compatibility and the OSD

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Chuck Swiger (cswiger at mac.com):

> So? 

So, it seems decided peculiar to speak of "insulting" someone who was
not characterised in any way.  Maybe the word means something different
on your planet.

> You have a habit of switching from arguing about the point at hand to 
> making personal attacks against the person you are debating....

[Fallback to time-honoured "demonstration by repeated assertion" gambit
noted in passing.]

> You don't think telling someone "your humble opinion has been duly 
> noted and discarded" is insulting?

Not particularly.  I didn't care for that opinion; Alex will have to
find another place for it to spend the winter.  (For bonus points,
endeavour to distinguish between the merits of speakers and those of
things spoken.)

> Let's try the Mom test:  [...]

Sorry, Chuck, your attack-the-critic allowance is gone for today.  Try
tomorrow.


> That's right.  You were responding to a point of fact-- Alex was making an 
> observation about what you said you had done reviewing licenses at 
> SourceForge-- with a blanket dismisal of his point and a slam at SF.

Once again:  I replied that my "experience with evaluating SourceForge 
licenses" in no way, contrary to Alex's assertion, establishes that open
source isn't the same as OSD-compliant.  It says something, rather,
about management's decision to take no steps to actually implement a
distinction that it fully recognises, explicitly in its implementation
of Eric Raymond's "trove" architecture and elsewhere.

I didn't wish to detail the latter point, and still do not wish to, for
reasons of decorum.  I'm sorry you evidently didn't quite follow my
point, but I am now quite done explaining.


> L.E. Modesitt does that better than you do, but this wasn't bad.

Lee's a good guy.  (I'll have to tell him about this.)

> Anyway, did you have a point to make?

How 'bout that you managed to misrepresent "Alex Rousskov's point" in
the grand finale where you said you "agreed with" him?  Since you're so
all-fired concerned about offence towards others, maybe you have some
apologising to do.  Or not.

> People were talking about "open 
> software", "open standards", and even "open source" before 1997 on Usenet, 
> although "free software" was undoubtedly the more common term back then.
> 
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=0mFRwQG00UzxE2UUVt%40andrew.cmu.edu&output=gplain

I would be much more impressed by your example if it actually _used_ the
term "open source" in the software context, which it does not.