Another channel for Slate

[Glenn Alexander]

I'm mostly lurking here and tinkering with Slate as the development 
level is still too low for me to really contribute usefully at this 
stage, but I will chime in here. 
 
Brian: I have seen a few posts from you which made me cringe for the 
recipient. 
 
Pupeno: I don't exactly know Brian's situation, but I suspect he is 
quite frustrated by not being able to put nearly as much time into 
Slate as he would like, mainly because of the need to put food on the 
table. While I can understand your reaction, I doubt Brian was 
deliberately being snipey to you or anyone else personally. 
 
Being a project leader (even a joint one) is not easy and letting 
other people 'meddle' with your 'baby' is both exceedingly contrary to 
human nature and at the same time laudable for those who do it despite 
this. The only person I have ever heard of that pulls it off with 
anywhere approaching minimum insult is Linus, and even he has the 
occasional on-list barney with other developers. 
 
I have often seen it cited (wrongly or rightly, though I suspect 
rightly) that Linus' people skills are by FAR the main reason Linux 
got off the ground like it did, so yes, Brian (and the rest of us too, 
for that matter) might want to be careful in his replies to people who 
don't have quite the same agenda/direction in their development 
motivation as he, but by the same stroke, we all need to accept that 
we are in a delayed text environment (mailing list) with all its 
humanity-stripping characteristics and the apparent tone of a 
quickly-typed (and likely late at night after a harrowing work-day) 
email may not adequately express the true attitude of the sender to 
the recipient. 
 
My 5 cents (since we don't have 2c coins in Australia any more). 
 
-------------------------------------------------------- 
Glenn Alexander 
(B.Teach, B.Ed Major IT Education, University of Wollongong Australia) 
Home site: http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~glenalec 
Jabber:    glenalec @ jabber.org 
-------------------------------------------------------- 
Who sleeps with a clone, wakes up to themselves.