[Toybox] Fw: Re: Dude.

[Rob Landley]

On 5/4/24 11:34, Oliver Webb via Toybox wrote:
> (Rob wants this on the list anyways, and he hasn't CC:-ed it.

If I want to send a message to the list, I'm capable of doing so.

As I said in the postscript I don't _object_ to it being on the list (in an "I
say the same things in public as in private" way), and I did lament that I'd
spent half a work day composing several thousand words to just one person rather
than as a general resource I could refer back to in future or maybe get a FAQ
entry out of.

But thinking about it after the fact (when I got your reply), I honestly didn't
expect other people on the list to be interested beyond maybe closure. It's
potentially useful to know that the guy who wrote about half of all messages to
the list last month (35/76 in the web archive) might stop.

>  I want it on the list for multiple reasons.

Or might not.

Reading lots of text is _work_. I reference "pascal's apology" a lot (him being
sorry for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short
one), because people try to _read_ this stuff. (Or worse, they stop trying.) I
try to keep the signal to noise ratio up, and that means editing it DOWN. Which
takes time and energy. (This reply is uncomfortably rambly, but I've already
spent a day away from the keyboard going "I have to coherently reply to this"
and not wanting to.)

> (I gave him permission
> to cc it in a reply email I intend to forward to the list))

And I didn't, so you put words in my mouth again about what I "want".

This thread doesn't advance the project, and I doubt this exchange offers much
insight into _my_ behavior. I've been posting publicly for a quarter century on
linux-kernel and busybox and uclibc and toybox and j-core and elsewhere. I've
maintained _this_ project for 17 years. I've made policy statements about it in
design.html and the faq and on the list and in my blog (and twitter and mastodon
and livejournal and talks on youtube and mp3 recorded panels from penguicon and
linucon and heck, you can pull my old comments out of slashdot and lwn.net if
you try). There's even a code of conduct which HIGHLY IRONICALLY was originally
copied from twitter's. (No really:
https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/bc308973ffb6) People already have
_plenty_ of rope to hang me with if they decide they need a reason.

I care about the _code_. what's best for the _project_. I also care about
documentation, but the problem is usually "too much" and needing to boil it down
and put it somewhere obvious where it's indexed and people can easily find it.

I'm trying NOT to make it about me. I'm very fiddly about the work, sometimes
trying (and failing) to do the programming equivalent of Faberge Eggs, and the
perfect can be the enemy of the good. But that's what distinguishes this project
from the half-dozen other implementations of the same stuff already out there.

That said, you pointed me at a message where you'd asked an actual question:

> > > because I've been trying to run gcc under mkroot and a response to
> > > http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2024-April/030334.html
> > > would've been helpful.
>
> Hadn't seen it. It got, quite literally, lost in the noise.

And I'd started replying to that (before you sent this to the list), and stopped
because it was too long and I needed to edit it down. I should just press "send"
on the ramble and move on to the next todo item. (Top of stack is fixing unshare
I think...)

Rob