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sigh

From: Larry McVoy <lm_at_bitmover.com>
Date: 2001-04-03 03:13:07 CEST

Once again I have to correct Eric. I was forwarded the first mail he
sent in which he implied that I called you a bunch of idiots. I did
no such thing, I didn't say that, I didn't imply that, that was 100%
Eric fabricating statements I did not, and would not, make. I find
that sort of statement unacceptable.

What I did do is express amazement at the design decision, I did say
that I thought it would add substantially to the schedule, all of which
I also told Greg. See the difference? I said that the decision made
no sense. That does not translate to "you guys are idiots". Who among
us hasn't made a bad design decision? That doesn't make you an idiot.

While it is true that we are likely to compete, I'm an engineer first and
a business person second. It is my strong instinct to point out problems
when I see them, even if it is helping someone who competes with me.
That's called engineering and real engineers cross company boundries
all the time in the name of engineering. It's also a fundamental part
of the spirit of open source, in my opinion.

What Eric did is politics. He took some information and embellished
it to the point of not being factual, all in the name of getting you
worked up. There was no need to do that, I'm sure you are all capable
of seeing the problem without Eric playing politics. I really don't
know what he was thinking, maybe he was tired.

Unfortunately, my team reads your mailing list. As much as I like good
designs and as much as I like sticking in my two cents, I can't do that
when Eric turns it into a political liability, one which I then have
to explain to my people. They all wonder why the hell I was helping
the competition.

What Eric should have done is just mentioned that he thought it was
a problem and kept my name out of it. Instead, he left me no choice
but to just keep my opinions to myself. It's your loss, probably not
a great one because you all seem quite capable of figuring this stuff
out on your own, but it is a non-zero loss; I've been through this twice
already so it's reasonably likely I would have some insights you haven't
reached yet. Oh, well.

The point of this message is to get you to apply a little peer pressure
on Eric to keep his politics out of the mix and let engineers do their
job. I have a tough enough time just because I put my own foot in my
mouth on a fairly regular basis; having Eric do it for me is just a bit
much.

Sorry to bug you, but I wanted to set the record straight. I'd much
prefer we were on friendly terms but I can easily imagine that if you
think what Eric said was truthful, those friendly terms are not likely.
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:27 2006

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