On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 09:07:55AM +0000, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
> On 2007-12-18, John Robson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Simply adding the message you want to the top of the ion man page
>
> People read manual pages? Those people that install Ion from a distro
> without checking whether it is obsolete?
>
> > that "informational" window that you get first time you run ion really
> > ought to be enough to say "this package may not be the latest available -
> > check tuomo's site".
>
> Bah, the distros conduct is the problem, so they should fix it.
>
> And besides, then I'd have to forbid the distros from removing that --
> and again they would moan that "it's not free". (The FSF is actually
> among the saner end of the FOSS movement, what with GFDL including
> invariant sections, and GPLv3 containing provisions for requiring
> modified versions to be renamed or so. The real zealots are centered
> around the distros, and only consider those licenses "free" that give
> distros the most power at the expense of authors.)
>
> It's funny, actually: FOSS is supposed to be developed in a bazaar,
> but the typical FOSS licenses are only suited for cathedral mode of
> development: release when it is ready and stable as a rock. For
> otherwise you'll have to suffer from distros distributing obsolete
> development snapshots.
>
> > So anyone who doesn't spend all their time recompiling software for what
> > is, for most people, a tool and nothing more, is an idiot according to you.
>
> These are not end-users with other specialities, but rather the lower
> strata of developers.
>
> > Well, I almost exclusively use binary packages - because they make my life
> > easier.
>
> I provide one too -- for a few platforms. Most authors provide them on
> Windows. But generally binary packages for FOSS operating systems are only
> available from The Party.
>
> > You'd rather deal with yourself and only yourself - you've demonstrated
> > this arrogance before, and will do again.
>
> I've had enough of the FOSS herd, and how it's destroying everything I
> once thought could be great. I really am universes distant from them.
>
> > It's a shame that I don't have
> > the time to write a tiling WM myself, because I actually think that a
> > couple of us here could do a very good job of it.
>
> Yep, the typical FOSS attitude: write a clone for petty reasons of
> ideology, rather than fixing far bigger issues with the shoddy quality
> of FOSS crap, the monoculturist practises prevalent in the movement,
> ridding yourself of the love of The Party, and so on.
>
> --
> Tuomo
>
tuomo,
everything has (again) be said often enough, but I try it a
last time. up to now I gave you the credit of having a
(minor) point and thus a bit of justification for causing
this trouble. but stepping back a bit and trying to analyse
your reasoning shows that it's altogether off-the-wall.
the problem is that you WANT something and then argue
backwards to construct reasons for your intransigent
attitude. and excessive albeit sometimes creative use of
four letter words is nothing but replacing arguments by
shouting.
so, yes: people do read manpages. and john is of course
right, that such a modification to the manpage or something
similar would suffice to make your sole point: tuomo (if no
one else) considers anything older than 4 weeks obsolete
crab.
regularly, at this point, you twist it along the same line
of "reasoning": users too dumb/lazy to understand this,
therefore I need more'. tell you what, you'll never achieve
a state where 100% of the people get the message. but maybe
90% would really be enough. moreover, your whole
supposition that users will complain in large numbers seems
wrong to me. how much traffic is there on the mailing list?
what if you ignore mails which violate your high standard
("current version or nothing")?
but that does not satisfy you. somehow you need "them"
crawling in the dust. so this "fight" is not about users
coming to you (how do they do this? I only know of the
mailing list -- it's that difficult _not_ to answer if
someone asks for help with a 12 month old ion3 version?) and
demanding help (nobody _demands_ it), it's about some kind
of crusade (the historic as well as the contemporary ones
have been notoriously successful endeavours).
the only thing you achieve is the annihilation of time
resources all over the place, your own included (by futile
mail discussions, by the trouble in the repositories, by
problems with compiling it yourself).
and defining the distros as the evil empire -- yeah sure,
they have the bomb, too.
so I think you are addressing more or less only 2 different
points:
1. users thick as a brick. therefore must enforce my message
with draconic measures.
2. distros evil. therefore must fight them.
after the fight: nothing works any longer. mission
accomplished.
and, finally, after reading the last posts: it seems that
ion3 has quite some dependencies which still cause trouble
in the build process. I only know of a single wm which
really compiles out of the box without _any_ trouble: dwm.
I don't think the much larger/complexer ion3 can achieve
this -- that's why all the distros are there and do the
patching and tweaking. and so on and so on.
so, altogether, I think your goals for ion3 are ill-defined:
make up your mind if you want that it is used in a
significant number of installations. if so, accept that
`ion3' might be mutating a bit in some distros (mostly this
won't happen at all) or that it will exist in different
versions concurrently. no problem at all, except if you have
a weird sense of property and are a control freak. or has
ion3 become simply a means of fighting the evil empire for
you?
without the fighting the situation would be as it has been
for some years: ion3 available and usable. everybody happy.
nobody corrupting your work in any real way.
if you don't want that it's used, burn it, for heaven's
sake. this would be at least a quicker and more efficient
procedure in comparison to what's going on right now.
joerg
