From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2004-08-17T04:33:48+09:00 Subject: Re: About ruvi On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 04:04:01 +0900, vruz wrote: > Gavin and Hans, welcome to the Ruby Gestapo. > > Is this yet another censorship effort from the newborn > establishment? I think that a whole bunch of people need to settle down and stop pretending that this is a free speech issue -- and I'm not just referring to ruvi. I think that ruvi is a neat idea, but Gavin and Hans are right: unless you're targeting 80% or more of vim's features, there's no sense in calling it a vim clone. Calling it, perhaps, a vi-alike editor, or vimlike editor, would be more accurate. I don't think that either Gavin or Hans has suggested that ruvi is a bad project. Instead, they've said that the claim is a bit excessive, and Alexander has more or less confirmed that it's a mildly outrageous claim by stating flat-out that he will only be supporting a subset of vim features. vim started out with the intent of matching -- and then improving -- upon the features of vi. ruvi appears to be heading a different direction. It may be a better direction, but it's not a vim-clone unless it's going to be headed significantly toward the features of vi and vim. Alexander has said that he won't be supporting the 'f' motion key (and related keys); the problem is that this is not even a "vim" feature; it's a *vi* feature. Without this, it's clear that ruvi won't even be a viclone, much less a vimclone. This is just an example. No one is trying to silence Alexander or stop him from releasing ruvi. Instead, they are suggesting that (1) the claim of "vimclone" is (wildly) misleading and (2) they won't be using it any time soon because it barely has a few percentage coverage of vim features. Gavin even suggested that there might be a better way to approach the problem space. > Read my lips: > "Anyone can release anything they want, whenever they want in any > form they want" > > You're not obliged to use their code, if you don't want it, > try to be constructive at least. > > Now, let's all repeat: > "Free Speech, Free Speech, Free Speech" A number of folks from #ruby-lang have used this defence in the last couple of weeks. Here's a clue: free speech doesn't work that way. Free speech includes taking responsibility for one's words. There are no moderators on ruby-talk or clr. Absolutely no one has suggested that the people involved stop releasing software or talking about it on the list. This isn't, has never been, and will never be a free speech issue. It is a discussion about misleading claims regarding a project that otherwise looks very interesting. I would suggest to Alexander that he change the claims because otherwise people will be very disappointed. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca