Manjaro Linux's Biggest Drama That Never Happened

Key Takeaways

there is an endless supply of Manjaro copium but they have had some unquestionable mistakes whether it's the fact they shipped a broken build of pamac that DDOS the Aur not once but twice letting the SSL cert on their website expire three times this should never happen they should be automatically renewed or shipping unstable Asahi Linux packages that don't work on Apple silicon devices these notes were written before the recent edition of sending a broken patch up to Arch Linux arm that didn't make any sense to ship and I could keep listing things out basically all day but I want to make something very clear I don't hate menjaro I don't hate you if you work on Manjaro I don't hate you if you use Manjaro all I am here to do is tell you what is happening Manjaro is just really fun to talk about if you want to keep using it that's totally fine it's your computer but there is one Scandal that I've talked about plenty of times and plenty of other people have as well and for a very long time was listed on the manjano website but it seems like there might be more to that story and it didn't exactly happen the way that everyone initially thought that drama being Philip Mueller Jonathan and the 2 000 Euro laptop but before we get into those details there's probably a lot of people that have no idea what I'm talking about so let's just recap The Story So everybody's up to speed back in July of 2020 a forum post was made on the Manjaro forums and cross-posted over to the Manjaro subreddit this was made by Jonathan entitled change of treasurer for Manjaro Community funds and in this forum post he does discussed how a 2 000 Euro laptop was purchased with the intention of it being a Dev machine compiling code on the go things like that this purchase was supposedly disputed by Jonathan and according to him he was the treasurer and the whole purpose of a Treasurer is to ensure the proper use of funds so they're not being wasted on things that just you know don't really matter this led to a giant internal squabble whereby the result of this Jonathan says Phil was unhappy about the rejection and the additional questions about how Community funds would be used as a consequence I am no longer Treasurer leaving Phil in control of all funds once again and following this removal the expense was approved the laptop was purchased implying that Philip was the one who actually approved the expense and this has basically been a story for a couple of years rumors have been circulating and this has been used as like a massive Hammer to beat Manjaro with a big part of the reason why is Manjaro never properly came out and actually explained the details of what is going on there was a lot of stuff that was basically as left up to interpretation but then seemingly out of nowhere two weeks ago the man in question Philip actually got in contact with the maintainer of menziano creating an issue and a pull request giving more context on what's actually going on and seeing the funding problem was a false claim now keep in mind this is the person who had their reputation basically dragged through the mud so I remain skeptical on things that I cannot verify but he did include a lot of information that is 100 verifiable that we're going to be going through for the other things we'll have a look at what he's saying and come to our own conclusion so we'll start with the easiest who purchased the laptop and who approved the claim everything in this case is being done on the open Collective the open Collective includes all of these logs entirely publicly and we can very easily go and verify it so initially mengiano said that Philip was the one who purchased the 2 000 Euro laptop this isn't accurate the one who purchased the laptop is a completely different person who may be affiliated with Philip but is a different person helmet stilt at the time of purchase he was maintaining a lot of packages under both Manjaro and also base Arch Linux the exact kind of person who needs a powerful device for compiling packages so you know he can actually test them and make sure they're working which you know is something Manjaro should probably do more often but that's besides the point also this expense was not approved by Philip at least not directly I can't really say it was going on behind closed doors maybe a discussion was had but at least publicly he is not the one who approved it so it was first created by Helmut stilt rejected by Jonathan helmet then went and updated it probably to go and add some extra clarification things like that and then it was actually approved by Vitor Lopez this final person down the bottom here is someone affiliated with open Collective not the Manjaro project this person here is not Philip not Philip whatsoever there was also this claim floating around that the dispute itself was over the purchase of the laptop that this was a waste of money and there was a much better thing you could purchase like you know renting out a Dev server and having this that everybody could use and getting it for a couple of years at the exact same price I feel like this floated around because this is the way that the community felt a lot of people when they saw this purchase were like this is a giant waste of money but we do have some comments from Jonathan to explain how he felt at the time in response to someone saying the only Shady thing is that all of this should have been clarified internally and not done Hasting or emotional he says I've tried that on how many occasions now three four every time the same sequence of events I'm told it's my job to release expenses not question them I disagree others in the team agree with me seems to be resolved repeat a month or so later basically saying he felt like a Yes Man and the position that he was in didn't have any of the power it was supposed to have basically he was a robot that approved expenses he was never there to question it that was someone else's job and in the half response that Manjaro did give at the time called change in Manjaro team composition Philip did respond and give a bit more context on the situation explaining how yeah a laptop maybe isn't the most optimal purchase maybe you could get a build server instead but in this case a laptop did actually make a lot of sense but it didn't really matter because the laptop wasn't what the disagreement was about the disagreement was not caused because the purchase was inappropriate as everyone involved was mostly on the same page about how the money should be spent including Jonathan the actual disagreements were about the process of allocating the funds Jonathan and I had a disagreement about how the approval process for Community funds has to run he was concerned about my overlapping roles within the company the Manjaro company and the community T which would create potential for conflict of interest I was concerned on the way funding requests currently were being processed which would discourage team members from adequately expressing their funding needs it resulted in a long discussion with him and several team members of the community developer team and this claim about the laptop and how the funds were being spent was actually backed up in Jonathan's original post saying another expense was submitted today for a 2 000 Euro laptop with discussion between only Phil and the person wanting the laptop this was rejected as the policy had not been followed and I queried the expense other privately discussed expenses also came to light basically Phil was doing some shady stuff in the background setting up expenses without going through all of the proper channels and Jonathan wasn't exactly happy about that and Jonathan being in a position to stop it that's exactly what he did this led to a disagreement and ultimately to everything else that happened now the problem is this is basically where the evidence ends everything after this point is pretty much just open to discussion firstly there's the matter of his removal as Treasurer which he updated on the post but we didn't notice and basically ran with anyway what it says now is as a consequence I am no longer Treasurer leaving Phil in control of all funds once again what it originally said is as a consequence I have been removed as Treasurer leaving Phil in control of all funds once again this slight change of words completely changes what it means the reason he originally said removed is simple from his eyes he was removed in response to someone saying to me it seemed like you took the initiative to step down as a Treasurer because you got frustrated with the conflict he says so I wasn't holding back the project I made all the team and admin on open Collective I was then removed as ad admin Ergo I was removed and he ends the entire thread by saying to update there may be a public statement from the team leader which will seek to smooth things over that was that post I was just mentioning before as far as it goes for me Phil has decided it is time for me to leave the project see you all on the other side so from his perspective it seems like he was removed maybe it was framed in a little bit of a disingenuous way but he was removed as the treasurer now Philip on the other hand he disagrees with the fundamental claim he doesn't think that Jonathan was ever the treasurer from the issue on the Mangiano thread also Jonathan was just the initial admin of the groups he created on the fiscal host the actual Treasurer is on the fiscal host side to finally approve any spending based on the policies a project has but in that initial thread from Jonathan he titles himself as the treasurer he mentions being the treasurer multiple times and regardless of how many times Philip actually replies to this thread he never questioned that Jonathan was the treasurer it wasn't until we get to the replay thread where they use a different term for Jonathan they refer to him as the administration of donations is that different from a treasurer maybe it's certainly not called Treasurer I don't know how Manjaro names the individual roles internally but if this is accurate No he was not the treasurer but I find it really strange that he was never questioned on being the treasurer in that initial thread maybe Philip just felt like that wasn't really important but everybody was under the assumption that he was the treasurer and it seems like he was under the assumption that he was the treasurer as well so what was the deal there now while that should clear up a lot of the concerns it's not to save the entire situation wasn't handled terribly by both sides involved Philip for example um thought it was a good idea to multiple times unless the thread with another moderator re-listing it why are you a Trader unlisted while people are really angry I don't understand it was just going to make make people more Angry trying to silence people is never going to work and while still up remained firm that no funds were misused saying I can assure you all no donations were misused at any point it didn't change the fact that a lot of people were not happy with this expense it didn't seem like it was properly explained to the community which doesn't need to be done for every single expense but when something does become a big drama it is going to help you know alleviate some of those concerns while he did include the explanation about why a build server you know wouldn't make the most sense in this case a lot of people still argued the laptop was too expensive or you could have used a build server anyway maybe people were being unfair but it didn't seem like it did a great job at alleviating concerns now the biggest problem with all this is while it would have been loved to get Jonathan's side of the story to find out exactly what happened pacing the other both sides that can't exactly be done because earlier this year in 2023 Jonathan sadly passed away he was a very important part of both the arch and the majority communities and I'm sure he'll be missed so this is basically just going to fade into the history of Manjaro it's probably going to be brought up from time to time but hopefully when it does you're a bit more informed on what actually happened and don't spread around things that are entirely false if I make a mistake like that again please do let me know and you know if it's actually a mistake I will be happy to correct it so let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below uh did you even know this drama happened do you think it was a good idea to buy the laptop do you think is a bad idea what do you think about administration of something or rather whatever administration of funds do you think that's actually a Treasurer let me know what you think down below so if you like this video go and like the video and if you really like the video and you want to become a one of these amazing people over here check out the patreon scribes Dolly therapy linked down below that's gonna be it for me and I run Arch by the way [Applause] [Music]