Quoting Vic Cekvenich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Was that called for Craig?
Yep.
Maybe putting in the4 context of ... ASF was accused of stealing designs, and Vic decided to presure ASF?
http://www.mail-archive.com/general%40jakarta.apache.org/msg08432.html
Feel free to go make your case on someone else's website.
As an external observer (I keep one eye on various forums in this application space) I cannot help but make certain comments.
First of all, as regards your statement above in which you refer to "someone else's website", I parse this to mean that you consider the jakarta.apache.org/struts website to be _yours_. As a matter of fact, it is not. It belongs to the Apache Software Foundation, a non-profit entity set up with a certain charter and that has received support from various organizations.
If the website in question were your personal website (which it is not) then there would be no issue whatsoever in terms of removing material on the basis of arbitrary, personal considerations. In terms of one's own personal website, one can be as petty and arbitrary as one wishes. However, if you are maintaining the Struts-related material on apache.org, on behalf of ASF, I think one should be subject to certain constraints related to professional ethics, and one's behavior should not be petty and arbitrary, subject to personal animosities and so on.
Let me develop this a bit further. Presumably the BaseBeans site was linked in the first place because it was considered to be something potentially of interest to the Struts community. It stands to reason. What other reason would there be to link it?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Now, as far as I can see, a legitimate reason to remove the link would be the determination that the BaseBeans site is no longer potentially of interest to the Struts community. However, BaseBeans, as far as I know, continues to offer the same products and/or services that it offered when originally linked. If the site was potentially of interest to Struts users when it was linked, it would seem that nothing has occurred to change that.
Any 3rd party observer would draw the conclusion from this that Mr. Cekvenich made statements in a certain context that rubbed you the wrong way, so you are removing the link in retaliation. In other words, the decision was based on purely personal or political grounds, not on any objective basis.
So the link was and continues to be of interest (at least potentially) to Struts users. (That's why it was initially linked and nothing has changed.) And now, you want users who visit this page not to see the link -- that is potentially of interest to them -- because of a personal or political conflict with Mr. Cekvenich.
The link might be potentially beneficial to a Struts user who is interested in the services that Mr. Cekvenich's company offers. However, since that would also benefit Mr. Cekvenich, an individual towards whom you are not hiding animosity, you prefer for the link not to be there.
I can only speak for myself but this gives me a very bad impression. It is suggestive of a lack of professionalism, a lack of ethics, and also even a lack of consciousness of these kinds of issues. By that, I mean that you even state in a CVS commit commment that will be publicly visible that this was the basis of your decision to remove the link.
This is my honest reaction, I hope I am expressing myself clearly. If there is anything about the above that is unclear to you, feel free to request clarification.
Vic Cekvenich of BaseBeans.com has made it clear in public postings that he is ashamed of using Struts, and has engaged in an attack on the
proper
behavior of the Apache Software Foundation's Board of Directors. In
these
circumstances, it would be hypocritical for BaseBeans to benefit from
the
free advertising value of being visible on the Struts web site. Help
them
out of this conundrum by removing such references.
I have a further point to make about this. In the above, you state that it would be hypocritical for BaseBeans to benefit from a link on the Struts web site.
That does strike me as quite outrageous... First of all, do you stand by that statement?
If so, I would like you to back it up. I see nothing in the least hypocritical about BaseBeans benefiting from such a link. Please explain why this would be indicative of _hypocrisy_ on the part of BaseBeans or Mr. Cekvenich.
To focus this question, let me ask your opinion about a couple of seemingly analogous scenarios:
1. I, a small business owner, am an outspoken critic of the monopolistic practices of the local telephone company. Is it hypocritical of me to benefit from the free advertising value of being listed in that company's yellow pages directory?
2. I am a university professor who is an outspoken critic of U.S. government policy in the Middle East. Is it hypocritical of me to benefit from a research grant funded by the U.S. government?
Well, look, it's clear enough that I think that your case is very very weak logically and ethically. We're not acquainted, but, in my experience, people in your spot will start to bluster and engage in ad-hominem types of responses.
I would make the friendly suggestion that you think carefully about how you respond to this. I think you have already caused some damage to your own good name, but you should be careful about making matters worse.
On the other hand, you really do have to respond. For one thing, you really seem to be accusing another man of being a hypocrite. If you cannot back up that assertion, common decency says that you should retract the statement. And quite humbly. You can minimize the damage. After all, we all make mistakes.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Using FreeMarker with Struts: http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_servlet.html
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