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Civility in the Marketplace of Ideas [was: Public Domain Python]

Huaiyu Zhu hzhu at users.sourceforge.net
Wed Sep 20 18:59:04 EDT 2000 
Hi, Pat McCann,

I'm not sure if this is your real name.  But since I was wondering why there
has been a persistent thread attacking RMS in confusing ways, I did a little
review of pipermail archive.  Your first post came up on Aug 14, as a follow
up to "some comments for Python 3000 - my requests"

[Pat McCann wrote]
  I'd just like my languages to have a simple syntax change (maybe it
  could even support the old one too for old code):
  
  EVERY DECLARATION BEGINS WITH THE NAME OF THE THING BEING DECLARED, 
  so the name isn't burried in a mess of pre- and post-qualifiers.  I
  wonder how much time has been wasted by people searching the whole
  width of a page for declarations when a scan up the left could have
  been sufficient.
[end quote]

I don't quite see how this relates to Python.  But from that time on, you
just kept on picking every thread relating to licence and patent and trade
marks and make unsubstantiated attacks on RMS, FSF, and GPL.

To alleviate my suspicion, (and that of many other who would certainly be
aroused), would you please tell us a little bit about what you do with
this "your language", and why you like it?  I would appreciate it very much,
and would apologize if my suspicion turned out to be unfounded.

Huaiyu


On 20 Sep 2000 12:53:33 -0700, Pat McCann <thisis at bboogguusss.org> wrote:
>Vehemence and personal attacks can both be civil.  Cold-blooded deceit
>and obnoxious public behavior cannot and those that engage in such
>incivility deserve both vehemence and personal attacks, civil or not.
>Thankfully, they usually get it and only the most head-strong are able
>to resist conformance to community standards of civility. Unfortunately,
>too many allow celebrities that entertain or otherwise do something good
>for us wide latitude to be incivil which encourages more of the same
>from them and others.  Leaders should be held to higher standards than
>the rest of us, not lower.
>
>Of course, this shouldn't be taken as a defense of everything said in 
>public forums which allow a measure of anonymity where behavior is free
>to sink far below even Stallman's low level of civility.
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