For those who have been following the 'cabal censorship' claims, it has morphed into a statement of no proof ("I don't log"), and an attempt to justify antisocial behaviour towards others via the claim of having the stones to state your mind. Relevant quote-
I should start keeping IRC logs. Would be fun to post all the incriminating material and allegations that are made behind people's backs. But then, I'm not that kind of person. If people don't have the guts to say in public what they think about certain Gentoo developers in public, that's their decision.
For those who aren't aware, sadly there is a gentoo ettiquete guide that applies to devs; either you can view it's existance as proof of another step towards beuracracy, or as a reactionary measure to incidents requiring that at least general common courtesy/decent attitude towards others has to be spelled out.
The basic notion behind the guide is that by becoming a dev, like it or not said dev becomes a representative of gentoo. People don't recall their experience with a group as a whole, their interaction with specific members of the group serve as the basis for their opinion of the group. Bluntly, one bad apple in a group casts a bad shadow on the group as a whole.
Continuing, by becoming a dev you become a representative of the group in whole- doesn't matter if it's volunteer work or not, it still is a basic social group, and has it's own conventions/requirements. In laymens terms, by joining the group you agree to the implicit (now explicit via ettiquete guide) rules of the road. In gentoo's case, courtesy towards others is required; as the guide states, and common sense would dictate, it's not hard and fast rules, the rules are essentially between the lines. Play nice if you want to play with us is the implicit assertion of that document.
Having the balls to stand up for what you believe in is one thing, but it does not justify abuse of others.
There is a very large difference between stating
"Dev xyz doesn't always deliver on what he has talked up"
and
"Dev xyz is only capable of hyped up bullshit that will never get anywhere"
Both state your opinion. The difference is that the latter is an example of flagrant disrespect for others. This is justified via this claim of "having the guts to say in public what they think about certain devs". This is the assertion being used to try and justify trollish behaviour.
Something to consider. I'm "having the guts to say in public what I think about certain devs", and I'm managing to do it without resorting to catcalling, flagrant attacks, or nebulous claims about supposed censorship. I'm simply pointing out that ciaran as a general rule of thumb has trollish tendencies, and aparently just levelled an unsupported accusation of 'censorship' at devrel.
No swearing needed, nor namecalling. The point stands on it's own.
So, according to ciaranm he's been told to not state that pathspec/gentoo opensolaris are vapourware, posted via this entry. Stuart picked up on it, and did a bit of digging into if it's vapourware or not, here. Personally, I stated about 2 months back that pathspec was functionally vapourware (no code at the time), although bug 87877 was opened since, providing the basic prefix modifications required for installation akin to fink's /sw layout.
Ultimately, doesn't matter if the projects are vapourware or not, the thing devs should be concerned about is whether or not the accusation is true. Specifically, that devrel in no unclear terms (implied via his post) told him not to comment on the projects, in effect, that they attempted censorship. The implication of this is not pretty.
Thing is, we've heard strictly ciaran's take on it, and he's known for being heavily against devrel (cabal namecalling anyone?). Perhaps the reality of his claim is that he was told to attempt basic civility towards our users, devs, and projects, rather then the type of attitude displayed in this thread that just happens to touch upon all the things he was supposedly told not to speak ill of.
Jochen Maes (Sejo)'s statement of "stop bashing people!" within the thread lends a bit more credence to the possibility the claim of censorship is a bit misleading, and the request was to lay off the bashing/attacking of others. While the statements made in said thread might be true, they certainly weren't stated in anything but the most disparaging terms possible.