This email is a follow-up to comments in: http://news.lilynet.net/The-LilyPond-Report-22
I spent 5 minutes trying to post my latest reply, but the forum software continually complained that I had used wrong words, tags, or symbols, and thus it rejected my comment as spam. I am posting my reply here instead. "debunk... [my] last comment" -- you do not believe that actions have consequences? Or you do not believe that I hope that you are happy with them? I believe both things. I am not happy with these consequences, but if you are happy, then at least this is not a complete mess. I have always wanted to release 2.14 as soon as possible. However, there are two ways to interpret that phrase. One way is to shove it out the door regardless of the number of serious bugs. I believe that many commercial software projects follow this model. The other way is to work on fixing the serious bugs, so that the software can be released with no serious bugs. That is what I was doing. I don't know who tells you that your time is not as valuable as my time. It is possible that you are misinterpreting my statements that "I have used up X hours" -- I do not say that to suggest that my X hours are more important than your X hours. I am saying it to remind myself that efficiency matters. Time is a limited resource; the best way to get stuff done is to "work smarter, not harder". That is especially relevant when programming -- it is all too easy to spend literally four hours in disorganized debugging, only to take a break, come back to problem with a clear and logical approach, and fix it in 10 minutes. Earlier this year, I spent literally 6 full days doing nothing but working on one problem. When I finally consulted a physics professor and spent 30 minutes explaining the problem, he said "oh, in that equation [from a thesis], vc is not a variable; it's a constant. Hmm... probably around 0.5?". I went back to my computer, made one change, and sure enough, the whole thing worked. By engaging in unproductive debugging and rewriting code, instead of seriously attempting to understand the equations I was trying to implement, I completely wasted almost one full week of my life. By keeping track of my time, I am constantly reminding myself to look for the most efficient way of working. Before discussing anything specific, I want to settle the abstract question "should an OSS project have any kind of private mailing list?". You have two options: 1) Give an argument why they should not. In particular, explain why Kurt Fogel is wrong. Explain how we should discuss giving people git access in a public, archived forum. Explain how we can safely discuss unpatched security flaws in public. 2) Agree that an OSS project can, in theory, have a private mailing list. And apologize. You have named me as "abnormal, unethical, and deceiving". You have stated that such a list is not "compatible with the openness, transparency, mutual respect that any community-based project requires." You added "Any decent one, that is.", which presumably means that you consider Debian, freebsd, svn, and lilypond to be *indecent* projects. You accused me of being ready to give "-excuses- reasons", and that the "dear readers" would be ready to judge me. You continually mock me as a member of the "Cool Kids Club". You chose the most public venue we have to attack me. I thought we were working together on the Report; imagine my surprise when I began reading this issue and found your "post-scriptum". I understand that you do not trust me; that is regrettable, but I do not believe that this justifies your insults. As I said before, I am proud of the work I have done for LilyPond. When I make mistakes, I apologize for them and acknowledge my error. With the exception of actions which I apologized for, I stand by everything I have done. - Graham Percival _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list lilypond-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel