people who just want to cause issues and get people’s attention just to feed their ego…

Update 2: I just want to make sure people understand that Alvaro is still listed as a developer/founder, he appears in the amsn website, he’s in the README, etc.. but all we did was remove him from the “list of currently active developers” (the sourceforge membership list) and that’s what he didn’t like.

The title of this blog post “Who’s the bastard?” isn’t meant as an insult to Alvaro, it is meant to answer all those hundreds (probably thousands in the next couple of days) of comments on meneame and on Alvaro’s blog who are treating *me* of a bastard, son of bitch, stupid, etc.. without knowing the facts.

Alvaro decided to be a troll and start a flame war and a vendetta against aMSN, and I don’t care, but I won’t sit by watching him insult us without giving the real truth to people.

KaKaRoTo