Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 8:54 pm Post subject:
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
I have decided to go one better, I'm leaving. Sadly, I have to put up with this BULLSHIT during the day. I don't have to when I get home.
Sad to see you go, but honestly...if you go with Office v.X you'll get a better product then either (and with 2004, more stable too )
Politics is probably one of the most unfortunate things about open source, and it's something that doesn't seem to go away. From experience, it can be so all-consuming that you stop coding...and it can be so frustrating that it makes this junk no longer fun and it just becomes stressful and irritating. I'm sorry that it's gotten to that point for you and apologize for my own petty politics (it's not like I'm not culpable in this all in some fashion).
You've been a great voice, supporter, developer, and tester for everyone. Reminds me of asxless, who was quite a community member and who also left due to politics. Let's just say he went on to spend more time with his wife and with plans to do some great community service.
A selfless spirit will always find a way to do good for others
I have decided to go one better, I'm leaving. Sadly, I have to put up with this BULLSHIT during the day. I don't have to when I get home.
Sad to see you go, but honestly...if you go with Office v.X you'll get a better product then either (and with 2004, more stable too )
Ed:
I really don't want to pad the bottom line of the folks at Redmond, but I have to work with there stuff all day.
OPENSTEP wrote:
Politics is probably one of the most unfortunate things about open source, and it's something that doesn't seem to go away. From experience, it can be so all-consuming that you stop coding...and it can be so frustrating that it makes this junk no longer fun and it just becomes stressful and irritating. I'm sorry that it's gotten to that point for you and apologize for my own petty politics (it's not like I'm not culpable in this all in some fashion).
Politics is a terrible waste of time, effort and money. I have to deal with a political situation during the day (and this is one of the reasons I may still leave that position and just turn into a Tucson bum) that, if it turns out the way that I feel it may, will end up with the termination of my current job position. However, and as bad as that may appear on the surface, this will end up bettering me.
OPENSTEP wrote:
You've been a great voice, supporter, developer, and tester for everyone. Reminds me of asxless, who was quite a community member and who also left due to politics. Let's just say he went on to spend more time with his wife and with plans to do some great community service.
So will I. I have a feeling where I will end up at.
OPENSTEP wrote:
A selfless spirit will always find a way to do good for others
Sadly, it will not be here and Patrick will need as much help as he can get in the next few months. In the end, this may be the start of the long slipperly slope downward. I'm of the opinion that both Patrick and you are strong enough to survive whatever happens. I don't know what will happen with the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X 'crew'. I am the last American on their team. Everyone else is from either Asia or Europe. I don't have a problem with this, as they tend to be able to work together well. I just don't think they realize the size of the task they took on. Maybe they never will.
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:49 pm Post subject:
OPENSTEP wrote:
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
I have decided to go one better, I'm leaving. Sadly, I have to put up with this BULLSHIT during the day. I don't have to when I get home.
Sad to see you go, but honestly...if you go with Office v.X you'll get a better product then either (and with 2004, more stable too )
Politics is probably one of the most unfortunate things about open source, and it's something that doesn't seem to go away. From experience, it can be so all-consuming that you stop coding...and it can be so frustrating that it makes this junk no longer fun and it just becomes stressful and irritating. I'm sorry that it's gotten to that point for you and apologize for my
own petty politics (it's not like I'm not culpable in this all in some fashion).
You've been a great voice, supporter, developer, and tester for everyone. Reminds me of asxless, who was quite a community member and who also left due to politics. Let's just say he went on to spend more time with his wife and with plans to do some great community service.
A selfless spirit will always find a way to do good for others
ed
I'm very sorry to see you go. Your great support efforts (for both Neo and OOo) will be greatly missed. I was hopefully that your efforts on the OOo team would lead to a little more ... common sense.
I understand your frustration and will miss your pointed comments.
I posted a "why is this locked" message in all of the OOo fora, though didn't feel it necessary to give much background and just linked here. I tried to provide relevant links on how to contact both Eric and the mac@porting mailing list. Please let me know if you have any suggestions as to how to make it more concise or provide better links. I didn't do the research for the deep link to the mailing list subscribe or archives for mac@porting. Should I add those?
What's there looks good to me--well, you could removed one of the two instances of "preferred" in that one sentence
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:26 pm Post subject: escalation
Pray tell, what is gained by locking support fora? I am not a Christian, and I will not advocate turning the other cheek, but tit-for-tat responses are among the most useless things ever invented. See Israel/Palestine for a good exampe of how otherwise reasonable people are ruining their lives.
Basically, I had hoped for better from you. Just because Eric is narrowminded, you do not have to be. I know there is pride and expenses but the reason why the fora are there haven't changed..
Best wishes,
Oscar (who is deeply disappointed by the whole mess.) _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
James, I'm really sad and sorry to see you go, but I understand how it is; there've been several times when I've "disappeared" for a bit in reaction to the flaming and politics. I hope maybe some day you'll come back, but one needs to do what makes one happy; that's really what's most important in life.
I'll miss your hard work answering questions here, trying to get useful information from bug reports in Bugzilla, and doing double-duty building both 2.0 products; they're better apps because of the work you did.
Best wishes to you and your family in all your future endeavours.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Last edited by sardisson on Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
Anger aside, and doubting that it will do any good, I still sent the following message to Louis, the "head" of OOo:
Just for completeness's sake, here is the reply I recieved from Louis this evening:
Quote:
Cc: Eric Bachard <eric.bachard@>
Subject: Re: De-listing of NeoOffice and removal of Ed Peterlin's cvs access
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:06:13 -0400
To: Smokey Ardisson
From: Louis Suarez-Potts <luispo@>
hi
I think you need to address the Mac OS X Porting project, not me.
You might also wish to discuss efforts to port OOo to Mac OS X with them
Best,
Louis
On 2006-04-19, at 15:55 , Smokey Ardisson wrote:
[complete text of my original message]
For the record, I do not intend to re-post my message on mac@porting because it has been made very clear to me for some time that I am not welcome in the OOo-Mac community, and any communication from me will only serve to further inflame the situation (I also note that the current "dialogue" on this subject on that list has been "more of the same" despite efforts from thread-starters to be civil, and that Pavel has suggested, contra my reply from Louis, that the subject is not relevant for that list).
One question I would like answered, though: my understanding was that the "co-listing" agreement was between OpenOffice.org (as a whole) and NeoOffice.org, not between the OOo (Mac) Porting project and whomever. Is, er, was, that correct?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 12:23 am Post subject:
Honestly, the agreement was not legal in the sense that there's a written contract, so any understanding is wound up in legal ambiguity. Regardless, it's not any "contract" that riles me, it's more the manner in which all OOo oriented parties handled the situation.
I'm through griping about it, though, and have more important things to focus on. I've gotta get my hard drive resurrected (anyone know a good faith healer?), get a machine running with which I can record my opera on saturday, and build a new machine so I can compile faster than this TiBook allows (I'm still on language modules). The CPU update was supposed to speed up my compile to be done by today, not the other way around
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 12:28 am Post subject:
(OT: my cube bit the dust on Monday when the dual G4 cpu update that was supposed to make it a kick ass primary box instead fried the motherboard, and of course OWC won't replace my cube but at least will refund my money for the dual upgrade. Now the best I own is a tibook 400, so my builds are a bit slower )
While I understand the feelings behind the decision to lock the X11 fora, it does seem to me that it is better for NeoOffice advocacy to leave it open, so that there is more opportunity to tell X11 users about NeoOffice, and so encourage them to advocate/lobby on its behalf in the OOo court.
I'm personally happy to lend what help I'm capable of to fielding people's support requests re OOo X11, and I'm also happy to make a regular donation (though necessarily small - I'm only a poor charity worker...) towards the costs of maintaining those fora. I'm currently waiting for PayPal to okay my bank a/c for taking donations from - as soon as that's ready I'll start one up.
Let's see how they'll handle end-user support. It seem that they won't (be able to?) setup a forum. Mailing list aren't very easy to use for Mr Everyone compared to forums...
Wow, I didn't even notice that nothing on that wiki links to the page; it was clear that nowhere in the Mac Porting project was there a link. Google also does not show any pages linking to the wiki page.
I also noted that page was essentially created 2 days ago (January, but the products were not added until 18 Apr) and Neo was listed as "NeoOffice/J" even though we've been "NeoOffice" since last fall....
Creating that page was a convenient way to pretend that Neo wasn't being "de-listed" but instead the listing was being moved to a "more appropriate" place....
OPENSTEP wrote:
Honestly, the agreement was not legal in the sense that there's a written contract, so any understanding is wound up in legal ambiguity. Regardless, it's not any "contract" that riles me, it's more the manner in which all OOo oriented parties handled the situation.
I knew it wasn't a formal written agreement; I just didn't know if it was Louis on the other end, or Martin H. or Kevin H. or Eric B. or...?
Anyway....
/me sends Ed's magnificent Cube good vibes for resurrection....
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Nov 28, 2005 Posts: 299 Location: Near Frankfurt/M. Germany
Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:35 pm Post subject:
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
I have decided to go one better, I'm leaving. Sadly, I have to put up with this BULLSHIT during the day. I don't have to when I get home. This is why I have tried to calm the waters over the last few months and try to get the parties involved to come up for air. Sadly, this has not happened. I have to pull my support until the situation becomes better. Sadly, the end user is the one who suffers.
BTW, if I wanted to use X11, I'd dig out my Thinkpad, install Fedora Core 5 and then use OpenOffice.org there. It does what it is supposed to there.
James M.
James, did I read correctly? You are going? Is this really your last word on this? Sad to see you go! But if it is your last word, let me say: I hope your personal situation (job et al.) evolves well. It was nice to read your posts, and good bye. Wish the very best to you!
Thomas
Well, I aired my feelings to the OOo people on the porting list (see here), and I think I should do the same here.
Basically, I am with James. I'll keep using Neo, and I'll lurk for a bit, but you may consider my presence much diminished in the future. I've pretty much had it with the temper tantrums on both sides and the politics.
I also think I will wait with getting Neo 2 alpha, because something in the whole process irked me. Patrick always said his testers were worth more to him in time and effort than in money, but when it came to sending the regulars free builds, he categorically said no. Of course, I understand Pat's need for funding - he has a family to maintain - but I don't have to feel appreciated for it. That's OK, though. I can wait for another month, as Neo 1.2 is still going strong.
Personally, I am looking forward to Neo 2, as well as a means to pimp the icon set and the pretty clipart people are working on. They will look good on my next mac .
I do wish everyone working on making Neo 2 and OpenOffice.org the very best. No regrets about the time I did invest and the friends I made (you know who you are) - but the fun is somewhat out of it. And I have real-world life as well.
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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)
Your great support efforts (for both Neo and OOo) will be greatly missed. I was hopefully that your efforts on the OOo team would lead to a little more ... common sense.
