Re: Status report for Building Debian/Mingw packages for DIA

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

You know about Godwins law, but you still continue ...

please let this thread die (take it offlist if you must) even this
additional response to a thread Cyrille was trying to end could be
considered very annoying, you must realise that?

please continue your work, but be a little bit quieter about it.

please dont fork ...


On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, James Michael DuPont wrote:


> > The kind of behaviour RMS allegedly told you to pursue is called in
> > French  "délation". And to my mind, it immediately invokes collective
> > memory about
> > a period of the 20th century I'm very happy I never lived in. Now, by
> > Godwin's law, the thread is finished.


> > You definitely have not understood what I think the problem is with
> > you:
> > it's with repeated offer for peace followed by repeated blows in our
> > face.
>
> Ok, I might be guilty of not giving up. I dont give up easily.

and how! <sigh>

> My offer is to fix the problem.

that is great but please try harder to avoid saying anything contentious.

> I first dropped the issue on this list until my investigations showed
> that there is a real problem. I wish I did not delete all those mails
> about the GPL FAQ not counting, never did realize how far this would
> go.

yeah, but you were agressive and not polite so no matter how right you
might be you are still Wrong.   (any mails to the list are in the mail
archive if you really want to read them again).
Nitpicking about the GPL ... no matter what you had said you probably
would not have made anyone happy, but if you had said it very carefully
and politely you might have gotten some more cooperation.

> My complaints because very concrete when I saw the real problem and now
> I am taking steps to fix it.
>
> I apoligied for supposedly false accusations at the time,
> it turns out they are right.
> Go figure.

for example you could have done yourself a big favour and not said that.
Am i making sense?

it does not matter if you are right or wrong.
Criticism is bad and wont help you get what you want.

> > This I can't tolerate. You claim you have re-read the whole disaster,
> > very
> > good, you claim you didn't see anything wrong from your side, well,
> > that's
> > your opinion.
>
> Sure, I see your side, I could have been nicer about the whole thing.

> > If this
> > is really true, then I invite you to fork the project.
> I see no need for that. I am not interested in taking over the
> development of DIA, just volunteering to port to windows and add in
> some plugins.

> Of course you can try and ban me from the list, remove cvs access, I
> don't see the point.

be really quiet and extra polite, and i am sure it wont come to that.

> I only got involved in this GPL thing when I tried to compile the
> sources on windows, and use the python plug-in!

you were trying to compile everthing from scratch, not exaclty making life
easy for yourself ...
if i recall you may have intially failed to read some of the documentation
and some of your comments were interpreted as being agressive, so a bad
start got worse and maybe slowly that will be undone but you have to
realise the strong initial impression you made will take quite a while to
change.

> Anyway, I hope that you will get used to the idea that I am not going
> away.

i hope you can be much much more careful and avoid posting anything
contentious in the future.

> Deal with it, remove me, hate me, whatever.

a good start would be to not reply to this, or at least not reply to it on
the list.

> Fact is that I am trying to help, trying to fix problems.

At this point i would think that those who are willing and or able to help
you have contacted you offlist and hopefully you wont need to bring up
further non - Dia specific issues.

> This is just the beginning.

I know you mean well but it is really unfortunate that it has gotten this
bad.  Hopefully if you give the developers plenty of quite time and your
future posts are very succint and relevant and non-contentious and dont
sound like they are accusing or blaming anyone then there wont be a
problem.

If you want me to proof read your message and advise you what might not be
relevant or what might annoy the developers i would be willing to do so.
I want happy developers writing code (because i am not much use at coding
yet) and i want to help keep the list friendly and fun and a source of
encouragement not criticism for the developers.

Anyway i am rambling and wasting space so i quietly hope this thread can
end

Sincerely
Alan Horkan

I am trying to learn
"Amatuer Diplomacy for Dummies"
:)