Re: [gentoo-dev] Why this nonsense has to continue (Was: Some council topics for March meeting)

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 06:59:02 -0800 Brian Harring <ferringb@×××××.com>
wrote:
> > as evidenced by
> > every previous time you've gotten involved with anything I've done,
> > and given how badly you tried to screw up GLEP 42 and how much of
> > my time you wasted doing so, I really don't want to deal with your
> > noise ever again.
>
> Save the adhominem kindly; may not like the fact that at the time you
> had to put forth proposals I had a say on it, but thats the way it
> was.

It's only ad hominem when it's irrelevant to the discussion. Since the
discussion is whether or not you have anything useful to contribute,
it's not ad hominem. An example of what would be ad hominem in this
situation is saying that you can't contribute because you wear women's
underwear.

> Further, the glep42 changes *were* intended to make it saner for
> portage to support, not just your manager.

The changes were irrelevant for Paludis -- supporting multiple
repositories or not is approximately three lines of code difference.
The changes were, however, hugely relevant for the GLEP. Thanks to you,
the GLEP had to include a whole bunch of new requirements for the
package manager that have absolutely nothing to do with delivering news
items to the end user -- and they're requirements Portage will probably
never meet.

> > You also have a lot to gain by wrecking the process,
>
> I gain zero by wrecking the process.  Time for another history
> lesson...
>
> Friendly reminder, the only reason EAPI=0 is even being possible is
> because *I* added EAPI, against a fair bit of arguing at the time
> also.

As I recall, the arguments (at least the sensible, well grounded ones)
were over it being done via an environment variable, which highly
limits the scope of possible changes. The suffix alternative doesn't
have that or any other kind of arbitrary limit.

>  Intention was for the format to evolve (add in bits stated in
> the other email that couldn't be done without breaking things).  None
> of the real features folks have asked for can be added without EAPI=0
> defined, thus *I* have an interest in it getting finished.

Sure they can. Define EAPI 1 in terms of what it changes from existing
practice.

> Yes, you may dislike the form EAPI took.  Point is, kindly don't
> claim I have anything to gain by blocking the process *I* started.

Except that blocking PMS blocks the competition, and you've already
shown that you're quite happy to resort to any means at your disposal
to do so.

> Don't like your behaviour, and can get pissed off, but that
> doesn't justify the attack.  Besides, public ml is the wrong place
> for it.

No, a public ML is entirely the right place for it.

Here's how this thing works:

* Some people who don't have anything better to do start posting
attacks on PMS because they hate spb or myself. Flameeyes was the first
offender here -- it suited him politically to claim that spb never does
anything, so naturally repeatedly demanding PMS updates was the way to
go.

* A bunch of people who don't know what PMS is jump in and add to the
noise. Some of them think they're being helpful, some of them just want
to play with cool toys, and some of them 

* Any claim by any of these people, no matter how absurd, left
unrefuted, is taken to be evidence that PMS has failed.

So yes, someone has to sit down and respond to all this idiocy, and
they have to do it in public. If it's left unchecked, PMS is taken to be
a failure.

In the mean time, trying to keep on top of this particular batch of
noise has amounted to about the time taken to write one and a half
chapters. So, if people really do care about PMS being finished, I
suggest they sit back and wait for a public review copy.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh
Mail                                : ciaranm at ciaranm.org
Web                                 : http://ciaranm.org/
Paludis, the secure package manager : http://paludis.pioto.org/