Per your request, the flamewar is over.

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

The flamewar is over because it has been unilaterally ceded by myself.
Through the email of a number of individuals--you know who you are--it has
become clear to me that what happened on Slashdot was an isolated event and
is not indicative of what would happen should another user put forth a
proposal.

Since much of my energy was based on the (justified) indignation that no
user should have to go through the violent disagreement that I felt the
coders of GNOME placed me through, my reason for fighting has vanished.

To the coder's regret, I will not be able to satisfy their demand for fully
working proof of concepts before making a proposal.  I do not feel this
would be fair, as the two existing proposals on the GNOME Web Site do not
have existing code, as well as the fact that such calls-for-comments bring
out design issues nothing else can, and perhaps bring new coders out of the
woodwork.

I don't know everything.  What bothered me was the fact that this was taken
as an implication that I don't know anything.  For once, I don't totally
regret a flame war.  In a meritocracy, as has been claimed, people are
judged on their ideas, not on anything else.  Yet, my ideas had not been
judged by those who might help implement them--there was but a cursory
amount of evaluation, and a strange mix of "it can't be done" and "it's been
done before, so why are you bringing it up now" as a response.  But I do
regret the split I detect between gnome-dev and gnome-gui--I had no idea it
existed, and I feel terrible for increasing it.

Hopefully we can all move past this, and I can get to work organizing the
numerous comments made regarding "cluehunting"(needs a new name) into a
cohesive proposal--more of a specification than a description, though the
justifications and examples will remain in some form.