[Gnu-arch-users] Exploitation defined [was: top posting and flame]

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Thomas> * "ex-ploit (v): to make use of selfishly or unethically" [1]

Note carefully the disjunction.  Selfish behavior my be ethical.
Exploitation may be merely selfish.  (And unethical behavior may be
selfless.  Chew on that one for a bit.)

Don't you realize that everything you stand for is about exploitation
in that selfish but ethical sense?  Does Tom have software I can use?
I'll just take it.  "tla get ...".  Mark?  "apt-get ...".  Linus?
"git fetch ...".  Slurp, slurp, slurp.  Getting down and dirty,
compared to what you have received, what have you contributed?  Not
much.  Maybe rms can say "one hell of a lot."  Maybe.  But who else?

Mark Shuttleworth is paying some people to do what they want to do
more than anything else in the world---write software.  Is there
something wrong with that?  It's a shame that you're not among them,
but that's by your own choice.  (Please don't rebut that here, do it
below at "SXEmacs".)  So what if he uses software that he doesn't give
back to as the author wants him to?  Who does, to *every* *single*
*author* whose code he uses?  The question is, are there
*pay-forwards*?  The jury's still out on Mr. S.

I have to admit that I'm with Andrew where he says that Canonical
presenting itself as a warm fuzzy friend of free software doesn't sit
well with me.  Canonical is a business, they are going to (mostly)
contribute to FLOSS where they think it will do them good, and even
their charitable contributions will be calculated for PR effect.  You
can live well in a "lifestyle business," where you *are* friendly with
your customers, suppliers, and rivals, but to get as rich as Mr. S,
you *must* depersonalize your customers (at least).  Big business is
nobody's friend.

But it's not anybody's enemy, either.  It's just business.

As I once pointed out to a truly clueless person on FSB, even the
Internet doesn't make it feasible to treat all 6x10^9+ humans on the
planet as individuals.  You *must* choose your friends as a miniscule
subset of all individuals.  Business is about cooperating with all the
rest, *all* the rest, including billions of individuals whose names
you will never know, let alone greet.

That doesn't mean I think Mr. S's behavior is ethical, let alone good.
It means I don't know.  I haven't seen him lie, cheat, or steal.  I
see a rather deflated project, but there is more than one cause
apparent, and it's unclear which are most important.  There are plenty
of unethical businessmen, perhaps more so among the rich ones than
otherwise (though that's not clear); I don't know that Mr. S *isn't*
one.  I just don't know yet.

You may be in a position to know.  But I don't know that either.

The only thing I do believe is that you will be happier and more
productive if you "just get over it", and figure out how to deal with
the world as it is.

    Thomas>   1. I claim that the behavior of Canonical's agents
    Thomas> caused unjust harm to me personally and to a public
    Thomas> project.

It is unjust, slightly, but it's nothing to jump off a bridge over.

But "public project" is whitewash, unbecoming of you.  It's Tom Lord's
Arch, no more and no less.  The public has *never* had any input,
except to the extent that you "channeled" the public good.  Your
buddies do, true, but they're not "the public" as a group any more
than you are as an individual.

    Thomas>   2. I claim that there is more to a free software project
    Thomas> than simply the sequence of tar-bundles containing source
    Thomas> code releases.

I most certainly agree!  In fact, I really don't much care about the
tar bundles.  My argument (as of others) is that you are in no
position to say anyone else harmed the Arch *project* more than you
have, by your inattention and wilfulness.

You have done very little to "grow" this project beyond providing most
of the design and the code, and integrate contributions from people
who have stature in the community in their own right, and have long
since learned to deal with cantankerous project leaders.  It's not an
accident that a former denizen of debian-legal and two senior GNU
Emacs developers are long time regular contributors to Arch, while
less "robust" personalities have gone elsewhere to get their jollies
(and get their features in).

Haven't you been concentrating on the tar bundles, too?

    Thomas>   Aside: "Always motivate from the positive," is the
    Thomas> wisest sales and marketing advice (and among the wisest
    Thomas> general life advice) I've ever heard.  Well, there is
    Thomas> figure and ground, no?  Can not one emphasize the figure
    Thomas> (the positive) by darkening the ground?

No.  You see, it's the complaint that is the ground---you darken
yourself, and lighten that which you complain about.

    Thomas> * "ex-ploit (v): to employ to the greatest possible
    Thomas> advantage; utilize" [1]

    Thomas>   You start burbling about "*previously released*
    Thomas> software" and I am disappointed to find you stuck in an
    Thomas> overly simplistic economic model.

No, I simply don't see that there was a project to destroy.  The
people who left were in Arch only because it was the only frog in the
pond big enough to jump to the next lily pad.  As soon as the
Canonical bullfrog showed up, though, they jumped with it.  (In
support of this interpretation, note that there are plenty of others
who chose to jump with Git, or Darcs, although they didn't even get
paid to do so.)

Folks like Andy Tai, Stefan Monnier, Miles Bader, Alfred Szmidt, et al
are still with GNU Arch, and they contribute like the mature adults
they were when they came to Arch, but in limited roles.  Andy picked
up an important leadership role in project management, but there's
nobody who is ready for the role of architect or even CTO.  So the
project is in a holding pattern, but not obliterated by any means.

Some of the people who jumped to Canonical have perceptibly grown in
that context, in ways that weren't possible for them in Arch.  I'm
not faulting; I'm saying that there was growth as well as destruction.

Cf. XEmacs vs. SXEmacs for a fairly exactly analogy, minus the
commercial interest.  I think you know Steve Youngs, ask him about it.
I'm too close to it all to arrogantly say, "he's grown," but he's
undoubtedly happier, and much more productive, in SXEmacs than he was
in XEmacs.[1]  As much as I wish he was working "for" us, it has proved
out that he did good to fork, and he handled the fork very well.  The
fact is that XEmacs has not made much progress since then.  But that
isn't Steve's fault in any way, nor that of any of his collaborators.

Note the quotes around "for".  I don't value the work he and his
collaborators have done very much (by which I mean I've tried SXEmacs,
and I wouldn't use the new features they've introduced at all often).
I wish he were doing what I and my colleagues want done.  Nothing
wrong with wishing, of course, but it must stop there.  Were he to be
working "for" us, doing what we think is important, he would be
subordinating his values.  We would be peonizing him.  No wonder he
was less happy in XEmacs!  Sometimes that kind of constraint is worth
bearing, of course, but it's *his* place to decide.

Isn't that true of the Canonical hackers, too?  Even if money is part
of their motivation, so what?  And isn't that true of you?  You're
*not* in Canonical because that would be subordinating your values,
making yourself a peon.  Good for you, standing up for your values!

But that doesn't reflect on Mr. S at all that I can see; it's no more
his obligation to compromise than it is yours.

    Thomas>   Having recognized that he obtained value for what I had
    Thomas> already done, in my project, Mark would have simply been
    Thomas> *wise* to bet *for* *rather than invest against* my
    Thomas> *future work*.

Not the project, Mr. S got value from the tarball.  That's what free
software per se is about, use of software without obligation to
owners.

I'm not surprised he didn't perceive future value from a project run
by you; his goals are very different from yours.  It would have been
charitable of him to invest in your future work, but it would likely
be a losing bet, because he's going to be able to use it anyway.
While any additional value you produce in terms of unforeseen types of
software is likely to be balanced by your disruptive effects on the
business.

    Thomas>   No, no -- the ethical principal in my family is that
    Thomas> yes, you *may* respect the *expertise* but *certainly* you
    Thomas> must respect the *man*.

I didn't say otherwise.  Making an offer you can't accept is a rather
mild form of disrespect, though.  Ask any Turk.

In any case, you show nothing but disrespect for others in practically
every sentence you post on this subject.  You've argued before that
when you think something is unethical, you are bound to say so.
Perhaps, but your normal mode is disrespectful in itself, as you label
*people* and their organizations, not their *actions*, as unethical.
You've been asked many times over many months to describe exactly what
is so unethical, and you've finally answered.

You've never paid any respect to others' needs, either.  Rather, you
tell them that their perceived needs are bogus, and that they'd be
much better off adopting your work habits.  Well, maybe, but that's
frankness, not respect.

Nor to others' work.  What price respecting *man* if you treat the
ideas of those "without expertise" like shit?  People have this habit
of identifying themselves with their product, you know.

So it's hard for me, at least, to get too upset.  You'd be much more
plausible if you put harm to the *whole* free software community
first, as Andrew does, rather than spilling so many bits discussing
how much harm has been done to the Arch project and you, and how dumb
everybody opposing your proposals is.

    Stephen> Oh, come on.  "Software is forever."

    Thomas>   Nonsense.  Sheer, utter, nonsense.  Well... most of the
    Thomas> time.  Nearly all of the time.  With some exceptions.  In
    Thomas> theory.  Maybe.

Nonsense?  Never.

Projects, as you point out, are fragile.  Software is forever.

               "GNU Arch is dead!  Long live GNU Arch!"



Footnotes: 
[1]  Where I think Steve will agree that he was happy some of the
time, and reasonably productive, but not to his potential.  Anyway,
I definitely not deprecating his large and diverse contribution to
XEmacs.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.