Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 24 Dec 2013, at 20:49, Doc O'Leary <droleary@7usenet2013.subsume.com> wrote:

> In article <mailman.10199.1387840022.10748.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
> Richard Frith-Macdonald <richardfrithmacdonald@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Brutal => unscientific
> 
> Nice try, but so very wrong.  Science is about provisional truth.  
> Sometimes true things are not just unattractive, but downright brutal.  
> You will die on this isolated rock after an infinitesimally brief life, 
> never having known even 1% of reality or having even visited a 
> neighboring star or planet or moon.  Brutal.

Clearly you don't use the standard meaning of the words 'brutal' and 'science'.
Science is an endeaviour of rationality and intellect.  Brutality is 
anti-rational/anti-intellectual.
You could present facts in a brutal way ... which might make you truthful, but 
would not make you scientific.
However, whgat you are doing is presenting your opinions in a brutal way ... 
some of them may be accurate, others are surely not.  I pointed out one which 
is clearly not accurate, and pointed out that brutality is not a scientific 
approach (and not an effective approach to persuasion and progress).

> But, hey, Merry Christmas!
>> Honest?  It's OK to be honestly mistaken, but when you ignore evidence, 
>> that's self deception.
> 
> Indeed.  So why are so few people here ignoring the evidence?  Why to 
> they deceive themselves into thinking that people who point out problems 
> *are* the problem?

I suspect that you meant 'many' rather than 'few' ... and I don't know 
specifically why you are ignoring the evidence, though it's a common tendency 
to ignore evidence that doesn't fit your world view.

> What do you expect me to show you that isn't available freely?  Do you 
> want the link to the failed Kickstarter proposal?

In what way does that demonstrate that gnustep is hostile to OSX users?

> Do you doubt that the popularity of ObjC has skyrocketed in the last 5 
> years?

In what way does that demonstrate that gnustep is hostile to OSX users?

> Do you want to see how little gnustep.org has been changing?

In what way does that demonstrate that gnustep is hostile to OSX users?

>> It would therefore be unreasonable for people to accept that you are being 
>> scientific about things.
> 
> The burden is on you to explain why you're ignoring the obvious evidence 
> and spinning fantasies instead.

How does pointing that your statement that the gnustep is hostile to OSX users, 
is ignoring the evidence become 'spinning a fantasy'?
Or are you referring to the other point (that your behavior demonstrates an 
unscientific approach to the issue)?

>> Well, it may be a conclusion for you, but you state it as an assertion, and 
>> if you arrived at the conclusion it was despite all the evidence to the 
>> contrary (stated aims on the web pages, majority of comments on mailing 
>> lists, the amount of work put in to OSX compatibility etc).
> 
> Part of my point is that, yes, such things are *said* on the web site 
> and elsewhere.  But if you actually sit down and think about it, if you 
> apply the use case "I'm a Mac developer looking to try porting to 
> GNUstep", the *full* body of evidence makes it obvious that GNUstep is 
> not very welcoming.

Thankyou.  That sounds better than your original statement that GNUstep is 
hostile.  Now we are beginning to get enough detail to know what you think a 
problem is, and moving away from the negative language (you can't really use an 
emotionally loaded word like 'hostile' without a whole load of qualification 
and specificity), and ambiguity (the word 'hostile' implies active attack 
dislike etc).

Now, if we go a stafge further we might get to somethihng like:
'It seems to me that, if I imagine myself in the position of a new OSX user 
thinking about using GNUstep to port code to other systems, it would be 
clearer/easier/more-appealing if ...'

I don't know in what way you feel it's unwelcoming exactly  ... maybe in 
several ways ... but if you addresed one at a time and suggested improvements, 
then the people who have been working at trying to make GNUstep appealing to 
OSX users would probably enjoy discussing those suggestions and doing something 
more, rather than being put off.

>> You ignore all the evidence (including the evidence that 
>> people are willing to look at ways to try to keep on improving things), and 
>> cite the admission that the world is not perfect as proof of your case.  
>> That's cherry picking the evidence, and unscientific behavior in the highest 
>> degree.
> 
> It remains you who is willfully ignoring evidence.  Stop working 
> backwards from your conclusion that GNUstep is juuuuuust fine.  Either 
> that, or change the "soft" evidence that pretends you're trying to do 
> more than you are.

Again, please look at the evidence rather than making up insults.  There are 
few ways you are likely to annoy people more than by telling them what they 
think:
According to you I think that GNUstep is 'juuuuuust fine'  ... so you 
apparently know what I think better than I do, and you also know that I'm just 
lieing when I talk about  things being imperfect and about how we might improve 
things.
Stop yourself and consider whether your behavior here is making any sense.
Some people are just ignoring you, one person has suggested that we all ignore 
you, that's just a normal reaction to insulting rhetoric.

>> I have lost track of the number of times people have asked you to help in 
>> this thread.  If there's no desire to improve things, why would anyone have 
>> bothered?
> 
> Instead of counting them, you should have read them.  What is almost 
> universally asked for is code, code, code.  My suggestions have almost 
> nothing to do with that, and are thus deemed of little value.  Until 
> that thinking changes, I'll bow out of tilting at windmills.

Well, of course we want code, but also website improvements, documentation (I 
suggested a VM a couple of times), I think David suggested getting cross 
ciompilation working from xcode.  I have not counted, but my impression was 
that few people have specifically said code, and nobody has said code and 
nothing but code.
What people want are practical useful things (of any kind) suggested or done 
rather than vague ideas.
Note that I say 'suggested or done', not just 'done'.  Clearly everyone would 
like *you* to be doing the work rather than *them* to be doing it (after all, 
nobody wants to be loaded down with more work), but come up with good enough 
practical suggestions that people can do in a reasonable timeframe, and people 
will take on that extra work and thank you for the ideas.

>>> Again, I have.  I did not receive a positive response.  The demonstrated 
>>> best strategy for an iterated prisoner's dilemma is tit-for-tat.  The 
>>> cycle will be broken when someone inside GNUstep wises up and moves in a 
>>> positive direction.
>> 
>> On the contrary, most of the comment you've had has been pretty friendly and 
>> positive, especially considering the way your emails come across.
> 
> Again with the ignoring of obvious examples to the contrary.  Do you 
> actually bother to read things?

Sure ... I said 'most', not all.  And it's a relative thing ... what I mean is 
that people are clearly making the effort to try to make the tone of their 
responses to your emails more positive than the originals.  In particular, you 
needed to insult Greg quite severely before the politeness of his responses 
dropped to my level, and I don't think any of his responses have been as 
insulting as the emails from you that he was responding to.

>> Lots of people are doing useful stuff ... why not join in and contribute 
>> something?
> 
> Answered many times.  Please read before responding.

If you mean the answer about wanting to discuss general aims/directions ... 
then I think you need to get real.  People will consider it a contribution if 
you actually provide good workable well defined ideas, but they probably need 
to be clearly demonstrably good, not just opinions.  If people are to value 
your opinion then you will need to work up to it.

>> I suggested putting together a VM to make it easier for people to get 
>> started 
>> ... is that not something you could do?
> 
> It indeed is.  But, again, what is the point in doing so if the 
> leadership doesn't actually place the *underlying reason* for providing 
> such a thing as a priority issue for the GNUstep project?  Perhaps my 
> time is better spent on other things.  I'm trying to profile before I 
> optimize, which apparently makes me a jerkwad in this upside down world.

There's so much wrong with that statement:
1. It seems clear you *still* haven't paid any attention to what the website 
and the emails in this thread have said about what GNUstep is and what its aims 
are or you'd know already that being OSX friendly is a high priority already, 
so all you need to do is pick things that will improve that.  If you don't 
think a VM will help, then work out what will and address that instead.
2. Don't just 'try to profile',  do it!  That's what people are telling you.  
The information you need is out there but it seems you don't read/understand it 
(and in fairness it's hard to do so), so you need to get involved.  When 
profiling a progam you compile with profiling instrumentation and use tolls to 
gather the information you need and analyse it.   if you don't get involved in 
a project how can you expect to be able to learn enough to optimise?