At 16:05 10/7/2001, Rodent of Unusual Size wrote:
First, Zeev: I consider you to be 'way off base here. Regardless
of what has gone before, pointing out (what you consider to be)
someone else's inadequacies does not obviate your own. Do
you admit that your posts are nothing but your opinion and may
not be reflective of reality? No, you challenge others to
consider that you 'might be right for once.' Why? Do you think
people consistently think you are *not* right? If so, why
might that be? You come across as though you are omniscient;
do you say 'IMHO, having another scanner is stupid'? No, you
say 'having another scanner is stupid, and if you think about it
you will see that I am right'. Boy, that would sure rub me the
wrong way! One of the fundamental forces behind open development
is the 'scratch an itch' aspect. Sascha apparently has an itch,
has been waiting for something you apparently said you were going
to do to come along and scratch it, but has given up and scratched
it himself. It is NOT for you, nor anyone else, to say that he
should not do so. No-one here is entitled to speak in absolutes,
only opinions.
The 'I might be right' statement was aimed at Thies (and Rasmus, possibly), not at everyone. If everyone was telling me I was wrong all the time, I would have figured it out by now and quit. This is not the case though.
I also realize that bashing someone in public doesn't necessarily say any good things about me. I've explained numerous times that I chose to go in this path only after months and years of failing to approach the problem in other ways. I realize that this was not necessarily the safest thing to do, but 'victory' is indeed not possible without facing danger.
As for the 2nd scanner being smart or not, in the beginning, I indeed failed to find words to explain why having two identical beasts, one stronger than the other with no other issues, makes no sense. I later thought about it for a bit, and tried to find words to explain what I considered obvious, explicitly pointing out that I may have been mistaken to consider everyone thinks it's obvious. I already did do that, though. Comparing it to Apache, it would be similar to having two httpd.conf scanners that do exactly the same thing, one being 20% faster and more portable than the other, and having to abstract the Apache conf-file-reader-scanner interface through mod_perl, or something like that, because this scanner is incompatible with the Apache license, only with the Perl (GPL) license. My guess is that it wouldn't have been done, but either ignored, or reimplemented by the Apache folks under ASF license.
As for Sascha's itch, to judge things here, you indeed needed to be a bit more involved in the way things worked. Let's put it this way - it's simply not the way things were here.
I appreciate your experience and obviously-neutral view.
I am sorry for having to bring the subject up, even though I still think it was the right thing to do. As I told Sascha in person, I think that despite the mess, I think that something good also came out of openly discussing it. I apologize for the readers who got offended by this discussion.
Zeev