(This message isn't intended for Otto but for other readers. I want to reduce the likelihood that anyone gets confused by his rhetorical tricks).
On Tue, 6 Jan 2026, at 00:40, Otto Kekäläinen wrote: >>> There are so many Cambridge debating society tricks in your response I >>> don't know where to start :) >> >> Starting your response like that is impolite and implies an assumption >> of bad faith. It just makes me read the rest of your message with more >> scepticism. > > What is polite depends on your cultural background [...] > In my culture being frank and stating your true opinion is considered > honest and polite, while omitting relevant facts is considered not If you had written your message in good faith and this was just a matter of being used to a different culture, then at this point you would have said something along the lines of "oh, apologies, I this was not my intent. I'll adjust my style on debian-devel in the future". Since you are instead putting forward the Torvalds defense, I believe that you started your message this way not in the belief to be "honest and polite", but to subtly undermine Ian. > What Sean did [....] is in my culture very impolite. "Look, others are doing worse!" > My comment was to express that I feel that Ian is doing tricks [...] Indeed. You are assuming bad faith and you are accusing Ian of something without giving any evidence. At the same time you are using the very debating tricks that you accuse others of. For example, you packaged a serious accusation as good-natured statement with a smiley at the end, thereby making it much more difficult to engage with. > I already some private emails from people who agree they see the same pattern "I have many people behind me, just trust me". >> > Debian is actually one of the few distros that is attempting to have >> > workflows based on importing upstream git repos. Debian currently has >> > two competing popular systems for doing this: git-buildpackage and >> > dgit. >> >> This statement reveals, even for a casual observer like me, such a >> fundamental misunderstanding that, in my opinion, it disqualifies you >> from this discussion. > > Which of the two points above you feel is not true and you would like > to have evidence on? dgit is not in competition with git-buildpackage, and git-buildpackage is not in competition with dgit. > I have been researching, documenting and enhancing packaging workflows > long enough that I think I understand them pretty well Apparently not well enough, though. Best, -Nikolaus
