No, but they are rude in context. The fact that you do not work within the context of that particular conversation makes them rude.
On the contrary, I did exactly what was appropriate. When someone briefly mentioned Ubuntu, I briefly mentioned it, giving a link to information about the issue. That did not interfere with the discussion about hosting, which will surely continue. It was an aside. Someone who works for Canonical posted a long apology for Ubuntu, so I responded to it (as well as rebuking the groundless personal attack). Each message was entirely appropriate in the situation where I sent it. Sorry, I did not see it as a personal attack. Here's what that message said: > Richard, I would appreciate if you didn't try to use every single > opportunity that you had to speak negatively about other projects, A more cut-and-ried personal attack, there cannot be. It exaggerates a negative into a falsehood then and attacks me with it. I am surprised you did not see this. You've offered me help in being "more effective", but there is no reason to think I have not been effective already. I am not perfect, but I have been rather effective generally. GNOME's existence is a part of that effect (see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html and search for GNOME). Were my two messages about Ubuntu effective? They provoked opposition, but that doesn't mean they didn't do their job. I am sure that many of the GNOME developers on the list have read the article http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html, and are now concerned about the issue. Perhaps even you will inform yourself about the issue, though I can't force you. Anyone who thinks there's a better way to raise this issue is welcome to try that way. If you do it better than I did, I will be glad to step aside and leave it to you. and a plea to you to please help us all be more effective in our efforts to promote free software. The plea in his message was to overlook the Ubuntu spyware issue, to accept such spyware as normal and legitimate for the sake of avoiding disagreement. That raises a substantial and important issue. There is a reason we should overlook minor annoyances and mistakes of other free software developers. If we quarrel about things that we could disregard, we will lose out. However, when another free software project does something especially bad, we must not overlook that, because tolerating that would lower our whole community -- and we will lose out. Spying on the user is mistreatment of the highest order. In 29 years of campaigning for free software, I have seen nothing worse than this, and few things that are as bad. If there is anything we should not overlook, it is this. Ubuntu is not entirely free software; but most of it is. Use of Ubuntu is not moving to free software, but is much closer than MacOS or iOS. Thus, in the past we could not endorse Ubuntu but most of the time we did not need to bring up the issue. However, if we want to promote free software effectively, we can't ignore the spyware. We have to make Canonical back off the spyware, and cancel the announced plan to go even further and make Ubuntu offer products from Amazon. To work together to promote free software, the supporters of Ubuntu must try to pull it back from spying while we outsiders push it away from spying. If they think Canonical's decision was a mistake, that's a good start, but they need to go beyond just thinking so. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list