[odf-discuss] GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation

[Daniel]

To all:

If I had been in Jeff's place, I would have given up on talking to this 
list long ago. I'm sorry, but people in this list, in particular PJ, 
have been quite vicious in their attacks and have taken the slightest 
nuance of everything Jeff says as proof that Gnome is the spawn of the 
devil. What has occurred in this list is not civil discourse, and it 
should not have been allowed.

I intend this to be my only email to this thread, because honestly I 
have no energy for the kind of discussion that is going on in this 
thread. I am embarrassed to think that this is the kind of group I 
helped form. This is not at all the community I envisioned when the 
Fellowship was first created. I dreamed that it would be a place where 
people would work constructively to make real progress for ODF. I did 
not expect that today it would one day resort to witch hunts and "you 
are either for us or against us" kind of positions and in-fighting with 
other FOSS projects.

I don't expect that this email will alter the views of those who have 
participated in this thread. I expect that nothing will. But maybe 
others readers will get something from my post.

Sincerely,
Daniel.

Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Jeff Waugh">
> 
>> Jody Goldberg is the lead maintainer of Gnumeric, a GNOME-based
>> spreadsheet application, a position he has held for seven years.
> 
> Again, I'm not sure the intent of participants in this discussion is very
> positive, so I don't know how long I'm going to offer my input on the
> issues. It just doesn't seem particularly helpful to waste my time defending
> the integrity of my peers and project in the face of such vehement attacks.
> 
> I'd like to offer one thought, however: Every time we use the argument that
> OOXML is an enormous specification (over 6000 pages) and extremely difficult
> to implement (an issue that is particularly relevant for my work against ISO
> standardisation of OOXML in Australia), we benefit from Jody's work on ECMA.
> Just think about the number of times this issue comes up, and whether or not
> challenging Microsoft on their home turf is a good idea. I'm not going to
> change a lot of minds here, but perhaps some will see that it is ridiculous
> and laughable to cast GNOME as "evil" in this issue.
> 
> It still frustrates me that the knives and vitriol has come out when we
> clearly share 99.9% of our values and vision, very little time has been
> spent listening to the logic and reason behind our participation, and that
> this overwhemling anger has split our community to Microsoft's advantage. I
> think that's a very sad thing for both ODF and FLOSS.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Jeff
>