# Apologies for the massive and pointless thread

2 messages from 2008-01-22 to 2008-01-22. Participants: Kevin Ballard, David Kastrup.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/11698

## Kevin Ballard, 2008-01-22 04:55

Subject: Apologies for the massive and pointless thread
Message-ID: <00C73A5A-D81D-41F5-A57D-BD84A1065C1B@sb.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/00C73A5A-D81D-41F5-A57D-BD84A1065C1B%40sb.org

```
I want to apologize for the recent thread entitled "git on MacOSX and  
files with decomposed utf-8 file names". I also want to try and  
explain myself a little. I realize I was wrong in my original post,  
which was motivated out of offense at having my OS of choice insulted  
for a design decision. My original goal was to try and get people to  
understand that both approaches (HFS+ vs basically every other  
filesystem) are valid, and they accomplish different goals.  
Unfortunately, my argument seems to have been completely lost in the  
noise, and everybody ended up with some idea of what my argument was  
that was completely invalid. Given the prevalence of this mistaken  
idea, I am forced to admit I must have been at fault in describing my  
viewpoint, but the fact still stands that most of what everybody was  
arguing against was not, in fact, my viewpoint.

I am a stubborn man, as I believe most of you are. When someone argues  
against a mistakenly-attributed viewpoint, I feel compelled to correct  
their belief as to what my viewpoint really is. I realize this is  
pretty much hopeless, and I only served to clutter the list. However,  
the same can be said about most of the replies to me.

Eventually I realized my mistake, and attempted to steer the thread  
towards discussion on potential solutions. Unfortunately, nobody  
seemed to want to follow me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, people  
had already invested too much into telling me why I was wrong. But I  
do think it was a missed opportunity to get some real work done. And  
no, I was not, nor was I ever, asking people to write code for me. I  
was asking for a discussion on potential solutions, since you all know  
far more than I do about how git works, and thus you are much better  
suited towards evaluating potential solutions than I am. I'm sorry if  
I did not make my desires clear enough.

Despite what you may think, I did learn things in that thread. I  
sincerely hope this situation won't preclude my involvement in the git  
project and community in the future. I've only been using git a short  
time but I've learned a lot in that time, and I'd like to help the  
project to succeed.

So once again, I am very sorry for what I have caused here.

-Kevin Ballard

-- 
Kevin Ballard
http://kevin.sb.org
kevin@sb.org
http://www.tildesoft.com



```

## David Kastrup, 2008-01-22 07:57

Subject: Re: Apologies for the massive and pointless thread
Message-ID: <8563xm47ix.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/8563xm47ix.fsf%40lola.goethe.zz
In-Reply-To: <00C73A5A-D81D-41F5-A57D-BD84A1065C1B@sb.org>

```
Kevin Ballard <kevin@sb.org> writes:

> I want to apologize for the recent thread entitled "git on MacOSX and
> files with decomposed utf-8 file names".

[...]

> Unfortunately, my argument seems to have been completely lost in the
> noise, and everybody ended up with some idea of what my argument was
> that was completely invalid.

You still consider everybody who does not share your point of view an
idiot.  And telling people that is not going to change their mind.  You
need to come up with an argument that convinces anybody, and "the
designers are smart people, they must have thought something smart even
though I don't actually get it myself" does not convince anybody.  And
that has been your main argument.

And you consider others dense for not accepting it?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

```
