[Axiom-developer] Re: Fork time

[William Sit]

Dear Waldek:

I feel sad that you have decided to "listen to Tim," but
precisely at the wrong time! I understand that your decision
has been provoked by Tim's message (A modest proposal). I
was surprised that Tim chose to communicate his convictions
in such a strong and provocative manner. I take full
responsibility for the consequences of my posting the
message to Tim that started all this. However, I did not
anticipate this turn of events and I apologize to the Axiom
community for sparking this chasm.

I applaud Gaby's restraint to stay in the project despite
similarly provoked. I, too, considered "listening to Tim"
and quit, but I found other reasons to continue to hang
around. I particularly find Gaby's willingness to work on a
megapatch to merge his build-improvements with the trunk and
his consideration for unity inspiring. He sets the best
example for us to follow.

At this stage of Axiom, forking is certainly not desirable.
Tim has taken the "rules" of open source to the extreme. I
think I understand Tim's reason for not merging his branch
to another. He does not want to set a precedent: where the
best "running code wins" even if the "running code" is not
the "runing, documented, code." Tim's version of best
"running code wins" is best "running, documented, code wins"
and perhaps he believes his work so far holds that title.
But if he WAS (he certainly IS) unwillingness to merge his
patches to wh-sandbox (for whatever reasons, one of them
seems to be wh-sandbox is not (yet) the best "running,
documented, code"), he should not have asked me to make my
email public, requested a vote, and said, "We will go with
the majority opinion." [Tim: you cannot both dictate and be
democratic.] For, to say "we will go with the majority
opinion" (which opinion is not yet clear and likely a tie)
implied his willingness in the event that there is a
majority opinion agreeing with the proposal. In my private
email to him, I had this as the first paragraph (removed in
the public message "A suggestion for Gold"):

"I am writing to you privately because I do not want to put
extra pressure on you. You can simply ignore this message if
you do not agree. If you feel you rather prefer this to be
made (or answer this in) public, please simply delete this
paragraph and quote the rest."

I believe somewhere along my private communication with Tim,
we had a misunderstanding. But that is not important. In
fact, it is not important *to the project* which of you, Tim
or Waldek, has to do the work of bringing the trunk
up-to-date and documented (I know, easy for me to say; but
you have both contributed greatly to the project and neither
of you are scared of work).  What is important is what Gaby
said, "move on *with* Axiom."

Please reconsider and continue your good work.

William