Stephan Hermann: To put an end to this topic

Dear Followers of Ubuntu Planet,

to prevent wasting Marks valuable time to write an eMail to me, this post will clear up some mess (at least I hope so, if not, who cares anyways).

First, appologise for being a topic on the CC agenda, but not showing up. I was busy with having some beers with a couple of colleagues in a nice pub, actually this was more important then attending a meeting with Fabian not attending. There are more important things in life then Ubuntu, really.

Anyways, first of all, I’ll appologies to you, dear Reader, for reading such a free, open, and hot tempered blogpost regarding Fabians way of lecturing people. That’s me. 

Secondly, Mark, I don’t know where you read something about masturbation? In the blogpost in question, there is no word of masturbation. Fabians comment on my article (which is not published on the planet, therefore it’s on my private property) mentioned this word the very first time. If I wanted to write something about masturbation, I would do so. The word "climax" in this article has really nothing to do with it. But the word was well choosen, because of the refered article. "Climax" meant and means and will mean even in the future of this blogpost in question: augmentation, increase, gain, cumulation, enhancement, progression, raise, rise, step-up of my mood when coding Python. And yes, it was meant as a play with words, but it has nothing to do with "masturbation". Furthermore, when I type on my keyboard, and that I can do really fast, it looks like that my hands are really shaking. So nothing to be concerned, but even not "he [\sh] wrote about masturbation".

Third, Oliver (ogra) was right during the CC meeting: \sh is hot tempered. Not only in the negative meaning but also positive (most of the times). This can be approved by many of my friends, colleagues and of course my wifes.

Fourth, the problem I have with self-proclaimed moral guardians is, that Ubuntu is not a religious, fanatic group…no, quite the contrary. Ubuntu is, I said it in the past, and I say it now again: BUSINESS and TECHNICAL and NON-FANATIC. Nothing more, nothing less. (Only Bishop Tutus mentioning of "Ubuntu" in his famous speech, has something to do with "Humanity" in general). But this view is not shared among the most of the followers of the Ubuntus Distribution (well I hope it is). No, we are just creating a group of fanatics, who are thinking that "the Ubuntu Linux Distribution" is creating a new, stronger, more humanity to others group of people, and we have to stop cursing, swearing, smoking, drinking, but we have to be nice to each other etc. "Ubuntu" makes Linux more enjoyable for other people, yes, because it’s eventually more easy to install and to work with, but this is all about the Ubuntu in the marketing word of this Linux Distribution. You know, most people do earn money with Linux, also with Ubuntu. Actually we earn a lot of money with it, if we wouldn’t: No CDs, no UDS Sponsoring, no nothing. But without the people around this business there would be no marketing (well, there would be, but more expensive), no revenue, no spreading the goodness of Ubuntu as Operating System. Really, Ubuntu is not a religion, no church, no way to become a better person, it’s just what it is: a Simple Linux Distribution, with a cool Marketing Name Tag on it. Really. Awake.

The Code Of Conduct, as always sworn to it, is a "policy" how people are working together inside the Ubuntu "Framework". We (at least the working people) all know how hard it can be, to work with people you don’t like (social meaning) in the office. This can be very hard, and sometimes it’s really difficult to lower your temper. This is the CoC…it gives you a "company policy", how to behave, when you work in this group of people. It doesn’t make you a better person, no, really not. Most of the time, when I talked about the CoC people were laughing out loud, and they were asking "Did your group ever heard anything about Common Sense of Living Together?" I replied, "Well, you have to know, we are coders, packagers and technical people, we all lack of social skills most of the time". (I think I’m right, but even this is more a behaviour of a sysadmin, as my colleague said).

This is why I’m getting upset of people, who are coming to my property, putting words in my mouth, thinking: with this guy, we can do that, he wrote in the past about a iPod Vibrator and he said that one member is "sexy". Damn, I’m marked with that curse of being bothered with self-proclaimed guardians?

I think: YES ! Example?

Ok, here it goes (appologies to all mentioned people here, I love you all guys, but I was in need of some examples )

Language:

Richards Post about Chicago Critical Mass: Quote: "To end it, a thousand or more cyclist took over Michigan Avenue, Chicago Police included, and yelled “HAPPY FRIDAY” to all of the pissed off automobile drivers and the cheering pedestrians" (Yes, pissed off is really a bad language)

Non-Christian Signs:

Jono Bacon: "Life ain’t dull"

Half-Naked bodies and drunken people:

Og Maciel: "Stormy Weekend at Chapel Hill"

(Those are examples of the near past, we could go further, but you’ll get the point).

Read the comments, anyone coming there, and asking to "please remove this picture, because it’s clearly against my religion" or "don’t show yourself drunk, it will give children a bad influence" or "Man, you don’t say "pissed" in the public…you have to say "angry"?

No! See, what’s the difference? Yes, \sh is the dick, and this bastard is proud of it.

Now, what is Planet Ubuntu?

Technically it’s an aggregator of RSS feeds, it pulls the feed from the server of other people (named personal blog).

Socially, it’s a place, where people can read a lot of "crap" about the insights of other people. You don’t have to agree, respect, accept with all what’s written there, you can filter those postings you don’t want to read. You can swear, curse, write crap on the authors page (comments are evil, yes, but they can also be refreshing and enjoying).

What you can do to stop people writing about their insights: "Placing a new policy for aggregated feeds of the writers on the Planet". This is an easy task, because (especially here) planet.ubuntu.com belongs to a company, which pays for the traffic and for the infrastructure (server, network, rackspace etc.) This policy has to come from the company, which runs the whole Ubuntu environment, because some things can do harm for the business of the company. This is understandable, and the only rational reason to change the policy.

But is it really what YOU want?

Actually, I do like reading Jonos posts about his heavy metal career ( as much as I enjoy having a beer with him ) I do like reading about Ogs family, because it shows me, that we are not so different regarding our lifes, even if we live thousands of miles away, and were grown up totally different. I do like reading Richards swearing and his work. I do like reading political statements of Jeff, to be honest, I do like reading more of it from everybody. Technical stuff is important, yes, but this we get all the day via IRC or the fridge or freshmeat or slashdot.

I think Jeff (jdub) put it into the right wording: (one of the replies to a comment on his article):

"You realise the first Planet site was created specifically to reflect the personal lives of project contributors, rather than being simply a news feed about the project itself? What you complain about was precisely the original intent, so please suffer in your jocks and allow the rest of us to enjoy the personal bond and sharing between contributors that Planet was designed to encourage."

You know, moral thoughts about some posts, I also like to read, but people who are trying to doctrine others, as self-proclaimed moral-guardians, this is something which I don’t like, because it gives the wrong view of what the community is. And yes, I’m open to everybody who get it touch with me and tell me: "Listen Dude, you are such a dick, I hate you from my deepest heart". It just tells me, that my thoughts were read by those people. That’s good. Really. But don’t lecture us, don’t tell me, how I have to write my articles, how to express myself. This is something I don’t like, and I think most of you don’t like it either. We all knew how to behave in a civilized manner. But "Civilized" means also, to just blow out your anger, sometimes, and that’s what happened with my article about Fabian.

I don’t know Fabian in person, and I think if we meet somehow somewhere, we could discuss all this, with a beer or wine in our hands, and after that, we can put all this to a file, burn it, and trash it. I think what happend is more human then anything else.

Coming to an end, Sorry, Fabian, for blowing up, but next time, let’s do it on my property (means, come back and write on my blog, it’s free of charge, and you can say what you want on my property). There was nobody addressed in my blogpost in question (the WTF one), there was no intention to hurt anyone, and there was no meaning about talking about masturbation. Nobody was complaining, but you. So there was no need to start trying to be "El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha". There was nothing wrong with it.

Anyways, I think that this post was not the real outcome of the mail of Mark to me, but it will be the last post on this topic. You can read my insights now on http://www.sourcecode.de/, the Ubuntu feed on this host will be strict boring and technical from now on. Actually, this is the only way to go, without changing the marketing of the community. It can happen, that I will be fired from here, because of revealing some marketing tactics of making revenue out of the OpenSource framework, but it won’t stop me from using Ubuntu and coding on Leonov.

Therefore, good night, whereever you are,

\sh

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