Re: can someone please explain what this blog tagging this is all about?

On Jan 19, 9:46 pm, Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bor..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> hjr.pyth..._at_gmail.com wrote:
>
> > There's no commitment. Only a mutual obligation to respect each other.
> > The Oracle community broke that deal.
>
> No - some members broke "the deal", perhaps, if any.
> I regard myself part of the Oracle community, and I cannot
> remember having done anything to put you off.

Really, I'm doing my best to end this thread and my contributions here! But if you keep on making points like these, I feel obliged to reply.

And by way of reply on this occasion, I am just going to say: look around you. This very thread is eloquent on your "having done something to put me off", though I don't see or feel it in quite those personal terms. "Get over it and visit another blog aggregator" was, I think, your particular brand of pithy comment earlier in the piece, after all.

You are, of course, entitled to that view. And I am equally reasonably (I think) entitled to interpret that as, at best, straight acquiescence in the vandalism perpetrated by others and which, to me, constitutes a 'deal breaker'.

> No generalization, please! You yourself have always been
> very exact with words.

And on this occasion, too. Naturally, when one speaks of an aggregated entity like "community" or "society", there is always the trivial objection that specific individuals might have felt or acted differently. That neither Tom Kyte nor Jonathan Lewis played tag is a simple enough demonstration that the aggregate doesn't capture every individual nuance possible. So much is, frankly, obvious: it is the root of Thatcher's, 'There's no such thing as society just lots of individuals' claim, after all.

Nevertheless, in so far as it's possible to talk about an Oracle community at all, the vast majority of that community took a view on the chain letter "game" that I take to be a breach of the mutual obligation of consideration and respect that was the basis for my making my work available. If you or some other reader wishes to make some sort of mental reservation after the fact along the lines, "But that didn't include me", then you are free to do so. Just so long as you realise that from where I'm sitting, there are no such distinctions to be drawn.

Now: I really don't want to keep discussing this further here, and we've already had one complaint that it's all horribly off-topic. If you wish to elaborate or get me to elaborate on something here, please email me. Received on Sat Jan 19 2008 - 05:51:23 CST