Re: Contributors and maintainers

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:

>>> No submitter can brow-beat us into accepting a patch because they
>>> think it is "clear" or "right" or "obvious".  This isn't how
>>> collaboration works in the free software world.  We decide who has
>>> commit rights, and we reserve the right to reject and revert
>>> commits.
>> 
>> I provided clarification several times.  It was ignored.
>
> Certainly not.  You got *a lot* of replies.
>
>> Let me list some different mails in which I repeated more or less
>> the same explanation with different wording:
>
> This is exactly the `agree to disagree' situation I've mentioned in a
> previous e-mail.

Well, these days generally "discussion" is understood as everybody
repeating his opinion until most drop out, maybe a trickling down from
the culture of political debate, with a focus on scoring points rather
than extending one's views.

This mode of discussion tends to work rather bad in a closed round of
experts.  Repeating your point on the assumption that your opponent was
just too dumb to get it the first time gets old rather fast.  Instead of
making the same point over and over again and riling everybody including
yourself up in the process, you better try bringing up new facts or
considerations.  Everything else is only likely to affect the emotional
but not the factual result of the discussion.

While "everybody's glad that this is over and one will not meet ever
again" may be a somewhat emotionally conclusive resolution in substitute
for a convergence to factual agreement, it's not much of a basis for
ongoing work.

-- 
David Kastrup