An apology is required from me

[Daniel]

On 06/23/2012 07:59 AM, Mike Wohlgemuth wrote:

> Someone claimed that they found gnome bashing tiresome.  Your response
> was they should complain to the Gnome developers.

No, that wasn't my response.

If one were going to kill a snake, then I would indeed _suggest_ 
smashing its head rather than its tail, but all that presupposes that 
one should try to kill the snake.

> It seemed sort of
> analogous to ordering a pizza in a restaurant and realizing it has
> anchovies on it.  You hate anchovies, but it was clearly labeled as
> coming with anchovies.  It seems at this point you could choose to
> take the anchovies off and eat the rest of the pizza.  Or you could
> talk to the wait staff about resolving the issue.  Or you could
> complain loudly to all the other patrons, and when the other patrons
> express displeasure with your actions, tell them that it is really the
> restaurant's fault.

Well, here's a rather better analogy, reworking yours:

We have a bunch of people who have been going to a pizza restaurant 
for some years.  And they find the pizza to be quite excellent.  Then, 
suddenly, it is changed.  The old sort of pizza is removed from the 
menu, and it is replaced with a new one that a contingent of 
"regulars" loathe.  So _they_ -- not just one hypothetical patron but 
a bloc of them -- begin complaining not only to the staff, but on 
Yelp! but in letters-to-the-editor.  And people who want to read 
_different_ letters-to-the-editor become annoyed, and start 
complaining about the complaining.

(Note: You don't have to read this mailing list to use Gnome, nor to 
Fedora with or without Gnome.  Analogically speaking, the complaining 
is _not_ in the restaurant.)

Of course, the restaurant has a right to change its offerings, but the 
complainers have a right to complain.  And the people complaining 
about the complaining -- well, shouldn't they know what they got 
themselves in for in reading other people's comments?

One answer to the people who don't like the pizza is to tell them to 
go somewhere else (even if there's no other pizza place in town).  One 
answer to the people who don't like the complaints about the pizza is 
to tell them to stop reading Yelp! and the letters-to-the-editor (even 
if there's nothing else to read).  And these answers aren't either/or; 
one could embrace each.

And one could embrace both of these answers, while suggesting that 
someone complaining about the complaining might do better to try to 
smash the head of a snake than to attempt to stomp on its tail.

> This third option is what I find astonishingly arrogant.

Well, your attempts to interpret my psychology are grossly incompetent.