[ILUG] Guess who got a job offer?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Braun Brelin (bbrelin at gmail.com):

> Well, ESR's always been kind of strange. He's one of those gun type who 
> believes that gun ownership is the root of democracy. 

Interesting that you brought gun-advocacy up, since it had _nothing_ to
do with the exchange in question.  I notice that this non-sequitur
quality is common in the flamage that follows Eric around, on the Net.

If Eric had asked my opinion about his draft, before sending, I'd have
told him:

1.  It'd be much better without crude language and imagery.
2.  While it's true that you personally lead the effort to gain
    big-business acceptance of open source, and did much more than
    anyone else in that department, and though any reasonable 
    observer would follow your inference that you've been Microsoft
    Corp.'s worst nightmare in that critical area, it comes across
    as boasting and will draw flamage.

But I'd not have dragged in irrelevancies -- certainly not any
difference I believed I had with him on politics.  That'd be just rude,
not to mention a distraction from the subject.

The flamers miss few chances to decry egotism and arrogance[1], as if 
that had any relevance to the merits of his actions, and as if their
armchair opinion of the man personally were automatically of public
interest.  

[1] The many who use _both_ of these terms (not you, Colm) often seem to
think, in error, that they're synonymous -- further evidence that
they're not bothering to leave their brains switched on.  I remember
myself as a teenager, and I was utterly arrogant but not at all
egotistical.  That is, I'd approach topics with others in a fashion
showing extreme effrontery, but not out of any conviction of personal
importance; rather the reverse, in fact:  I didn't matter, my
interlocutor didn't matter; the subject did.  That's arrogance.