Steve,
I do not think your response is really very helpful. Now, I think everybody has the right to express their opinions in good faith. (In fact, that is why the whole idea of attempting to retaliate against Vic basically for expressing opinions you don't like shocks me.) But, while you have the right to express your opinion, I think you should have refrained from writing this post. First of all, it is basically irrelevant ad-hominem schlock. And secondly, the (near-Orwellian) stuff about how Vic's company receiving visits from a link on the struts pages was an example of hypocritical behavior on Vic's part (!) was a nugget that came from Craig McC and only Craig could satisfactorily clarify what he meant by that or whether he stands by this statement.
Or, really, to put it bluntly, I was not addressing you, Steve.
The committers of the Struts project are entrusted by the Apache
Foundation to determine the content of the Struts portion of the
website.
Well, sure, but that's not in dispute. The issue is that, in terms of carrying out that entrusted task, there should be certain guidelines based on ethics and professionalism. The basic idea that somebody expresses views that you don't like him expressing, so you are going to retaliate against him by removing a link to his company's website -- that strikes me as unacceptable. Or at least it should be.
For example, in terms of pages I maintain, take for example: http://freemarker.org/poweredBy.html , a list of frameworks and other software products that leverage or interoperate with FreeMarker. I'm a blunt opinionated guy (as you surely can see already) and I have had some heated exchanges with people involved in a couple of the projects cited there. It would never occur to me to remove the links to those projects based on any such personal issues. The criterion for inclusion on the page is that it is potentially of interest to the user community. Don't you see a problem with including or excluding such links based on whether the people involved are toeing a given political line? Or sucking up to me, stroking my weak ego or whatnot???
To tell the truth, the fact that you cannot even seem to even grasp my objection to this situation has disturbing implications. I have not really investigated the issues in Vic's posts that were objeted to. However, the seeming lack of any grasp of professionalism and ethics in this case makes me suspect that there may well be something to what he is saying. If you guys are this unprofessional in this instance, you are likely to be so in other instances. So, as a result of this incident, I have a greater tendency to lend credence to things that Vic says in this regard than I did previously.
None of us has objected to Craig's update, probably because we've all grown tired of Vic being a PITA. (Incidentally he's always a PITA about non-technical, POLITICAL issues.)
Well, you're basically reiterating this: "Vic has been saying stuff we don't like, so we are retaliating". Well, fine, but that is precisely the chain of reasoning (with all its lack of professionalism) that I am objecting to!
Summary: You realize that apache.org is a high-traffic piece of web real estate and that being linked there is desirable. Moreover, for a company that offers products or services that are Struts-related, it is desirable to be linked on the struts site. Since Vic's company might get some business benefits from such a link, and Vic has been saying things that you don't like, you intend to retaliate by removing said link.
The link may be a small matter in the overall scheme of things, but there's a basic principle. I do not like what I see. It's just wrong. You guys should not use your stewardship of a part of the Apache Software Foundation website to reward/punish political correctness or lack thereof. It is my view that links to third-party products and services should be based on whether they are potentially of interest to the user community. CLearly BaseBeans is of interest by that criterion. That is why it was originally linked.
It's done. Hopefully, Vic will get the message that nobody here wants to listen to his ramblings and we can all move on with the development of Struts and leave the conspiracy theories behind.
Steve, this business about "nobody here wants to listen to his ramblings" is illegitimate discourse. You are arrogating the right to speak in the name of the collective. You can only legitimately speak for yourself. You can say: "I am not interested in Vic's ramblings" but that's about it.
In any case, aside from that, I do sense a lack of honesty on your part of the dialogue. As for nobody being interested in hearing what Vic wants to say, it is perhaps more that you are afraid that people will listen to what Vic has to say. I cannot know for sure, but that is the conclusion that I tentatively draw and I somehow doubt that I can be the only person with that reaction.
Steve, I'm not really acquainted with you or with Vic, but your engaging in this kind of ad-hominem stuff and other examples of illegitimate discourse tends to reduce your credibility in my eyes and consequently, I would have a greater tendency to carefully consider any points that Vic raises in the future.
In any case, I am not satisfied with this answer. In particular, I would like Craig to explain this business about how it is hypocritical for Vic to be receiving the benefit of being linked on the Struts site when he has voiced criticism of ASF. It is very hard for me to interpret such twisted statements in a generous manner. But unless Craig actually appointed you as his spokesman/advocate, I think you should let Craig clarify what he meant by that and whether he stands by that statement.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Using FreeMarker with Struts: http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_servlet.html
Steve
-----Original Message----- From: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jonathan Revusky Sent: November 13, 2003 10:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: cvs commit: jakarta-struts/doc/resources archives.xml consultants.xml powered.xml sigs.xml
Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
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/msg
08432.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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