On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 1:17 AM, Harry portobello
<harryportobe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
*snip*
>
>
Some people prefer not to waste time with added fluff while
communicating, hackers are quite known for this (see also RMS, Linus,
Theo, etc.).

These people are often very busy and will not waste time with
superfluous niceties. I know I spend way too much time when writing
mails (like this one *cough*) or blog posts or whatever trying to be
as neutral as possible and trying to definitely not offend anyone
(unless my intention is exactly that, of course ;-)). People like
Thomas just gets the message across. No bullshit.

I can understand that for some these very short and to the point
answers can feel "rude" but they certainly aren't meant that way. If
Thomas says "not an Fvwm problem" then he has looked into it, you
can't really expect him to go fix $RANDOM_APPLICATION for you (though
he has been known to actually do just that as well). If he says "I
won't do this" you at least know where you're at, it's his time, he
gets to decide what to spend it on. Most people would just have
ignored the question entirely, if you think of it this way, which one
is the rude response?

So while I wouldn't recommend Thomas for a PR position (I'm sure he
doesn't really have any ambitions in that direction, many apologies if
I'm wrong though) I don't find his way of communicating offensive. It
is just way more direct than most people are used to and the latter
imho is the important part: people just aren't used to it.

I hope this e-mail has helped at least some people reading this list
to see things in a different light.

Kind regards,

Bert Geens

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