Ian C. Blenke wrote:
> Sadly, I tend to agree with Andrew. Credit where credit is due. If the
> individuals were truely acting as individuals, and not as members of
> SLUG, then I might understand the unwillingness to mention SLUG in the
> article. But to solicit support through SLUG and then not mention it in
> the resulting article might be considered rather rude.
>
Yes it's rude. But if the children get the benefit of the technology,
the school system gets the benefit of the cost savings, and the
community (not SLUG, the greater community) gets good press, then the
effort has paid-off handsomely. We can choose to dislike David for his
attitudes and practices, but he did a good thing (even if for the wrong
reasons). Most of us hackers aren't inclined to go looking for
opportunities like the one that David found, and we aren't willing to do
the people-skills-intensive BS that one has to do to get such an
initiative approved (I have been told before that schools are very hard
to work with.)
Lacking the hacker ethic (as defined by ESR), David probably doesn't see
what he did as wrong (kinda like us hackers committing ~50 faux-pas at
the average cocktail party (for you hard-core hackers: a cocktail party
is a *purely* social occasion (no attempt to accomplish anything))).
Shun him if you like, but don't kick him too hard; he doesn't know any
better.
--ronan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 18:38:23 EDT