Unfortunately your choice is rather weak and doesn't back up your argument so I feel obliged to continue the thread a bit further (plus its giving my brain some exercise).
[Oh yeah, the quotes are from some developer who's name I've promised not to use in my emails] > ...and telling Ben Collins to "take a Valium" after what appeared to be a > pretty even-handed message Unless he's a lunatic who has to take valium to keep some control I don't see what's wrong with that. Many people would use a similar analogy to indicate to someone they need to crank it down a notch or two. > ...calling Joey Hess "jumped up" and being generally rude in response to a > justifiably exasperated message about a long-standing problem, which was > accompanied by a standing offer to assist any developer with interfacing > with debconf Nope, I never did such a thing. Read the message properly to see what was said. The message specifically refers to the "view of others" and state my intention to ignore "jumped up developers" (note the plural). I did however state I wasn't necessarily going to stick my hand in the fire on the word of soneone else. > ...and stating that you'll "use debconf how [you] please and if that's > against the 'pure' view of others [...] then its [sic] just hard luck". > > The first two being insulting to the developers involved, and the third > being insulting to the spirit of cooperation and consensus that the project > as a whole depends on. And the bit that the "jumped up developers" don't seem to understand is the co-operation and consensus. I constantly see comments on how we should restrict the number of maintainers, how we need to make sure everyone's packages measures up to some indication of worth and importance and how if you have not got stuck in with some technical solution in the dim and distant past then your opinion isn't worth jack. My vision of inclusiveness means that everyone gets a say whether its liked it or not. There are no ranks in Debian, no one gets paid (AFAIK) and so no view is more or less valid than another. I think a small minority of developers can easily get identified as pushing their own agendas if we did an informal poll on this list. Those are the one's I have issue with and will continue to say so. Most likely a strong feeling to respond to this message will promote you to the top of the list 8-) Matt.