Re: [PATCH 1/9] remote-bzr: trivial cleanups

[completely off-topic; don't worry, we're just having a friendly chat]

Felipe Contreras wrote:

If you are not prepared to defend your review, so are others, why to
you blame that on me? If you were right, you would be shown to be
right. Period.

Felipe, there are some things that are worth arguing about for a long
time (like the new revision spec I'm proposing in [1]), and others
that are not.

[1]: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/222248/focus=222526

No, we operate in evidence and reason, *not* opinion. Any reasonable
person would say "well, I *think* this commit message needs more
description, but I don't *know*, I don't have *evidence* for it, so
I'm not going to fight to the death, as if I had".

Don't you think you're taking reason to an extreme here?  Reason is a
tool that I use when I want.  I don't want reason when I'm browsing
Google Art Project or listening to Gentle Giant.  Arguments like "is
this commit message large enough?" are really not worth the time and
effort.

Ultimately the decision to merge or not to merge comes to Junio, if
you don't like his decision, go complain to him, but I would be
prepared with points in time where people complained about these
patches, and there are no complains, so you have no ammunition at all
whatsoever.

I have no desire to "attack" you, Felipe.  I respect you as a more
experienced developer than myself, and am trying to offer constructive
criticism.

I don't have an ego (or consider myself important to the community).
Whatever will happen will happen, with or without me.

And this is how communities die. When everybody thinks the same, and
everyone who thinks differently is displaced. A monoculture, a place
full of yes-men where nobody criticizes anybody, a circlejerk where
everyone palms the back of everyone else. Eventually things go south,
and nobody around you understands why.

Diversity in a community is healthy. If you don't like people who
think differently, *you* have a problem. If you don't like standing up
and defending your ideas, *you* have a problem. If you don't like
discussing on the basis of evidence and reason, *you* have a problem.

Diversity is certainly healthy, and I it would be nice to have you in
the community.  We just have to find a way to keep the conflict down.