Pseudonyms (was Re: [TriLUG] SCO Conference Call)

Ed Hill ed at eh3.com
Wed Aug 6 13:51:12 EDT 2003


On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 22:53, Mike Johnson wrote:
> Ed Hill [ed at eh3.com] wrote:
> 
> > ps - And Tanner has an excellent point.  Isn't it curious that 
> >      you who are trying to make some (ill-defined?) point about 
> >      code ownership and copyright attribution fail to provide 
> >      an identity?
> 
> No, he doesn't have an excellent point.  How does his identity have
> anything to do with his arguments?  One does not need to include
> their phone number, address, and social security number to be permitted
> to offer their opinion on some random topic.  There are plenty of people
> on this list (and plenty of other lists) who don't paste their real name
> all over the place.  Does that make their opinion somehow less valuable?
> No.  It doesn't.
> 
> So please, if you have a beef with the content, cool.  There's no need
> to attack the fact that they haven't presented their drivers license to
> you.


Yes, Mike, he certainly does have a point.  And you're missing it.

In a discussion where the topic is largely *about* attribution (here,
the pedigree of source code), theres nothing off-topic or inappropriate
about me raising broader issues of identity.  And theres nothing wrong
with me making references to "those present" in order to provide
concrete examples.

As long as I'm (reasonably) on-topic and avoiding the ugliness of
profanity (etc.) you have no grounds to tell me what I can or can't tie
into the discussion.


So back to my point: as with any information, one should always consider
the source.

[Bad pun intended.]

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Room 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
            Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
email:   eh3 at mit.edu,  ed at eh3.com
URL:     http://web.mit.edu/eh3/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464
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