Re: Blog post

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

Hi Eshel,

[Emacs co-maintainer here, but I'm only speaking for myself.  I meant to
send this in December, but never did.  So this comes a bit late.  Sorry
if it's a bit long.]

I can't speak for the people that were attacked in that post, but I can
say that it made me concerned.  In particular, it seemed far removed
from the type of culture that we want to promote in Emacs development.

I thought about its purpose, and had a few guesses for what it might all
be about.  One option I considered was that it was simply someone making
a mistake due to not considering in advance the impact that words might
have.  It seems like this was indeed the case here, and that's good.

Emacs is a small church, and we need to always keep our shared goal in
mind.  I think everyone fundamentally agrees that sowing distrust cannot
help further our goals.  It's when the going gets rough, and the
technical disagreements are extra sharp, that we need to pay particular
attention to how we communicate and treat each other.

Let's be sensitive to and respect that some people might still be hurt
and upset by the incident.  That said, I believe that everyone deserves
a second chance.  So for my part at least, the matter is settled with
the above apology.

In addition to your apology, I also note that your original blog post
has been replaced with a simple notice of its retraction.  In my book,
that also goes a long way.

Hopefully, your apology will have made this episode somewhat less taxing
for Thierry and Eli.  Let's hope that both of them will carry on their
outstanding work for Emacs.  I also very much hope to see you continuing
to contribute to Emacs going forward, of course.

A month has now passed, and soon that will be a year.  Patches and
technical discussions will make that time go by faster, and we have
important work to do.  So let's get to it.