Debian and GNU maintenance, was Re: BitKeeper licence critic

[M E Leypold @ labnet]

Oh friends,

MJ Ray writes:
 > Joerg Schilling <schilling at fokus.gmd.de> wrote:
 > > Again: READ the mail, if you understand English texts it should be
 > > possible for you to to see what I am talking: The GNU make maintainers are
 > > unable or unwilling to fix their bugs.
 > 
 > Again: all we get from you is a constant stream of "RTFM" comments and
 > simple contradictions.  There is much heat but no light.  You appear not to

Please cut that out. I won't bother commenting on that thread much any
more (too much would have to be said + I have to work), but I'd state
one thing: I UNDERSTAND Joerg Schilling here, despite that fact that I
try to use only free (GNU) Software as far as possible. If I remember
right, he has been (unfairly) attacked by Jeroen first, and I can
understand his reaction. As far as the facts are concerned: They are
actually in the Cdrecord readme's: i.e. about decent and indecent
generic scsi transports and yes, I have to agreee with him, that there
is something wrong with the Linux version: I had to attach a drive to
a netbsd sparc to find out what the problem was (Linux error message
was just: rubbish + the aha1549 driver is broken too).

As far as the the Gmake include problem goes: I've noticed some things
here, which I don't like, and I'll read JS mail just to find out, what
he doesn't like. Perhaps I'll start patching my own gnu make :-).

I'm more interested in solutions, not in ideology. I advocate free
software, because I want to secure my investement in time, money,
thinking + understanding and not got that taken away by a new (costly)
version. I could go more into my ideas, what creates dependencies
(IMHO the opposite of freedom), but I feel that's not the place and
time to vent that ideas.

I like Richard Stallman's philosophie. But I cannot see any
reason whatever in the style of advocacy of these threads. In my eyes
that damages the free software movement more than anything else and
we'll be all poorer, if we lock out each other. Integrate,
don't split. Listen, don't argue.



 > attempt to understand the messages you receive, you explain nothing and then
 > insult other participants whenever they either cannot comprehend your
 > cryptic message or do not agree with your opinions.

Actually people speak + write english differently well. Something to
think about. If you want to communicate + understand it is possible,
if you just want to be right, you'll always find a point to hook into
and prove that the other party is nuts.

 > 
 > Throughout this discussion, despite your protestations to the contrary,
 > whenever I have looked for your engagements with the people you claim to
 > have discussed things with, I have found practically nothing.
 > 
 > Finally, this is off-topic and seeing as you don't want to discuss the new
 > points you raised, I exit the thread once more.
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A contradiction :-) 

Regards -- Markus