Re: Re: Re: Accusations

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <mallet@xxxxxxx>]

Atul Chitnis rearranged electrons thusly:

> On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

Wow, what a lot of communication gaps, with hurt feelings on all sides ...

> Wounded - yes. Martyr - no. Just because I am asking for a fair trial does
> not make me a scheming manipulator of emotional responses.
 
Fine, accepted

> First of all, get off your high horse. Your boss is a close personal
> friend of mine, and there were other reasons for my writing to him -
> reasons which were absolutely none of your business, or anyone else's. You
> have done both yourself and your firm a disservice by publishing private
> email.
 
I acknowledge that posting private e-mail is a breach of netiquette.  However,
other reasons or not, complaining to the other person's employer just because
you happen to have a flamewar with the person is not generally considered
netiquette either.

> > I don't have any power / status / whatever to defend, thank you very much.
 
> If you will notice, my post is aimed at my accusers. Notice the plural?
 
Let me clarify this - I am speaking for myself - and am not responding to your
accusation about other accusers.  As you followed up to me, and mentioned my
name as one of the accusers, I felt that I must set the record straight a bit.

> > I was following up to Ruchir Tewari btw ... and looks like Nagendra's
> > statement can be taken as
> > 1. PCQ does it itself (which is what I believe was being advocated in
> > nagendra's post)
 
> And which I questioned - understand that PCQ, Chip, etc. are *not*
> internet firms, and would have to field the job out to someone, which
> leads to...
 
Please, Atul.  I have also (at some point in this thread) suggested that
_corporates_ take it up.  PCQ was, doubtless, cited as an example.

As I mentioned to another person offlist, PC Quest (and CHIP) are media firms,
primarily - and running mirrors is not their forte. OTOH, ISPs, Portals etc do
have experience in this.  I have, in fact, succeeded in getting several people
to consider hosting mirrors of various aspects of linux ... one of these sounds
very promising, and am awaiting further details).

> > 2. PCQ gives some LUG bandwidth and a server (which is what Atul thought -
> > correct me if I am wrong)
 
> ...this, which is what was indirectly implied by Prakash (and no illwill
> intended in my response). Any sponsored facility is bound to raise
> political issues. As I said - I speak from experience.
 
I agree.  And the communication gap results from our apparently differing
interpretation of this statement, I fear.  I (and, doubtless, the original
poster) presumed #1.  You appear to have presumed #2.  After that, a lot of
personal stuff started filtering in from both sides to further obfuscate the
issue.

> A perfectly valid question from me too. Just because no one brought it up
> does not mean that the issue did not exist. I in fact referred to the
> linux.org.in battle for control as an example, because it is a classic
> case in point.
 
Agreed.  Which is why I have been advocating a hands-off policy all along

> You imply with "over inflated egos" that *I* was trying to get control of
> linux.org.in. My posts on this subject clearly said "register it in the
> name Linus Torvalds, with control by the community" (i.e. Linux India).

 Actually, it's like what you did earlier (with accusers plural).  Egos existed
on _all_ sides during that thread (or else, a flamewar can't just perpetrate
all by itself).

As for registering linux.org.in in Linus' name, I'd request you to take a look
at these whois outputs ...

$ whois -h whois.geektools.com linux.org.uk
   Domain Name: LINUX.ORG.UK
   Registered For: Alan Cox (alen.Cox@xxxxxxxxx)

Alan Cox, fine. 

[snip]

Now for linux.org

$ whois linux.org
Registrant:
Linux Online, Inc (LINUX-DOM)
   P.O. Box 1068
   Laurel, MD 20725-1068
   USA

   Domain Name: LINUX.ORG

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      McLagan, Michael  (MM141)  mmclagan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
      Innovative Logic Corp.
      P.O. Box 1068
      Laurel, MD 20725-1068
      (301)490-7124 (FAX) (301)490-7162

[snip]

Apparently, some corporate is the admin, tech and general contact, though an
incorporated entity called Linux Online Inc appears to be the owner

so, apparently, there is no hard and fast rule that the owner should not be a
corporate ...

> To go further on this - to this day, I do not have control over
> linux-india.org, nor have I asked for it or want it. The domain continues
> to be controlled by KD.
 
I know that KD controls it and you do the DNS / run the webmaster account etc

> My company sponsors web space for linux-india.org so that people have
> access to the site via a fast local server. This is a project that has not

Agreed.  Several offers were made (by Raju at Palcom, and by some ILUG-Bombay
members etc.  It was ultimately hosted at bangalore after you stated that
bangalore was a better place to host the server compared to bombay or Gurgaon.
This much I acknowledge.  [my memory might be failing me but this is what I
recollect from that thread]

> > You apparently hate being told that you may even be wrong, and reacted
> > vehemently (and even more rudely) to it, descending to personalities
> > yourself ...
 
> I was never told I was wrong. I was attacked tangentially in a completely
> unrelated fashion, for personal reasons, and with no substantiation
> whatsoever.
 
Oh please ... how unrelated was pointing out that an ugly ego-fueled flamewar
took place over linux.org.in?  In fact, I stated what you stated, but gave what
I felt was the reason for the entire flamewar.

> I do not have to apologise for putting you in my twit list on my server
> (the point that seems to have riled you the most), or for sending you
> ***private*** messages over a whole year asking you to stop jumping on
> people's bones on the lists.
 
Frankly, premium.exocore.com is your server and you are free to do what you
please with it, but all those private messages, on behalf of people who are
quite capable of speaking for themselves, riled me.  

If anyone had / has any beef with me, feel free to tell / flame me personally
either on or off the list.  Open invitation.  But who appointed you the grand
high netcop of the list, and asked you to step in each time to safeguard
someone from my perceived flames?

The last time you did that was in a case where someone was posting assorted
URLs (ftp sites, old linux archive hyperlinks etc) to LIH at the rate of two a
minute.  I requested him to set up a webpage and post the lot there instead of
bombing LIH.  You stepped in, and told me to stop.  I repeated my request to
you "please ask whoever has a beef with me to flame me directly instead of
doing it yourself", and cc'd Thaths asking for his opinion, as _he_, and not
you, is the list admin, part of whose role this is.

That's when you blew up and blocked half a dozen of my addresses (quite a few
of which had never been used on LIG is another matter) at your server.

> I am being accused of wrongdoing, of hijacking and possibly profiteering.
 
Profiteering?  No.  Wrongdoing? No.  Hijacking?  Yes, in the same sense that a
politician tries to win an election by cornering the most popularity.

> I have a right to seek proof from you and Rag00 (and any other accusers -
> feel free to hop in) supporting these allegations, or get exoneration from
> them and have these implied black marks against me, my company and my
> collegues removed in the eyes of our peers in the Linux community.
 
Again, please don't lump me with all your other "accusers".  My statements are
my own, and unique to me.  I don't share or advocate what Raghu posted about
your employees, and neither do I have any negative opinion of PC Quest or
RedHat.

> If you cannot provide such proof, you are implicitely stating that the
> allegations are false.
 
... and if you state it as so, it becomes true, I suppose?  Excellent.  "Your
word against mine" is what this boils down to.  As for the politicking - which
is the only thing about you in all these allegations which I feel is true, I'd
refer you back to the entire linux.org.in thread (and the choice of bangalore
over bombay, for example, which has far more bandwidth available than
bangalore).

> p.s.  "Central control over mirrors"????? Where did *that* come from?
> Whose suggestion was *that*??? Definitely not mine.
 
> The only ones who seem to have referred to it were you and Rag00. I simply
> said that companies (implied - who can afford it and have the abilities to
> manage it) should offer to provide this services (mirrors) and run them as
> a service for the community, but not *as* the community (because of the
> politics this would raise).
 
This entire thread seems to have resulted from the differing way in which I
(who was responding to Ruchir) and you have parsed Nagendra's statement:

1. PCQ does it itself (which is what I believe was being advocated - and what
Ruchir thought)

[and PCQ as representative of some generic corporate, I assume]

2. PCQ gives some LUG bandwidth and a server (which is what you thought)

This little communication gap, together with actions from both of us (for which
both of us dont see any need to apologize, apparently) seem to have started
this blasted thread.  Now, in the interest of saving the sanity of the other
members of this LUG, if there's anything you have to reply to me, can we take
this offlist please? (you might have to temporarily remove at least one of my
addresses from your access.db).

	--suresh

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian  <-->  mallet <at> efn <dot> org
EMail Sturmbannfuhrer, Lower Middle Class Unix Sysadmin