Free Speech

[swamp]

And jwocky stays?

[SkyBoat]

@Swamp--

Yes. JWocky stays. Israel, JWocky and I started Free Flight, Free Speech. Vincent joined us several months later as a moderator. There's a long history to that I won't go into here. You can read it in another part of the forum as it unfolded in real time.

What is important to understand this week, Swamp, is that although the bow was bent to the straining point, it didn't break. I'm certain the leaders in the other forum were close to popping their champagne bottles, cheering at the demise of Free Flight, because they predicted it would happen. They were not shy in telling us we would never survive a year or our first big crisis, that we were too "everything wrong" to not utterly fail.

Sorry, Curt and Thorsten. You guys never did understand the sheer grit and determination we have to make this work.

Sure, there are a few scrapes and bruises, but we are still talking to each other. Still kind of like each other. We are still committed to the same idea and ideals we expressed when we started Free Flight Free Speech and laid out a new vision for a better FlightGear. None of that has changed. Not on any of our parts.

We are still committed to the Bazaar paradigm of Open Source software development. If you don't recognize that reference, I am referring to Eric S. Raymond's seminal book on Open Source, titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Raymond writes,

Freedom is good.
Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by -- and given the way autoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, let it smother you and other hackers.
This isn't the same as fighting all authority. Children need to be guided and criminals restrained. A hacker may agree to accept some kinds of authority in order to get something he wants more than the time he spends following orders. But that's a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of personal surrender authoritarians want is not an offer.)

(You can buy this as an e-book on Amazon's Kindle; it's a read every would-be hacker should have.)

It was very much in Raymond's spirit that led Israel, JWocky and me to start Free Flight. Every day has been an experiment. Some days the experiment goes in a way ya just don't anticipate. But because we were all committed to the idea of freedom in Free Flight, we kept talking, communicating, and were able to restructure ourselves and sufficiently resolve our issues that we are keeping the place open.

FlightGear still needs a user forum where the Bazaar of flightsim ideas can flourish and be crafted and debated without fear of retribution or censorship. Frankly, you cannot do that on the other forum. We have the Club of the Banned as living proof of that!

We as the Admin team will continue to be about as imperfect as any four people could be. That is the one guarantee I can give you, beyond the fact that "Freedom is good!"

Skyboat

[jwocky]

Yep, I stay. However, as I wrote, I pull a bit out of daily admin stuff to keep a bit more of my time for tinkering and researching. Don't get me wrong, a real hacker attack for example would still land on my desk, for example, and I am never far away, still as admin, but there are also some interesting technical subjects for me and now, since the USA Tour comes to an end, I maybe find a bit more opportunity to look into things, I had in the past to ignore, maybe for tool building as well. The list of things, I would like to do on a technical level appears at this point sheer endless ... see, and now I get carried away by the tinkering stuff.
There are also some other things, another crazy idea to bring FG in quality nearer to systems like FSX. Not everything will be possible, but maybe we can work up the quality of the planes a little after we just made a nice step forward with scenery. But that will also need to be organized. Soooo, lots of work ahead.

[==bomber==]

We as the Admin team will continue to be about as imperfect as any four people could be. That is the one guarantee I can give you, beyond the fact that "Freedom is good!"

[cough cough] that'll be 5 people then ?

[SkyBoat]

Yes, make that five. I'm sorry I didn't include you, but I wasn't sure of your status when I wrote the post. So, welcome aboard ==bomber==!

[KL-666]

- I made a sig directed at certain people
- Some other people saw the sig after this thread was created
- Some of those other people were bothered by the sig
- So I changed the sig

Well, at least the objective of the first post has been reached. Not per se to remove the signature, but to have people reflect about such behaviour. Even though unfortunately from the second post on it had to go off topic immediately, still thoughts have been made.

Kind regards, Vincent

[swamp]

Well may we put this chapter to an end and move to the next...

[Octal450]

I disagree.
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=101

It appears we have another one of "them"

[swamp]

Well he has done nothing yet. This is something that will always be around where ever you go in life. When you go to work etc. Run from nothing. Except maybe a lion. A lion will freaking kill you.

[KL-666]

Hi It0uchpods,

I see exactly the same signature there as has been spoken of here. So i suppose this matter has been discussed already. I hope that some arguments people gave here can convince him to do something about it.

As this is a public forum without rules (yet), it is important that everyone takes a bit more responsibility for their actions themselves, than usual. And realize that some things not only harm themselves, but the entire community.

Btw, I find it a strange development that these days people start to discuss from within their signature.

Kind regards, Vincent