Lodahl's blog: Answer to Jesper Lund Stocholm

15 December 2007

Answer to Jesper Lund Stocholm

Thank you to Jesper Lund Stocholm for his comment on this post http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/inquirer-has-coment-on-this.html

And thank you Jesper for correcting me when I misunderstand the information from the National IT- and Tele Agency. The thing is that I didn't participate in either of the two conferences. As a unpaid volunteer, I can't join all the meetings and conferences that takes place during daytime. I have a job to take care of. This is also the reason for not being so active on the blog over the last few months. I'm sorry if this is disappointing you Jesper, but that is how it is. Unfortunately this now ends up in you criticizing me for who I am and what I don't do.

These are some of the basic rules in open source communities:

  • Don't put criticism to what people don't do, only to what they do
  • Only put criticism to the actual work, not to th persons who did it
  • respect other people even if you don't share your own opinion

I kindly ask you use another tone in the debate in the future, thanks.

The reason for the two posts on my blog http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/groklaw-denmark-pretends-msooxml-is.html and http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/inquirer-has-coment-on-this.html is that I have seen these international reflections to the situation in Denmark. The international press probably don't read Danish, so I try to keep them up to date with the situation. And yes, this is the situation as it looks from my point of view. I'm sure that someone else will talk about the same issue from other points of views.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Leif,

You must clearly be reading the comment of someone else - because even after reading my comment for three times, I cannot see where I am attacking you as a person. I am critizising what you say - or more correctly - what you don't say. You then tell me how to do things as in "open source communities" where you supposedly do not critizise things you don't do but only the things you do.

You are kiddin', right?

If I submit some code to e.g. OpenOffice.org that does not have proper exception-handling or is not using the agreed-upon style of coding ... I will not get critizised for my bad code-quality - simply because you won't critizise me for what I don't do?

Leif, I am critizising you exactly for this - bad quality in your remarks. Your conclusion is

The individual authority will be able to reject following the resolution, because it must be finacial neutral. So anything that costs money is a possible reason for not implementing open standards.

My conclusion is, that the resolution isn't worth the paper.


And I am saying to you, that your conclusion is wrong - and it is wrong because you have not made the effort to get the facts straight - or in the previous analogy - have not implemented proper exception handling.

If you were someone like me, i.e. "just bloggin' a bit on version2.dk", the consequences would not so grimm and I would not "come after you" the way I do. But, Leif, you are not a no-body in this debate. You really are the "go-to guy" in Denmark and you blog appears on countless blogrolls arround the anti-OOXML-community and you are referenced in blogentries on a global scale. That's why it is important to keep your facts straight and that is why I hold you to a higher standard than almost anyone else (this is really a compliment :o), Leif ).

You say that you can't possibly have all information since you are not paid for this, but I really think it is a bad excuse. I don't get paid for most of the work I do either and I attended the konference in Copenhagen on my day off (seriously beaten by jetlag after returning from Kyoto). I attended it because I think it is important to have as much information as possible.

People try to route information through me on a regular basis - maybe they think I have some credibility. I assume you experience the same. However, I always confirm the information before I send it along. Sometimes it takes several hours and phone-calls and emails to do this - but it is my oponion that it would undermine my work, if I just passed along wrong information or just wrote something without confirming it first. I am sure you feel the same way.

You say that you try to keep the outside world informed on the Danish process, and I salute you for this - Denmark is in many respects ahead of most of the world when it comes to application of these open standards, so it is important that the rest of the world knows about it. I just kindly ask you not to route wrong information to them.

Pheew ... this ended up as a rather long reply, but your post really made me think - I hope it is ok.

PS: My surname - as written in the title of the post - it without 'k'.

:o)

Jesper Lund Stocholm
idippedut.dk