Re: What it means to be Debian
On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 08:41:57PM +0200, Dominik George wrote:
> Hi,
>
> >I find it difficult to express my disagreement with the your views,
> >and your attitude, with the respect that is due to a fellow
> >contributor. But I will try.
>
> I looked, but somehow failed to see how the peer in question is a
> contributor. All there is is a demand for *our* contribution in *their*
> project.
Everyone has to start somewhere. By posting a first post on our
mailinglist, they are, in effect, making a first contribution (if only
"starting this discussion").
Was it likely that they will never post again after that original mail,
even if your original mail hadn't happened? Sure. But that doesn't mean
it's impossible.
However, by replying in a disapproving manner, you've likely made them
feel unwelcome. If anything, this will reduce the chance of them ever
coming back.
> Taking that into account, I again explain that they proved, in the
> very same mail, that they *do* have access to reasonable e-mail
> infrastructure, but still decided they wanted to look as close to spam
> as they could get.
>
> A simple plain text form would have done the trick as far as that
> Google Docs thing is concerned. Its results would have been easily
> parsable by someone dealing in software development, as the posters
> obviously do.
The problem with "a simple plain text form" is that it requires a lot of
development effort (if done right) as opposed to setting up a poll on
google docs. In the latter case, you just create a new document, go
through a wizard kind of thing, and you have a web poll. It's that easy.
I'm not aware of a free software implementation that would do the same
thing as easily. Are you? If so, you might have pointed that out
instead; this would have done much more towards your goals than what you
did.
Is it sad that using free software requires much more effort? Sure. But
that's hardly the OP's fault.
--
It is easy to love a country that is famous for chocolate and beer
-- Barack Obama, speaking in Brussels, Belgium, 2014-03-26
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