Leah Rowe, the creator of Libreboot, stole my work.
Hello,
There was a recent port that was made to Libreboot for the Dell Optiplex 9020 MT, and I was not properly credited for the work that I did. I made a pull request on Codeberg with my patch (github basically) and labeled it as 'WIP'. Leah and I were working on this together during that time, and I was told to wait a week, so I did. Time passes and guess what? They closed off my patch and added it themselves a week later with no credit given to me.
I made the .ROM files for the 9020 MT motherboard, I tested them, and they didn't work until Leah came in and resized the IFD and GBE regions. That was all that they did. Everything else, I did on my own, I added the entries in /vendor/sources for MRC/ME, and added it to lbmk. Leah is now refusing to accept my patch that's fixed.
I'm not trying to steal all the glory from them, they did help, I just want partial credit for utilizing the port from coreboot gerit. This port was originally made in Coreboot by Mate Kukri, so work mostly goes to them, but as for adding support for Libreboot, my name is completely left out. I just feel wronged because now they're saying that I don't deserve to have my name on this because I was too slow, when the reality is I was literally instructed to wait for them during that time period. I believe I was manipulated into waiting so that Leah could get the board themselves and add it without ever including my name. They also told me to wait a week on two seperate occasions, so in total I waited two weeks.
I spent a week working on this, and I let them know how significant this was to me, only to have my work shitted on and not properly credited. I'm now banned from IRC and Libreboot for talking about this on Mastadon. Leah claims that I was bullying/harassing them, but I was just exerting frustration, and if it was bullying, I apologize then.
Leah told me on Mastadon to 'respect their authority' and 'yield to their authority' and not to make a peep about this. I'm just ranting about this now because I feel like my work was just stolen. This is the most powerful desktop supported by Libreboot and now I'm left in the back pages where no one can see my name, which says 'Provided testing hardware for the 9020 MT' when I did much more than just testing. I was the one who added support for this desktop. I've been a fan of the Libreboot project for 4 years, this just makes me really sad to see it end like this.
Exactly. According to their replies to you on Mastodon, Rowe found a fix of their own that solved the problem faster than going through the process with you.
Your work wasn't stolen, it wasn't even used
There is an obvious disconnect between your perception of the work process and Rowe's, and that probably led to the miscommunications. You saw the collaboration as an informal deal that your work would be nursed through debugging to a workable version. Rowe, being the project lead, wanted any solution that would run on the device; found one and wrote it themself. To them the focus is not on helping make your personal contribution work, it's on shipping LibreBoot with device patches that do.
I'm not a developer but I've been in both positions as a volunteer, a freelancer, and as a project manager. Sometimes you get passed over, sometimes you have to let contributors go who either don't deliver the expected results or don't deliver on time.
And yes, I've had to field long conversations, sometimes public ones, with people frustrated that their work has been rejected. Frankly, that's not the reason anybody gets into project management. It drains energy you'd rather pour into the actual work.
The way you've brought this to Rowe on IRC, then on Mastodon, and now to Lemmy as a public grievance after they made it clear that they wouldn't engage with your complaint any more — I don't blame them for blocking you. It's clear that you're more concerned about your bruised ego than about the larger project, its importance to open computing — and the fact that there is now a functioning patch for your device.
I'm trying to put this nicely because, as I said, I've been in your position too (or similar), but I wouldn't work with someone who reacts this poorly to rejection. Coming out with baseless accusations against Rowe about stealing your work is a huge red flag to potential collaborators that you're the problem in the equation.