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On 23 Aug 2004, at 11:20, adam beecher wrote:
Ian, Sorry to lecture, but this bugs the living doodoo out of me...
This is a terrible idea...
When you want someone to listen to your opinion, telling them they have "terrible idea(s)" usually isn't a good way to start.
That is why I didn't, I said *this* is a terrible idea, not that he has terrible ideas in general.
How would you respond to someone that started a conversation with you like that?
Depends on whether what they were saying made sense or not. If I think something is a terrible idea then I will say so. I was criticising his idea, not him. If he is too thin-skinned to understand the difference, then he should probably refrain from expressing his opinions in public forums.
In this case I assume that he can give as good as he gets, he certainly doesn't hold back in his criticism of John Gray.
This kind of offensive (as in "going on the") communication is a massive issue for the Free Software and Open Source movements, in my opinion. Wouldn't something like "I don't think this is a good idea" have been a much nicer way of kicking your feedback off? Or is "nice" passé now, cos Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond don't do it?
I tailor my response to what I am responding to. If I thought "I don't think this is a good idea" adequately conveyed my strength of feeling on this issue then that is what I would have said. In this case he is advocating an idea which IMHO seriously hurts the anti-patent cause, and I do not apologise for criticising it in the strongest terms.
Ian.