Re: [OT] Guido Draheim vs. Peter Simons vs. Rest of the World(was: Macro Archive Relaunch)

[Guido Draheim]

Peter Simons schrieb:
> Let me summarize the statements you made in your e-mail:

Oh my... no phone call then.

Let me inject a short paragraph to the casual reader: flame wars
are nothing atypical in the opensource world, in fact it is thought
of being quite helpful as to clean up things and it can often help
clearing the minds of the contenders - and possibly leading to
better cooperation on the actual subject, the project work. Many
items spring up from the thin communication lines that the internet
presents - lots of what is `intended` or `done in error` happens
to be just speculation. These however are picked up and made up
into proper accusations, possibly extended with `evidence`
material. Such a thread usually meanders quite a time until the
silent readers of the mailinglist - and mostly partakers in the
original autoconf project - are fed up and make some noise
themselves which usually ends the discussion quickly thereafter.

In the current `case`, atleast four points are presented and
summed with a speech as to what that points at. I have some
`evidence` as well in my pocket which was not mentioned to this
point publically, - but there is hope that the flaming can be
ended more  quickly with the help of another argument chain that
follows up this quote:

> I have no intention whatsoever of trying to "resolve" this issue. I do
> not want to discuss this matter to a much greater extend than I did
> already. It feels nice to have gotten this off my chest, finally, but
> it is childish nonetheless. [...]
>
> I did release the archive's infrastructure under the GPL license and I
> am perfectly prepared for people to do with it whatever they want to
> as long as they obey the license. It is not necessary for me to _like_
> what they do with it.

Yes, putting work under GPL means to let it get extended by other
people - they can just take it even without asking. But that still
works out in the end since the original maintainer is always free
to take back, to pick up the material that was created by the
other one - the GPL ensures that all additions and modifications
are free to do such, even without asking, again. It goes both ways.

We see the effect that `merging` of projects is quite a natural
situation in the gnu world, there is nothing like longstanding
forks and branches since there is no point in doing doublework
as it happens to be with the maintainance of a common subset of
the two parts.

What I am pointing at: it is your own free will to not take any
benefit from the sfnet efforts, to diminish the work that is
presented there, to talk aggressivly about the other author of
those works, and culminate that there is no point in resolving
the issue, perhaps as  you just do not see anything worth in the
sfnet part (and possibly neither its author).

Many people have come to respect the works of the sfnet branch
and while you were starting your own extensions I was here on
the autoconf list, present to answer questions and to point to
possible solutions from the ac-archive. Surely, I did use the
link to the sfnet one since I knew it was up to date while it
became a common case the the gnu part was possibly a few weeks
thereafter.

As a result, more and more of the other people on the autoconf
mailing list did start to pick the sfnet branch when showing
references to ac-archive macros themselves. Perhaps it did
look to some as if the gnu site was not maintained in the way
that people might expect, and which they can get from the
sfnet branch. I was hoping that this effect lead to you to
strengthen your efforts with the gnu site.

That would have wiped the sfnet branch off the internet for it
can not catch up - it is in a minor position anyway since the
main autoconf site does point to the gnu ac-archive alone, and
you did never install a link to the sfnet branch either even
that you promised to do that, a year ago. It is therefore
interesting to see the sfnet branch is actually able to be
seen as a competitor by you that you need to come down badly on.

I am very dissatisfied that there is less hope in seeing the
two parts merged back anytime soon. Hopefully you can work out
a way for you to finally come to terms with me and the "Rest
of the world" that you involve in the subject of this thread.
The task should be cooperation, and that means communications,
and there was not enough of the latter during the last year,
and it is good that finally you started to talk about it, even
when that is done in public instead of doing it directly between
you and me, just presenting the results to the autoconf mailinglist.

best wishes, guido