By the same token, if it becomes apparent that Roy’s retraction and apology were made in bad faith–and Roy has managed to make a pretty god case in support of that in what seems like record time to me–then the retraction and apology become null and void, and actually would count as points against him if I subsequently decided to actually come down on him anyway.

That’s a lie, Roy. Trot out your evidence. Show your work.

It’s really wonderful to see the kind of commitment to truth and “healthy debate” you bring to this site. I’m surprised you haven’t been nominated for the Pulitzer, frankly.

Weirdly, all I seem to be hearing is the sound of crickets.

Come on, Roy! Bring on those “false accusations”, or admit that I haven’t made them in the first place.

Allow me to enlighten you.

The Linux Symposium is the longest-running community event around. Structured as an academic conference, submissions are selected by a peer-review jury, and are published in the event’s Proceedings. The ratio of submissions rejected to those accepted is, last I heard, about thirty to one. The folks who select the papers are widely acknowledged to be among the most important participants in the FLOSS community.

The Collaboration Summit is an invitation-only event sponsored annually by the Linux Foundation (and I hope you’ve heard of them). It attracts about 600-700 of the people who are most widely recognized as being important participants in and contributors to that community.

It’s shocking that people who are so active on a site that purports to be “locating trends” and “providing information” is so completely ignorant about the actual community in which they’re purportedly locating those trends and to whom they’re allegedly providing information.

But, as I’ve said, your perception of what this site accomplishes is completely at odds with what the folks who attend these events actually think about it.

You’re flat-out wrong, Jose. They are a very large part and important part of the community, and they very strongly tend to also be those who are making the greatest volume of contributions.

Since you’ve never attended a conference, you wouldn’t know that, though. Instead, you just make up a bogus “statistic” (i.e. “a small part of the community in terms of numbers”).

So, show your work, Jose. When you say “a small part of the community in terms of numbers”, what do you mean? Where’s your support for that?

This is astounding, Jose.

Okay, one last time, very, very slowly. If you don’t get it this time, I can offer no further assistance and shall have to–regretfully–write you off as “ineducable”. Life’s too short, I’m afraid.

I complimented Aaron Bockover’s work on Banshee.

You sneered at it, saying that there were “many other developers are doing exemplary work technically and in enabling users to avoid monopolies and restrictions”.

I asked you who those developers you were talking about were.

After another round of “I don’t get it!” in which you asked whether I was denying such people existed, you waved in the general direction of “contributors to the Linux kernel”.

This is such a broad and unspecific answer that I probed a little further to see whether you could, say, identify specific current contributors to the kernel, like Andrew Morton (whom I know), Greg K-H (whom I know), Ted Ts’o (whom I know), Matt Locke (whom I know and who’s worked for me), etc. I wondered whether you might be able to identify specific features or improvements that had “enabling users to avoid monopolies and restrictions”. Again, you can cite nothing specific.

Now–pay close attention, Jose, here’s where the rubber meets the road–if you were actually active in the community, and not so gosh-darned busy around here (and I use you as an example of the sort of person who populates this place, Roy and Willy and the rest are no different) with that “division of labor” you’ve selected for yourselves, and gotten out from behind the computer and gone to a conference that such people attend, you might actually have had real honest-to-gosh encounters with the folks in whose general direction you can only vaguely wave. You might know something aobut them and their work and their concerns.

Still with me?

By the same token, if you were really serious about making a reasoned case about Mono not being installed in Ubuntu, why wouldn’t you attend the Desktop Summit, where you could try to make a reasoned case to the folks who make the decisions? Mark Shuttleworth (whom I know) was there, we chatted for a bit… Miguel had other commitments, but there were plenty of Mono folks there as well.

Okay, take a deep breath, we’re getting close.

Since you don’t actually know any of these folks, and they’re not hard to get to know if you want to, you don’t actually understand what motivates them and what they think about these issues. The concerns you assert they have are not the concerns they have.

Okay, we’re almost at the finish line.

Now, if you came to GCDS and made the comment that you made to me to someone else as the two of you exited the presentation, sneering at Aaron’s Banshee work when they called it “awesome” because “contributors to the kernel”, whom you couldn’t name, were doing more in “enabling users to avoid monopolies and restrictions”, none of which you could identify, people would–and I say this without undue exaggeration–probably treat you as though you were possessed of some sort of malignant insanity.

Do you grasp my point at all?

Still waiting to see all those “false accusations” you’re so concerned that I’m making, Roy. Are you having difficulty actually turning any up?

Thought so.

Anyway, I can’t help quoting
“Are you denying the value in division of labor?”

What? You can’t seriously view your obsession/hobby/mudslinging as labour? Well, in that case I should label my having to correct the lies and inaccuracies on this website as labour, too! Who would have thought, verbal brawls on the software equivalent of a UFO-sightings-website are work for the community… NOT!

Neither do you stick by your retraction, nor are you honest enough to risk going to court for your ‘beliefs’.

You are just not a ’standing-up-for-your-beliefs’ type of person.

Those that attend such events are a small part of the community in terms of numbers.

>> You imagine that this site is about “looking for trends” and “providing information”

Not just this site. There are many trends. I was speaking about news sites and blogs in general.

>> Oh, so you think only coders go to these events. I see.

I don’t think that by a long shot.

I was asking if you thought I would be influenced by attending such a site. This is developers I was talking about. The discussion was about developers at these gatherings.

>> I’m also just a bit curious as to how one “voluntarily leaves such environments” when one has never been in such environments.

So to make myself clear, I am talking about environments where there is significant of focus on development issues by people with some level of access or expertise beyond what you might call average. Today, I don’t work doing any sort of software development or rubbing shoulders with those that do. I was, however, in such an environment at one point in time. I know people that are very competent and some of them do not care too much for closed vs open source issues. I value many things about such an environment, but not enough to have stayed. The Internet has opened up a whole new world for developers.

>> Do you actually code at all, Jose?

Yes, when I find the time. My coding contributions would be minimal at this point in time (I do have code not published, some contributed patches, code studies, a couple bug reports based on implementations not meeting ISO specs, etc).

I don’t mind answering this, but this has nothing to do with the other comments or discussion here about, eg, software patents. People that contribute to this site and other sites might not be developers. Being a developer is not a requirement by any means (PJ of groklaw and many others are not devs, eg). Developers that do post have made a number of misstatements here, for example. [-- Just making this clear. I'd rather avoid attempts to knock the messenger to avoid the message.]

If you have code you would like me to look at, go ahead and point to it. I have no interest in mono, but I would look at most other things (especially C).

>> so it’s doubly unclear to me what your point here is.

Yes, I’m aware of that. Hopefully, this comment helps clarify that a bit.

Indeed: the misunderstanding was on Stallman’s part in believing it was funny or acceptable to engage in that sort of so-called “humor” as part of a keynote at a major conference.

He said that “EMAC virgins are women who have never used EMACS” and that, in the “Church of EMACS”, “it is a holy duty to relieve them of that virginity“.

I see several problems here: first, it paints women, as opposed to men, as needing particular assistance with technology. This is pretty standard tripe.

Second, the idea that “us guys” have a “holy duty” to “relieve” women of their “virginity”? Maybe you can explain exactly how I’m “misunderstanding” that, because I was taught to say “May I?” first.

You find that amusing, Jose? Can you summon up a dim sense of why someone might find that offensive and a woman in particular might be made uncomfortable, especially when she’s in a context where there are literally 40 guys attending for each woman present?

If you have trouble grasping the issue here, maybe you’ll prefer to try this one:

Imagine an alternate universe, close to ours, in which Richard Stallman decides to poke “gentle fun” at Confucianism rather than Catholicism. Accordingly, halfway through his keynote, he dresses up as Fu Manchu, complete with a coolie hat (made from a computer disk, of course). Why, it’s the “beloved” ConGNUcius, come to read to us from the “Analects of EMACS”, which he does in an accent lifted out of a Charlie Chan movie:

“Ah, so, ConGNUcius say, man who install ploplietely plogram soon wind up slaving on lailload! Miclosoft make velly, velly bad demand! No license-ee, no ploglam-ee! Ploglam want be flee!”

Still “gentle humor”, right? We still having fun? Anyone offended? Do I not get to be offended, or complain about it, if I’m not Asian?

Just wonderin’. And feel free to chime in anytime, Willy or Roy, Jose could surely use the assist. I know you’re out there, thinkin’ them deep thoughts.

Not at all. As I’ve said several times, I’m asserting that the “labor” you’ve “divided” out on this site is neither valued nor held in esteem by anyone with whom I spoke at the Desktop Summit, something which is a strong symptom supporting my claim that you’re completely out of touch with the actual FLOSS community. Was I somehow unclear?

…not all of which (I don’t think) were by people that attended…

I think you think incorrectly, sir. Except for the very first “overview” link, all the posters were at GCDS.

When you generalize, you have to do much more than find a few examples. You have to show a pattern.

Do a search on the comments I’ve made in the past two days. Read them.

“Your conclusions that he demeans women did not follow from what others commented about that event or about Stallman in general.”

What part of “people who were there were very offended and women in particular who were there felt demeaned” are you having difficulty in grasping. That means that people found it offensive and demeaning, see? Stallman’s “explanations” never even acknowledge that. He actively denies the possibility, because “no one’s ever complained before.” Maybe people were too polite, or felt that he was too much of a “notable figure” to say something. Maybe some have complained and had their complaints ignored as mine were, but dropped the matter at that point.

Well, you haven’t lost your sense of humor.

Huh. And nameless people have been telling me that my “problem” is that I don’t have a sense of humor over on my blog. Go figure.

I have gotten the impression that there may have been a misunderstanding. I also have not seen enough to know that most of those people that were there and apparently agree with you made a convincing argument where we could feel comfortable calling Stallman sexist.

This is what I meant with this statement.