Ken,
The sharpest parts of my remarks weren't directed your way, and I
regret if that wasn't as clear as I had thought. For clarification: I
was referring to the thread as starting with what you forwarded by URL
(which was sent from a gmail address to the freebsd list), and my
objection was in the first instance to people who came back and
questioned the reply because it came from a gmail address.
As fortuitous as it is that someone from Oracle stepped into say that
there are no plans to strip ZFS out of OpenSolaris, my fundamental
objection nonetheless stands: the premise that it would be pulled had
a basic lack of credibility in both its premise and its particulars. I
appreciate that you mean to help by quashing these kind of stories,
but do we really mean to re-task the OpenSolaris list with challenging
every suggestive rumour that shows up on the Internet about the impact
of the acquisition on product roadmaps? I mean, is asking to have it
rejected by authoritative sources really a compelling reason to
circulate it further in the first instance? That seems to involve some
risks (e.g. perhaps you don't get a response, as there seem to be a
number of people trying to get the hang of Oracle corporate
communications policies, which seem deeply vexing to parts of the
community that are concerned about the future of their sweat equity in
OpenSolaris), where there are reasonable criteria for saying when this
is unnecessary. Surely there has to be some threshold of plausibility
before these things are passed on in a public forum, and, while I
don't mean to imply that forwarding the post to this list is something
singularly egregious, the two further posts quoted in my reply
reinforced to me how low the bar was set and how much this
participates in conspiracy theory (a rumour is posted to one list,
forwarded to another, attracts a rebuttal, and rather than asking why
they should credit the rumour in the first place, there remain a few
people whose spirit of critical inquiry is singularly focused on the
provenance of the rebuttal). Given that there are clearly some people
for whom this wasn't nipped in the bud in the manner you suggest,
where these people wouldn't necessarily have been aware of this were
it not for your post, despite your best intentions, there remain signs
of lingering negative effects that you've not addressed below. I don't
mean to be vehement towards you in saying any of this, but I don't on
the other hand mean to understate real, foreseeable, and negative
consequences.
For such reasons, shouldn't the standard for forwarding with a request
for clarification require that a rumour consist of what a reasonable
person would believe based on clear attribution and credible sources?
Cheers,
Bayard
Am 20 Apr 2010 um 20:09 schrieb Ken Gunderson:
On Tue, 2010-04-20 at 18:51 +0100, Bayard Bell wrote:
This thread starts with someone who doesn't claim to have any
authoritative information or attempt to cite any sources using a
gmail
account to post to a mailgroup. Now people turn around and say that
Whoa! By way of clarification:
1) If I had authoritative information why would I bother posing the
question?
2) The source were I ran across the info that prompted my query was
cited in my initial post and present in the email sent out by the
Mailman listserver. Noting evidence of confusion from some reading
via
Jive forum interface I followed up with an explanation.
3) Rather than fan rumor and speculation by posting to
freebsd-questions, a list to which I am not subscribed, I addressed my
query to what I deemed the most appropriate source for an
authoritative
answer. Moreover, in so doing I explicitly qualified the post as
suspect.
4) I do not have, nor have ever had, a gmail address. To the contrary
my email address is readily apparent in my signature.
they doubt the sourcing on this, but looking at the archives of this
list, there are a number of posts over the years from a Dominic Kay
using this gmail address but providing links to a Sun employee blog
(http://blogs.sun.com/dom/). If you Google "Dominic Kay Oracle", you
I didn't need to, as I already knew the name. Hence I publicly
acknowledged his reply as more than satisfactory, expressed my
gratitude, and moved on. I don't really see grounds for directing
these
vehement comments my way. The misinformation has now been
identified as
such and nipped in the bud, wh/I would think would be a good thing.
Thank you and have a nice day.
--
Ken Gunderson <kgund...@teamcool.net>
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