On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 06:24 AM, Rickard Öberg wrote:
I think you should go read it too, Rickard. Your comments here do not seem to be based on any grasp of what really happened.Jonathan Revusky wrote:François, I don't believe that you should take Rickard's account of what happened as definitive, particularly when there is a complete electronic record of all of this that anybody can look at.
Absolutely, go read it.
Anybody who reads the thread and was not born yesterday will see that the Velocity people started all the personal attacks, all the ad hominem and character assastination stuff against me specifically because they could not deal with me in legitimate debate. That you, Rickard, cannnot see through this, does not speak terribly well for you.
In the following post, a velocity users asks about monetary values in a velocity template. At some point in the thread, I respond. Here is the initial post of that thread, entitled "Comparing Monetary >> Value".
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/ msg08355.html
Here is my initial contribution to the thread and thus, I suppose, this is an example of my "ranting":
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/ msg08366.html
Not really, but it's a good start.
I am specifically saying that this is where the thread starts. Somebody starts talking about comparing monetary value and I take the opportunity to point out that FreeMarker has the features they want. The discussion continues where a bunch of the Velocity people decide to debate "philosophically" the desirability of decimal numbers and such.
I really think you ought to read the thread as well. I think that if you do, you will discover, to your chagrin, that my characterization of it is correct, and that, in fact, you owe me an apology.I would encourage you to read through the whole thread and how it developed. It actually becomes piquant. Quite entertaining stuff. But I think you'll see that Rickard's characterization of what happened is pretty stretched. What you'll see is that various people attempt to engage me in debate and then, when they end up looking foolish *but fairly, in legitimate technical debate* they then start the attacks on my person. And then they later claim (quite mendaciously, of course) that I was the one engaging in personal attacks on >> them!!!
As Jonathan said, read the thread.
Hold on a second. I *never* stated on the Velocity list that Velocity was a "monumentally mediocre piece of work". I just stated it here. On the Velocity list, I restricted myself to pointing out that features (such as decimal support among other things) that Velocity users were lobbying for, were already present in FreeMarker. That has its obnoxious side, but it is completely fair comment and I do not believe that you can really maintain otherwise.> Yes, his belief that FreeMarker was the ultimate solution and that heWhat an eloquant way to say "I have the right to say whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want, no matter what anyone else thinks".
> was entitled to telling everyone of this regardless of everyone on the
> list begging for the opposite.
To be clear, I see no real problem with telling people about FreeMarker on a Velocity mailing list. There are 2 key reasons for this:
1. Velocity is a monumentally mediocre piece of work that only receives the level of usage and attention that it does because it is part of apache.org. Since there is such a huge disparity in the visibility of Velocity and something like FreeMarker, I have no compunctions about mentioning FreeMarker on the Velocity list, no more than I would in mentioning FreeMarker on a list devoted to JSP. In any case, my behavior there may have its obnoxious side. Fine. Okay.... BUT... but what is the basic grievance? At the end of the day, the end-user can always choose to use whichever tool suits him best. You may also note that my posts were invariably factual and could have been helpful to anybody making such a decision. It appears that the Velocity community did not want anybody making comparisons.
It's really fine up until the very last point. Your above reasoning would allow "us" to go to the Struts list to explain to them what a monumentally mediocre piece of work they have,
In any case, your basic stance is fundamentally nonsensical. If you wanted to know what my behavior would be like on this list if FreeMarker became an OS project, the thing to look at would be my behavior on the FreeMarker list, *not* on the Velocity list. Furthermore, your characterization of my behavior on the Velocity list (though utterly irrelevant anyway) is also inaccurate. The other people invariably commenced the ad hominem attacks on me because they could not deal with me in legitimate technical debate. This is not a matter of legitimate controversy. It is what a reading of the electronic record will show.
BTW, in terms of my assessment of Velocity's quality as a piece of work, I pretty much completely pulled my punches there. I mean, just as one example, look at the way Velocity handles macro parameters. It passes them in as strings, that are reparsed and evaluated every time the parameter is referenced in the macro. I simply pointed out that features that people had been lobbying unsuccessfully for in Velocity for god-knows-how-long were available in FreeMarker.
which get the level of usage and attention that it does because it is a part of apache.org. Factually correct (one could argue), but oh so irrelevant.Well, as for "agreeing to disagree", with the overtones of political correctness and relativism, well... sorry... I don't just agree to disagree with you on this matter. I am stating that your characterization of what happened is FALSE. And I have backed up the assertion by pointing to the exchange in question that anybody can read.
I guess we will just have to agree on disagreeing on this point.
Note that the reading of it is not particularly flattering to me. It shows my ability to push people's buttons for fun somewhat. BUT the behavior of the other people in the thread was typically far worse than mine. That much is pretty clear.
I was simply stating that they were not very well placed to complain.2. Velocity developers have engaged in this kind of behavior themselves on the webmacro mailing list. This was particularly obnoxious because, of course Velocity is little more than a rip-off clone of Webmacro in the first place. In fact, the origin of it is that Webmacro was supposed to be an apache project, but there was some falling out between Jon Stevens and Justin Wells and Jon Stevens started the webmacro clone that became velocity. But anyway, given the history, the velocity developers are very poorly placed to scream and holler about me showing up on their mailing list. You see, they have bad karma...In other words, if someone else is a prick you have the right to be a prick too. Interesting logic, and again I guess we will just have to agree on disagreeing on this point.
But again, I repeat, that if people are asking about features on a Velocity list that are present in FreeMarker, I see *no* problem with telling them that the features they want are present in FreeMarker. If you think there's a moral or ethical problem with that, then we can "agree to disagree" on that, if you wish. OTOH, I would, as a matter of morbid curiosity, wonder what your logical grounds for that would be.
Well, that you found whatever thing "disgusting" is your personal subjective state of mind which can't be debated. Nonetheless, I can't help but think that there's an element of posturing there...> It was (to me) quite disgusting.Absolutely: you seemed to have fun. That's why I added "to me", because I had a hunch that you'd disagree.
Well, I'm glad you put the "to me" there in parentheses. I am quite convinced that some people derived vicarious pleasure from it. :-)
<LOL>But anyway, I very honestly do not want to start a flamewar here. I don't have the time for it and I don't have any quarrel with anyone here. In fact, I have little intention of participating much more on this list. But here's the key point: "Look, there's a complete electronic record of all of this. Go look at it and see if Rickard's characterization of my 'ranting' is accurate." That's pretty reasonable, huh?Sure enough.
And ironically, your post is an excellent example of the kind of stuff I want to avoid in OpenSymphony.
Rickard, if you wanted to avoid the subject, you should not have brought it up in the first place!
Do you think I'm the only guy around who doesn't like it when people spread disinformation about him behind his back? Other than that, do you think that *I* have any interest in showing up on a webwork list and arguing about some silly exchange that occured on the velocity list? Hey, I've got plans and things to do... *you* are the guy who brought up the subject!
Moreover, you mischaracterize something completely, and I respond, quite politely, and have pointed people to the information they need to form their own judgment of what happened.
Anyway, what aspect of this do you want to avoid? What I suppose you might like to avoid is somebody standing up to you and pointing out that you're wrong.
Right. No problem. But you shouldn't have brought up the subject. It was a very bad idea. <sigh>Now back to our regular programming.
Cheers,
Jonathan Revusky
--
FreeMarker 2.2pre2 is available! http://freemarker.org/
regards,
Rickard
--
Rickard Öberg
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Senselogic
Got blog? I do. http://dreambean.com
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