I think I see a pattern here. Put a short email in favor of Apache to Jonathan, and you get a huge one in return. The more you try to actually argue with his points, the longer and more condescending the response. It is almost like free energy! Someone ought to invent a power station to harness this amazing source of energy and time so that it is not a total waste any more! Hmm. I wonder if agreeing with him will reduce his response or perhaps even give me the last word! Would that be a first? Let's give it a go:
On 4/27/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Daniel Warner wrote: > > The > > "meritocracy" idea at Apache is not about who does the work best. > > It's just about who does the work. You do the work, you make > > decisions. > > You're joking, aren't you, Daniel? You're saying this is a "meritocracy" > in which you gain merit by doing work, but the quality of the work > doesn't matter? > > Well, that's just ridiculous, isn't it???? C'mon... You are right. It is ridiculous to say that the quality of the work does not matter. Did i really say that? Well, if you think that is what I said, you must be correct. OMG.... What could I have been thinking? <LOL> > > 2) SAF 2/WebWork is still in incubation. It's not even actually part > > of Struts yet. > > The "incubator" is just ASF pseudoreality. It doesn't correspond to > anything real. It makes no sense in this context. An actual incubator is > something you use to hatch eggs, or sometimes it refers to a kind of > environment that prematurely born babies are put in, because they could > not survive in the outside world yet. > > The living entity that you incubate is not even an infant, it is > something in an embryonic state. Talking about how Webwork is still in > "incubation" does not reflect anything real, because Webwork is not an > unborn baby or even an infant. It is the moral equivalent of an adult, a > peer of the Struts project and other projects in its space. > > This whole business of mature projects like Webwork being "incubated" is > just yet another striking example of the kind of bizarre use of words > that is resorted to when people talk about this so-called "Apache Way". > > The "incubator" is like the "meritocracy". Even though the term is being > used as a kind of analogy, it does such violence to the normal meaning > of the English word that it's hard to even have a sensible conversation > about it. I think you are on to something here. Please help us find better words and ways to use them in describing these things. Then we can avoid wasting time in all these silly semantic debates. ... > People who did inferior work overseeing or managing the people who did > the better work, does not, prima facie, correspond to the basic logic > and structure of what anybody would call a meritocracy. "Anybody" is a bit strong given our conversation above, but I see nothing else inaccurate in this paragraph. In fact, I would go further and say that those do not even correspond upon second or third examination either. > Really, when people accuse one of not understanding the "Apache Way", it > may be a kind of compliment. Frankly, I would be automatically quite > suspicious of anybody who asserts that they really understand all this > stuff. Now, okay, the projects that want to get branded as Apache > projects, the people involved have to demonstrate that they "get" this > Apache Way, but that's more like having to agree with some lunatics > because it's the easier path. > > "Yeah, I get it, I really dig the Apache Way. Cripes, I don't know how > we actually developed all this code we developed outside ASF when we > didn't even have the Apache Way, though somehow we did. But now I see > the error of our ways. Yessah, I see the light." > > "Praise be the Lawd! Hallelujah!" Are you saying that people who like the Apache way of doing things are all crazy zealots about it and believe that none of this code would have developed without it? Well, it is a good thing you are so well known for being a rigorously logical debater, otherwise I would suspect this was just biased and illogical mocking. I know better than that though. You are right on the money, and now I realize I have been suckered by this whole Apache thing. It hasn't been useful or productive at all. In fact, it has held back the development of what could have been great code and will surely corrupt the pure and beautiful WebWork code. > > Oh, and i seem to recall reading once in a Jakarta discussion that the > > ideal situation to the ASF is if all committers for a project are on > > the PMC that oversees the project. Does that sound like it has > > anything to do with who does better work? hmm. > > I dunno, but it doesn't have anything to do with what is happening in > Struts, because in Struts, not all the committers are in the PMC... Oh, but that seems inevitable for all those that stay here and stay involved. They too will be assimilated and begin to believe that they "get it". Such a shame... How lucky I am to have you here to open my eyes before I too began to move beyond lurking and feeding trolls! > > If they accepted your personally expedient definition of a > > meritocracy, then maybe. > > I'm sorry, Daniel, you are a very confused individual. I am most > certainly not the one promulgating a "personally expedient definition of > meritocracy".... My apologies. Your definition of meritocracy must be the only correct one in this context. > > It is you and i who have no legs to > > stand on here. Don and Ted do tons of work, and therefore have all > > the legs they need and more. Just pay attention to this list for a > > week and that will be obvious. > > Well, they and the others on the Struts PMC are in a position where they > have to answer certain questions regarding the lack of technical > progress on Struts 1.x IMO. That they do a lot of work themselves is > almost completely beside the point. An incompetent manager typically > will end up having to do a lot more work than a competent one. The > competent one manages to get other people involved and delegates work to > them, where the incompetent one ends up having to do everything himself. > > Don and Ted may do all kinds of work, but Struts development stagnated. > Maybe they could have structured things better to get other people > involved who would carry things forward. > > But anyway, even if they've put in a herculean effort, things must be > judged by the objective results. The objective results in the case of > Struts 1.x are really quite poor. And that is where the basic logic and > structure of meritocracy really would kick in -- that is, if this really > was being run as a meritocracy.... Ah, clearly I have misunderstood the responsibilities and nature of the Struts PMC since they were incorporated when the Struts community left Jakarta. I thought doing lots of work got you to be a committer, so that you could then do the work more easily. Then committers that stick around are brought onto the PMC because the people who do the work are the ones that make the decisions anyway. I didn't realize that the PMC was really supposed to manage other people doing the work. I think you have discovered another instance of them abusing the English language. You must be right that they must answer for these abuses! But please, if they are the ones using and working on these projects, who is it they must answer to? Surely it is not me, since I have only benefitted from their work for free. Is it you that they must answer to? I really need to know this so that I will not remain, as you say, "confused". > Jonathan Revusky > -- > lead zealot and time waster, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/ Daniel Warner, junior time waster and troll feeder (for today only, I promise I will go back to lurking tomorrow!) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
