[a person lambasted me in private mail for characterizing Bruce Perens as being without technical qualifications -- this message is bcc'ed to them] You misread what I said. Upon rereading my message later I noticed that it was possible that my mail could be misconstrued in the manner that you did. No one had yet taken me to task for it, so I didn't send out a postscript. Now I guess I should have. I'm aware of Bruce's authorship of electric-fence. Indeed, I reckon Bruce is hell of a lot better programmer than I am. Permit me to requote the section in question. The schism that led to Bruce's departure from the Project stems in part from a penchant among the developers for technical merit first and foremost -- sometimes with an "other considerations be damned" attitude. I don't think this characteristic is like to change any time soon. Therefore, the project leader needs to command the respect of the more technically-minded of our members. I don't think it's inaccurate to characterize the rift between Bruce and several of the other prominent Debian developers in this fashion. Bruce wanted Debian to refocus its efforts. Bruce had tons and tons of technical qualifications as project leader (if he didn't, I don't think Ian Murdock would have appointed him), but Bruce himself saw those issues as taking a back seat to marketability. He didn't propose too many technical initiatives in his last year here that I can recall, aside from advocating a switch to the RPM package format. I'm sorry you misinterpreted my statement. I had a lot to say and was trying keep the length of my message under a megabyte, so perhaps in some respects a little clarification and elaboration was sacrificed for brevity. I was more concerned with laying out the issues (as I perceive them), than with analyzing specific individuals. If I were to rewrite that mail, I'd probably replace that first sentence with: Debian developers are perceived by some as having a penchant for technical merit first and foremost -- sometimes with an "other considerations be damned" attitude. In the future, please consider possibilities other than deliberate character assassination when reading messages that aggravate you. Those who know me from IRC, my other mails to Debian lists, or in person will tell you that if I wanted to go off on Bruce I'd have done so in no uncertain terms. When I rant, it's obvious. -- G. Branden Robinson | Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? Debian GNU/Linux | A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck; branden@ecn.purdue.edu | more;yes;fsck;fsck;fsck;umount;sleep cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
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