Mail Archives: cygwin/2006/10/29/17:18:19
[overly long reply]
On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 12:58:59PM -0800, infoterror wrote:
>>>>On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 06:41:51PM -0700, infoterror wrote:
>>>>>gdiviney wrote:
>>>>>>A one-hour compiler class assignment has become an all-day goose-hunt.
>>>>>>Thanks Cygwin developers! Maybe someday I???ll have the opportunity to
>>>>waste an entire day of your lives. If it weren???t for schools, your
>>>>>>aberrant work would have been forgotten long ago.
>>>>>
>>>>Agreed.
>>>>
>Christopher Faylor-2 wrote:
>> So you, infoterror, are also a student? That's interesting.
>>
>> Given the number of people in this mailing list from companies who run
>> Cygwin, it's hard to see how you could have any basis for your opinion.
>>
>> Hmm. Now I really understand why your opinion of Cygwin is so low if
>> you equate giving away software and volunteering time with "capitalism".
>
>Typical thin intelligence replies. In the first sentence, you made an
>assumption written nowhere in the text. (The answer is no, for the
>record.)
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I had difficulty seeing how you could
subscribe to the notion that schools were the only reason that cygwin
was not forgotten since, if you are not a student, you obviously would
be remembering it and would automatically refute the assertion. So, I
assumed that you must be a student if you agreed.
>In the second paragraph, you make a weak "ad hominem" argument because you
>don't want to accept what your userbase is telling you here.
My second paragraph was stating that I didn't understand how you could
come to the conclusion that only schools are keeping cygwin alive since
there are clearly many messages from companies on this mailing list.
This does not in any way attack your character or appeal to special
interests. It is a simple statement of fact.
>In the third, you deliberately misinterpret a critique of SOME open source
>development for ALL open source development.
The third paragraph that you quoted was:
>>Hmm. Now I really understand why your opinion of Cygwin is so low if
>>you equate giving away software and volunteering time with
>>"capitalism".
I didn't mention "open source" at all.
Were you referring to something that you didn't quote? Otherwise, I
don't know how to respond to this.
>In summary, your critical thinking skills are underdeveloped.
That is entirely possible but merely stating this without providing a
factual rebuttal does not, IMO, prove your point. What did I
specifically say that was wrong?
>I would want to work for a project that rewarded critical thinking
>skills instead of bulk machine manipulations, because the latter do not
>support the user while the former does.
I don't know what you mean by "bulk machine manipulations". Do you mean
people who can write code, generate tar balls, and send out new release
announcements?
>It's interesting that a project such as Cygwin can't get over "attack
>the critic" rhetoric. How... immature.
I am sorry that you felt attacked by my reply. I tried to deal directly
with what you said.
What kind of changes would you contemplate in Cygwin? You mentioned
that the open source community is quite insular and does not accept
advice. What is your specific advice? I understand that you don't like
setup.exe. Is that the only thing bothering you? If so, what is the
mechanism that you would suggest for effecting a change, given that
everyone who works on the project is a volunteer who only "scratches
their own itch"? How would you motivate developers to change setup.exe?
If more than setup.exe is bothering you, then I would appreciate knowing
specifics there, too.
Finally, my previous response to you intended to make several points:
1) The statement that Cygwin is only around because of schools is easily
proven to be false.
2) When you ask for help, it is best to do so with deference and respect
to the people you are asking *if you want results*.
3) Free software projects are basically run as meritocracies. If you can
do the work, you can contribute. If you just want to offer opinions you
are not likely to cause much to happen.
4) We would welcome your technical writing contributions.
I'm disappointed that you didn't respond to any of those points but,
instead, seemed to take another opportunity to advance a negative tone
which started in your initial message here and was continued (a couple
of months later) by gdiviney. I'm telling you again, that I don't think
that this kind of communication style is productive. When you accuse
people of "thin intelligence" and say that they are "incapable of
critical thinking", you seem to be intending to provoke an emotional
response. I can't see any other reason for making these types of
observations.
For your words to have any credibility, you have *got* to provide
concrete examples and concrete suggestions. Merely making
generalizations about open source is not going to cut it. We'd have to
be truly out-of-touch with reality if we just accepted anything you said
because you, posting from an anonymous infoterror account, said it.
This is, again, a simple statement of fact. It is not an attack. For
all I know, you're Marvin Minsky but, so far, all we know is that you're
a guy named "infoterror" who likes to use the word "thin intelligence"
and rail about critical thinkers.
Show us more and maybe you'll convert us.
cgf
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