[development] Some issues and their fixes with Drupal 4.6.6 and PostgreSQL

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

Dries Buytaert wrote:

Preface: This is my last message in this thread.

>
> On 20 Apr 2006, at 17:01, Gary (Lists) wrote:
>>> I sincerely hope that people finally get this message.
>>
>> One more thing, Mr. Drupal, before I unsub here (at your request)...
>>
>> I think the message that you are communicating here is quite counter 
>> to any
>> spirit of community, which is what you claim that you hope to foster (a
>> community of open-source contributors.)
>
> Only few people applaud or support the tone of Gerhard's statements.

Well, as long as the people who matter at least bear with me, I'm fine. 
And I know some of these people even share my views.

>   Gerhard's statements are often the source of personal flamewars ... 
> just like now.

Sorry, but this is a) no flame war (if you believe that it is you 
haven't seen one, I am rather convinced you haven't participated in one 
;-) (not enough messages in the thread and not enough participants to 
count as a flame war) and b) did Gary get the answer he deserved for 
what he posted to a _development_ list (see below).

> These are not very productive and hurt the public face of the community.

I just want to state that your view and mine of who is actually part of 
the community quite apparently do not coincide. To me a member of the 
Drupal community is somebody who contributes in a useful way to the 
advancement of the Drupal project. There are many ways to do so, but 
bitching on the development about somebody's clients' needs is not one 
of them. Your criterion seems to be more relaxed which is fine with me, 
but I felt it neccessary to point out the difference.

> Personally, I find this quite disrespectful towards those (including 
> myself) who try to foster a friendly and constructive atmosphere and 
> who care about the public face of Drupal.

I am sorry that I have to impede your effort like that, but I have a 
strong feeling about justice. And I feel it is very unjust that people 
like Gary (if he were the only one I would not have reacted like that) 
can come in, and disregard all the work we have been doing over the past 
years like he did. This personally offends me as a long time contributor 
to this wonderful project.

And I think that I rather should speak out about this issue because the 
long time effects of letting go attitudes like his might be far more 
detrimental to the project than the occassional outburst.

In short: I do not like the feeling to be taken advantage of and I think 
that many contributors will agree on this. I know that distributing 
Drupal under a liberal licence such as the GPL will inevitably lead to 
"only" users and this is fine with me. I don't send patches to the Linux 
kernel mailing list after all. But I don't bitch there about missing 
features either.

>   Nonetheless, Gerhard is highly respected because of his good 
> intentions, and the time and effort he contributes to Drupal.  
> Obviously, he is high on my list.
>
> The point?  Be smart and ignore the tone.  We got used to it too. :)

And that from a guy who has been accused of being rude[1] more than once. :p

> Linus Torvalds once said: ""Some people have told me they don't think 
> a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me 
> they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 
> 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."
>
> I think we can substitute "fat penguin" by "angry German" here.  ;-)
>

Have you ever seen a penguin swim under water? Such elegance!

Cheers,
    Gerhard


[1] quite wrongly, but not by me.