Stallman's quote in real context

Posted Oct 7, 2006 7:10 UTC (Sat) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]

I will not participate in any attempts to turn what is hopefully an
insightful discussion into a pissing match.

And I almost did. I was in the process of tarballing up some unreleased
(as in prealpha) stuff I've been hacking on for months, but I realized
that it would be a poor waste of my time to divert in order to satisfy
this red herring you are now attempting to serve.

Incidentally it appears that the GPLv3 will be ready by the time I issue
an alpha release of my server software and its supporting 'C' library. And
I fully intend to skip the relicensing step and move straight to version
3, especially because I think the new anti-DRM provisions might be
specifically relevant to some things I'm currently doing. I promise of
course that I would have fully appreciated the opportunity to
automatically relicense had that been a necessity.

I argue now because Ingo proposes to deny me the chance to vote with this
new code of mine at all. He seems to want this license development
stopped. I don't think Ingo would succeed in stopping the process, but I
speak as someone who cares deeply about that process and as someone who
will absolutely engage in code release under GPLv3, and who would rather
do that release under GPLv3 than the less good (but still quite good)
GPLv2. Notice that I'm specifically avoiding telling him what I think he
ought to do with his stuff, or you with yours, because I have no stake in
that.

I have no doubt in my mind that your next reply will criticize me on the
grounds of not having published code about to undergo relicensing. Since
that is surely your intent, fire away and enjoy.

Credibility is a funny thing - it is the first and last thing people like
to attack when they can find absolutely no other argumentative point of
substance. You accuse me of politics when attacks on credibility rather
than reasoned analysis are most often performed by the dirtiest of
politicians. So I'll ask you to pardon me if I roll my eyes while you are
busy adding your two cents to this conversation. But I promise that I
won't do that if you instead decide to say something of substance.

Posted Oct 7, 2006 8:23 UTC (Sat) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link]

That is a very poor diversion. Ad hominem. Now for your arguments please.