Thom Holwerda's Journal: Wikipedia, cont'd

And now I have officially been blocked from Wikipedia-- simply because I wanted the thruth to be told. Me and Kelly won the discussion on all matters-- I guess the fact that Kiand and others have a grudge against closed-source software are more important than the truth.

Kiand had two major points:

SkyOS violated the GPL: Kiand asked for the source to OpenTTD, and Robert gave it to him three weeks later;

The skyOS team spammed the BeOS dev mailing list, in order to steal dev's away from the Be.

Now, point one of course does not make any sense. The GPL states nothing about a timespan between source request and source deliviery; and therefore the three weeks are completely legit. On this point me and Kelly won. Kiand refused to answer my question about how SkyOS violated the GPL, and he even denied stating that later on!

The second point was also easily defended. Kelly posted the infamous email he sent to the BeOS dev mailing list. Here is a reproduction:

Hello,

If you are receiving this message, it is because you were listed at BeBits as having written something relevant to printing services or applications. If you do not reply to this message, you will not receive any further e-mails from us.

SkyOS (http://www.skyos.org) is looking for someone with a great deal of experience writing printer-specific code to help develop a printing subsystem for our operating system. Specifically, the ideal candidate will have:

a very strong understanding and knowledge of the C language

a very detailed knowledge of what PCL is

the ability to write printer drivers

the ability to manage big projects (The entire printer system)

knowledge of how to design the required communication interfaces between SkyGI (graphics system) --> Printer system

knowledge of how to design the required communication interfaces between Printer system --> drivers

If you think you fit this skill set, and are interested in developing a printing subsystem for a cutting edge operating system, please respond back, stating your interest.

Thank you for your time. Again, if you do not reply to this message, you will not receive any further e-mails from us.

Regards,

Kelly Rush

Now, if that one, extremely polite and to-the-point email is considerd spam, then shoot me.

It is obvious me and Kelly won the discussion-- yet I got banned because I reverted the article to its original (pre-OSS-zealotry-edition) state more than three times (4 times, actually). I guess "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" says it all. From now on I boycot Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, where OSS zealotry and lies are more important than factual information.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Now, hold on

[Hexydes]

I believe the rewrite that you just listed was the original, before Kiand added his criticism of SkyOS list. We were perfectly fine with that. Kiand added a number of false statements (a.k.a. libel) about SkyOS, insinuating, among other things, that SkyOS possibly violated the GPL. He claimed that HE HIMSELF did not claim that, but that others had, and as such, it was relevant to post in his rewrite. The problem with this is that SkyOS, in NO WAY violates the GPL. Whenever this argument is brought up (99% o

Re:Now, hold on

[cianduffy]

Err, somehow you managed not to read any of my comments properly (this is Kiand, if you hadn't figured out already).

I said that there were accusations of GPL violations, mainly based on the lenght of time it took to get diffs. The time period is surprisingly long.

I said that spam (read Unsolicited Commercial Email, any unsolicited mail from a commercial organisation) was sent to BeOS developers. Kelly is in the US, where that is illegal, and Robert is in the EU, where that is also illegal. Hence it was sp

Re:Now, hold on

[cianduffy]

And also, that was NOT the mail I received. I'll have to dig out my backups to get the one I did receive, but it was nothing to do with printing.