Re: Copyright/Distribution questions (Emacs/Orgmode)

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

People on Emacs mailing lists exhibit a remarkable degree of patience. I
sometimes think they are too tolerant of disruptive and unpleasant
behaviour. I'm less patient and think we would be better served by being
a bit less tolerant of bad behaviour. I feel obliged to comment on your
behaviour.

Jambunathan K wrote:

> I have some disagreements with current Orgmode maintainer and the
> community in general. 

It's obvious to even a casual observer of the Org mailing list such as
myself that you seem to have some grudge against Bastien Guerry, who
AFAICS seems a remarkably patient (too patient, IMO), good-natured
individual. You on the other hand come across as very unpleasant and
deliberately disruptive. I invite anyone to look at your public history
on that list and judge for themselves. We are now getting a tiny taste
of it on emacs-devel.

As only the latest example:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-03/msg00747.html

I have no idea why anyone continues to read your mails, and encourage
them not to.

> I would like to withdraw my pleasure in having these files distributed
> as part of Org distribution.

Tough, there is absolutely nothing you can do about your past
contributions to Org. They can always put them in Org's contrib
directory and not merge them to Emacs. So the only thing you can
(possibly) screw by this action is Emacs.

AFAICS, you (quite rightly and predictably) had zero positive replies to
your offer to take over Org:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-02/msg00701.html

The best thing for everyone would be if you went away and made your own
version.

> More specifically, I would like to know how copyright assignment works
> for files that are not yet part of Emacs.  Is there is a way I can
> withdraw my assignment (for a substantial period - say 3-6 months) big
> enough to create a minor discomfort for the Org community.

What a totally mean-spirited thing to do, that can only waste a bunch of
people's time (we already have a bunch of people discussing what
assignment does and does not mean) and gain nobody anything.

If these are the kinds of games you like to play, then my proposal (it's
not up to me though) to resolve the issue is that we stop accepting
contributions of any kind from you to Emacs. This would save us having
to waste time on this.