Christian Perrier: Holy war against Nexenta
Hmmm, dear LWN, Anthony Towns is not
alone
when claiming that the reaction of the Debian community towards Nexenta
after they announced their work was probably overflated and certainly too
much aggressive.
I remember having
done so already and I did it again later.
I usually avoid debian-devel flamewars but here, this is not really a
flamewar. This was a rude action against people who may have done mistakes,
errors and certainly need to talk deeper with the Debian community.
Even if the contributors in this thread do not think they have been rude,
I'm pretty much sure they have been "perceived" as being rude by outsiders.
I'm afraid that such behaviour is very likely to enforce a very commonly
feeling among the free software community of Debian being a kindergarten of
free software bigots completely disconnected from real life. We know we are
not this so we should try to avoid people thinking we are.
This is not why I work in this project. When it comes at Free Software, I'm
a kind of "bigot" too, but I usually try to not enforce my bigotry to other
people by being uselessly aggressive. This also is a key
point for Free Software and we should more often think about it.
(don't take the word "bigot" as first degree, please...)
We (as a community) have been aggressive with Nexenta about this issue, just
like we have been in the past with, say, Ubuntu. So, I wish that we'll sing
along with Erast Benson at next Debconf just like some did at Debconf 5 with
the Shuttleworth gang.
I wish I would see more Debian contributors bringing this feeling in -devel,
especially our "historical" contributors, just like Ian Murdock did. Don't be shy,
people..:-)