Guys,
I have a few things that I need to get off my chest, and is not intended to be an extension of any discussions that went on earlier. It's a little bit long, and it's also not intended to offend. Please read and consider...
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Whether anyone here cares to admit it, this is a serious problem. It's a real shame that Martin has to be the peace maker here, and it's not the first time it's been necessary. This community is too small to afford the loss of even one contributor. I feel that a lot of progress had been made recently, particularly since the conference, and today, things have been set back 6 months.
If you don't care whether anyone else uses your software, or whether anyone beyond the current user base gets involved, that's just fine. However there are those among us who either depend on it [pike] for their livelihood or have an major investment in it in time, effort, money, etc. These sorts of goings on have a direct impact on our ability to find and retain the kind of talent that's required to succeed at whatever we're trying to accomplish.
Everyone commits the occasional email indiscretion from time to time (myself included), however the comments that flew during the Debian conversation were really out of line. As martin mentioned, it quickly got to the point where the original question and comments were completely lost. If you are unable to restrain yourself from typing things that are both non-productive and insulting to others, at least have the good sense to delete the message before sending it.
No one gets along with everyone all of the time. I know I don't. Not everyone has a mastery of each other's native language and cultures. I know I don't even have that good of a grasp of english, and it's my primary language. Not everyone thinks Debian is the best thing since sliced bread. I know I certainly don't.
Maybe a whole bunch of people were just having a bad day. I guess anything is possible, and placing blame really isn't my thing. I'd prefer to just learn from our mistakes and move on. With that in mind, here's a bit of advise for whatever it's worth: On several occasions, I've gotten into lengthy, passionate arguments with people on this list, and as far as I know, no one involved has walked away offended. How do I do it, you might ask? I am patient and polite in my communications, email in particular. I might think that Martin and his opinions are the root of all evil, and that all Austrians should have their email privileges revoked, but I keep that to myself. (that was humor, btw).
The long and the short of it is that, in all likelihood, pike has lost a developer that was at least trying to make things better. Did it have to happen that way? No. Each one of us has a responsibility to make this place as productive and open to new ideas as possible. Otherwise, we're all just wasting our time. I'd hate to think that that was the way it had to be.
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Thanks for listening,
Bill
On Monday, January 26, 2004, at 04:35 PM, Martin Bähr wrote:
guys, this is getting out of hands, i read things like:
you're determined to ignore them, right? and you seem to be intentionally minsunderstandning things in texts we write
so instead of talking about solutions we are accusing each other of bad intentions.
is there anyone left with good intentions. who here is really still interrested in getting pike to work? it seems that there is more interrest in insisting to be right.
can we please stop this senseless discussion now, and go back after a good night sleep tomorrow?
greetings, martin.