From: Shriram Krishnamurthi (sk@cs.brown.edu)
Subject: Re: endless onanism about semantics 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Date: 2004-09-01 21:50:01 PST 


Sigh.

I wrote:

> Bill Richter has explicitly said (privately, but given me permission
> to quote him) he has no stake in the Scheme community.  He is using
> the newsgroup as a medium to advance his career.  He doesn't care how
> many people he drives away.

Despite my phrase "has explicitly said", Brad Lucier chose to
interpret this as follows:

> This is total speculative bullshit.

(Note that of the five words in his response, not just one but three
were chosen for maximum rhetorical effect.)

Lucier could easily have asked me in private to justify my claims and,
if I couldn't, to have demanded I retract my public comments (or
denounced me here).  By instead writing inflammatory and pre-judicial
prose, he gives me little choice but to post the following.

It's very, very sad reading...  Take a deep breath first, read on,
take another deep breath, and hopefully you will agree that we'd be
best off ignoring the troll and getting back to Scheme.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Bill Richter <richter@math.northwestern.edu>
To: sk@cs.brown.edu
Subject: Re: interpreters & semantics
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 23:05:55 -0500

   Because I believe in maintaining a Scheme community, in helping
   newcomers, in guiding people through PLT Scheme, in answering
   tricky questions to which I took years to learn the answers -- to
   be a mentor to others as others were to me.  
   [...]
   Not to maul it with 250-line messages as if it were created to
   serve as my personal soapbox.

I'm outta work, with no prospects, and I figured that if I could teach
something to you guys, it might marginally improve my position.  And I
know I'm right, so there's no problem with ending up with egg on my
face after you guys prove I'm wrong.  But there's a big chance that
you guys won't listen to me, and then declare a victory, just like
last time, and then I typed a lot for nothing, but it's no worse than
that.  I don't have a stake in the Scheme community yet, so I don't
worry about any damage I'd do. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

(Notice that the three claims I made were (a) having no stake in the
community, (b) using the newsgroup to advance a career, and (c) not
caring about ill effects.  I trust I don't need to highlight the
corresponding phrases above.)

I may as well pre-empt the next flame:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Bill Richter <richter@math.northwestern.edu>
To: sk@cs.brown.edu
Subject: Re: interpreters & semantics
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 18:29:12 -0500

   > I don't have a stake in the Scheme community yet, so I don't
   > worry about any damage I'd do.

   If I had your level of principles, I'd post this quote directly to
   cls to let them know who they were dealing with.  But I respect the
   sanctity of private email.

Please feel free to share any private email from me.  I would think
this point would be so obvious that there's no need to mention it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that I did not trick the permission out of him; he gave not only
blanket permission, but also for the very quote I'm posting.  Even
then, I was not comfortable making this public (notice his message was
sent to me two weeks ago), but I feel like I've been left with little
choice here.

I hope all this dirty linen makes you happier, Brad.

Shriram