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:
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.
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.
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 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!
@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@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.
@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!
@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
@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.
@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!
@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.
@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
@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.
@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.
@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/)
@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/)
@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/)
@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/)
@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/)
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)
@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).
@mcc
This story made me understand how small your budget, which is worry me a lot more than possible little mismanagement of funds. Donated a few dollars now, thank you for your work.
I knew something was fishy with Nik's message. He accuses Tusky of committing fraud and tries to walk it back, with a "I'm 100% not saying it is fraudulent" but... I've seen a similar tactic used by political commentators attempt to paint an organization as bad by just skirting the line between accusations and implications to accuse someone if wrongdoing without directly doing so. This tactic is used, more so, if the organization is not committing any wrongdoing, at all.
I asked what work was actually done, flagged the risk that without more context this could appear to be fraud, and was very clear I thought this was a straightforward mistake, writing (emphasis in the original):
To be super clear — I'm 100% not saying it is fraudulent. This could be as simple as “Some work was intended to be done, it wasn't, other work was done instead, and the expense description was not updated”.
@Sibshops I do not see how you can read that as anything other than what I said -- I don't think deliberate fraud has occurred, and I suggested a simple explanation for what had happened.
I can keep saying that, but I am not sure what else I can say that would convince you, if you do not agree with the plain meaning of the words I used.
If there is a form of words that would convince you, and I agree with them, I'm happy to say them. Please suggest something.
@Sibshops First, thank you for continuing the conversation. That's been something of a rarity over the past few days, and I appreciate it.
I understand how, in a different context someone could choose to make the inference you did.
For example, if you were reading that "To be super clear..." statement from someone speaking publicly, with no connection to the project, and no history of working to advance the project's interests, or with a reason to somehow damage the project.
Looking at Open Collective was "in line with the responsibilities" of what I was doing (those previous quotes are from the project's public statement)
The very next sentence I wrote (also in the blog post) was "But we should be able to explain what that work was, and we should have processes in place so that this does not happen again." -- it should be clear that I am looking for ways to resolve this issue and make sure we don't repeat it.
@Sibshops I had thought I had made all of that context clear in the initial blog post (the "Why where you looking in to this?" and "Raising the issue" sections).
I am not the only person on the team that thought this, as I also noted in the blog post (the quotes at the bottom of the "Could this be an innocent mistake?" section).
@Sibshops With all that in mind, do you think that, in this specific context, it is clear that I was not making an accusation ("you have done something fraudulent") but raising a valid and serious concern ("I think you have done something that, without the necessary context, could be seen as fraudulent, and we need to take more care about this")?
@nikclayton@Sibshops having read the statement in reply now it seems to me that this is primarily a culture clash. Everyone was concerned about the historically poor accounting but it became perceived as a factional weapon rather than a historical nuisance. In that context framing the transactions as potentially fraudulent fostered panic, a circling of horses and unnecessary conflict. I used to see similar teacup storms in local politics all the time.
@nikclayton To be honest, it's not really that clear you are concerned about someone else's opinion.
Maybe take out the speculation and passive voice?
"I think you have done something that (doners/opencollective/volunteers) will see as fraudulent. They saw (this other thing) as fraudulent, and I believe they will think the same thing about (this thing) as well."
@mcc this is a really helpful write up for your community - I'm not involved in your project but as project lead for a large open source project, I totally feel your pain with the governance struggles as you grow.
I'm happy to chat if it's helpful about how we're approaching things since we recently became independent and decided not to form a separate entity (mainly due to time and resources being lacking) but to use open source collective's services instead.
@mcc You are trying to convince us, the reader. I think direct conversation with Nik is Neede here. It's him you need to get on board. I feel that would be more productive.
The fact is no one is perfect and everyone, regardless of what they wish, is capable of getting heated and getting drawn into an argument. No one is happy with how the discussion with Nik progressed. I don't think it's useful to assign blame; we tried, in the post, not to suggest Nik was at sole fault. While the argument was going on my focus was on, how do we de-escalate this; the post details our attempt toward that end… (1/2)
@silvereagle As for your final point, personally I very much do not agree that Nik has ever been excluded from project governance. Nik wrote the majority of our current project governance documents. Had he framed his views in the form of a policy document, proposed at one of our meetings (since that's when we make decisions, not in informal chats), we would have very likely adopted it and begun following it immediately (once our temporary hold on financial disbursements lifts, of course).
@mcc Hmm. Even in your expanded explanation, these payments still sound sketchy. The concept of invoicing someone for uncompleted work is bizarre. I'd suggest getting an audit and hiring an accountant ASAP. This window into Tusky's haphazard project governance is deeply concerning...
I love the Tusky app and I hope to continue using it as my daily driver. Please get this stuff fixed.
@pynkbites@mcc Its fairly normal if invoicing for time, not work done.
(The complexities around this are one reason why major grant originating organisations like NLNet tend to pay on milestone completions; though this comes with its own hazards around e.g. underscoped work)
@erincandescent@mcc Really? It seems a broadly unwise approach to freelance work. I'm imagining a commissioned artist coming back to me and saying "Sorry I wasn't able to draw your art, but I spent forty hours on sketches so I'm keeping the money."
@pynkbites@erincandescent All I can say is I own a small business developing VR software and unless negotiated otherwise, this is the standard I use when paying my own contactors. I agree this standard is probably unusual in art circles but I would describe it as typical in software development.
This aside, I believe had the employment been longer than three months, the remaining two issues explored would have become merged PRs. Actually, we still might (?) get them in; we're looking into it.
@mcc@erincandescent Thanks for the explanation. I work in logistics and retail operations, and our contractors are always paid based on satisfactory job completion; they still bill by the hour but cannot charge for incomplete work. This is the perspective I was coming from regarding my original point; I see now that tech work has differing standards.
@pynkbites@erincandescent As described in the post, Tusky has been working to move from informal to more formal processes, so maybe in future we'll reconsider how we contract with paid contributors. But I would expect that most of our contributors will be paid on a month-to-month basis and each month will get to whatever work from The Pile they get to, so "whatever hours you worked, bill them, document your work" might really be what we stick with for good. We'll see.
@mcc@erincandescent Sounds like a lot of hard work. I wish you luck in tackling these organizational challenges and shall pray for your resounding success!
@mcc@pynkbites Generally I would say time-based billing works better for regular contributors, and task-based billing works better for irregular contributors (for the latter case, in terms of administration overhead too)
Some of its just a matter of: regular contributors are going to be attending meetings, doing admin work, coaching, etc; none of which fits the task-based billing model well
@pynkbites if you believe getting paid by the hour and not delivering something concrete or finished is impossible or even shady, you've never been a freelancer or worked at any moderately complex organization.
@gryzor I've never been a freelancer, but I've certainly hired and paid them many times in both personal and professional circumstances. My experience comes largely from logistics and retail operations, and it seems tech work as an industry has different standards.
Add comment