Re Macedonia thread
Hello Christian,
I write you this mail, to more verbosely apologize
for my ill-considered mail to -project of half a year ago.
I have refrained until now from mailing you
because i did not want to unduly remind you
of what can not possibly have been something pleasant.
I hope that you have not suffered any remaining ill effects,
and that this mail does not tear open any wounds ;
I write it because i think you have a right to some explanation.
I started the thread on project,
because i thought Debian's consensus mechanism is usefull,
and because i thought the solution you proposed was not good enough.
You reacted to this in a positive manner,
and even let my arguments change your opinion.
During the exchange of emails on -project,
i became effectively mentally ill.
I do not know what caused it ;
i did not have a drink in any bar during that time,
nor has the introspection that i indulged in most anxiously afterward
revealed any defects in my thinking.
The effect of this mental disturbance was a complete inability to
make new sound judgements,
when they are needed for incorporation into new thoughts.
I remember thinking at one time, when writing that email,
'shouldn't i reconsider this ?', and drawing an absolute blank.
Thoughts that were formed before that time did remain intact,
resulting in behaviour that was only limited by my 'hard limits' ;
Apparently i have a hard limit that says
i cannot accuse someone without proof,
but there are a lot of things that can be done in some situations
that should not be done in others.
This caused me to write down some thoughts that i had in my mind,
some of which were sane thoughts formed earlier,
the first paragraph is one of these,
some were slated for removal,
among which the thought that you intended evil,
as that had been disproved by
you changing the value used in the installer,
some were clearly ill-considered,
the address to the project leader is an obviously example.
The idea that debian could be abused in this way,
while theoretically possible,
and most elements of it being taken from real life,
is one for which i have never had
any reason to believe that it existed in reality ;
It was a thought in the back of my mind,
not something i would normally write down.
The day after writing it, i started feeling not good about it,
the day after that i saw it was really wrong,
and apologized to you as unverbosely as i could,
to not risk sending more idiotic messages than was really necessary.
Finding that my behaviour had been undeniably wrong,
without me having been aware of that at the time,
was shocking.
I decided that either i had become crazy
or someone had slipped me a drug.
As you can imagine, i liked the second possibility better,
and if i was crazy, there was not really anything i could do about it,
so i assumed as hypothesis that i had been drugged.
In the days following, i concentrated on doing normal things,
stabilizing my mind, and looked at my thoughts critically.
Each day i found that i felt completely sane,
but that the value-judgements of the previous day
had been less sane than the value-judgements of the current day.
So it seemed that the mental-disturbance was wearing off.
This lasted three days, after which i no longer noticed a difference.
In the three days following that, i noticed a decreased talkativity.
Since then i have noticed no change.
I imagine that that email can not have been pleasant to you.
You replied to my curt apology in a gentleman-like way,
for which i thank you.
I bear you no ill feelings,
rather i think you are working hard for Debian,
and should be praised for that.
I would much prefer to not have sent that email.
I apologize for any unpleasantness it has caused.
Fortunately, the address to the project manager was so clearly wrong,
that i think many people have discarded the rest of it's content too.
Also, it does not seem to have adversely affected
relations between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia ;
the preconditions for these relations seem even better now
than they were at the time of my email.
However, in case anybody does have some lingering memorys
of my portraying you in an unfavorable way,
please feel free to show them this email,
included, but not limited to, posting it on public mailinglists.
I am CCing both -boot and -project,
which should take care of most of that.
sincerely,
Siward
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