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Author: Miles Fidelman
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] Fwd: Re: [debianfork] Don't panic and keep forking Debian™!
Matteo Panella wrote:
> On 28/11/2014 14:08, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>> Except that most mail clients (and my that, I include Thunderbird,
>> SeaMonkey, mac email, MS Outlook) don't have a "reply to list function,"
> There is "Reply to list" in Thunderbird, I just hit that to compose this
> reply. Perhaps you need to check the configuration of your button bar.


Ahh... that's new. (I normally use SeaMonkey, which is derivative of
Thunderbird. Just updated my copy of Thunderbird and tried it - yes
indeed, there's "reply to list"). Thanks for the pointers.

>
>> It borders on a religious argument as to whether to configure a list
>> manager to set reply-to: to match the original author or the list, but
>> the message in question came through with reply-to: set to the bounce
>> address for the list. That was just broken.
> Except that there's no Reply-To: header in the message in question.
> Perhaps you hit "Reply" and since From: was set to the list owner... you
> get the picture.


Aaargh.. That does confuse things a bit.

>
>> Sorry, but when the only public facing web page for the site is a
>> manifesto, with no names attached, and a button asking for donations,
>> with no name or organization attached, that kind of raises lots of
>> questions and doubts about putting much effort into a project. It's
>> easy to say "we are veteran systems administrators" and "some of us are
>> upstream developers, some professional sysadmins" -- but the web is
>> littered with sites and projects that advertise great credentials, but
>> are really one guy trying to look big.
> It's understandable feeling that way. The reason for being anonymous so
> far has been quite simple: people involved wanted to avoid personal
> attacks from the systemd camp until there was code coming out of the
> pipeline.


True, and I can understand that, but doesn't that kind of come with the
territory? Big egos are involved here, as well as fanboy behavior, and
who knows what other personality issues.

Operating in stealth mode for a while, then releasing code, I well
understand -- good model, even with some pre-announcements to generate
interest. But anonymity coupled with requests to get on the bandwagon
are a bit different. That just raises red flags, and is asking to be
challenged.

I'm reminded of Gentoo and Funtoo - Daniel Robbins was quite visible -
it was one guy who started things, but he was up front about it. Or
Linus and Linux for that matter.

>
> [Edit: just got Roger's mail. I agree that putting the donation link
> while still being under "curfew" (so to speak) is bad taste and reeks of
> a scam. Perhaps it should be taken down for the time being. IMVHO.]
>
>> Personally, I AM a "veteran unix administrator," who along the way built
> That is both a tongue-in-cheek definition (a nod to Paul Venezia for his
> "Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin", to be exact) and the truth:
> people involved have built their entire careers around UNIX and Linux
> and are willing to heavily invest their time in making sure that their
> infrastructure does not go to pasture over a silly decision.
>
> I'd have quite a hard time calling myself "veteran", but if we go by
> Paul Venezia's definition then I'm definitely a VUA ;-)
>
>> It's definitely time for a Debian fork, and as a user I know that I'm
>> actively looking for an alternative platform, and am willing to
>> contribute both time and dollars -- but not to an anonymous, unorganized
>> effort, and particularly one that considers asking for information to be
>> trolling.
> Since we've been trolled over time for our position on systemd by fellow
> sysadmins (which don't understand that the web hosting world isn't the
> only place where Debian is ran on servers) and some DDs (no names, you
> can grep -devel for "vocal minority.+?trolls" if you want them), most of
> the people involved with the discussion are still venting _a lot_ of steam.


Yeah... been the brunt of some of that. Sigh..

>
> The tone of your message didn't help either. Perhaps instead of posting
> a "cut the crap"-style message you could have raised your (valid)
> concerns in a more civil matter [Edit: as Roger just did] [Double-Edit:
> and Franco ack'd].


Fair enough - I'll cop to my rather aggressive style of "design review."

In my defense, though, I'll simply say that the manifesto style of
debianfork.org - along with the kind of billboard style screaming in
large letters, orange on black, etc. - kind of begs to be challenged in
kind. :-)

>
>> If you're for real, please take this as a word to the wise.
> Duly noted, even though I speak only for myself since I'm not (yet) part
> of the project :)
>

Cheers,

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra