N.B. Bowerbirds first post on gutvol-p on 11/06/03 is attached below in its full glory for the readers convenience.
bowerbird 11/06/03 it reminds me that i firmly believe us users should file a class-action lawsuit against you computer overlords
bowerbird 10/14/04 is this kind of name-calling condoned on this listserve?
Bowerbird started name-calling in his very first post and now he is soooo sensitive about it. In good ol' usenet tradition, he who dishes out freely must also be able to pocket graciously, but, of course, this applies to other people, not to Bowerbird himself. Also he got himself kicked out from at least one newsgroup (ask Jon Noring for details) and was at one point set under moderator supervision on this list. (Why has this changed? Have some bits got lost in the move to pglaf.org?)
bowerbird 11/06/03 this isn't flame-bait, 'cause i ain't even gonna argue with ya. i've concluded it's a waste of my time to even _discuss_ x.m.l.
Since then, Bowerbird has done nothing else than _cuss_ XML, that is: belittle the XML language and the people who are using it. He concluded that he'd rather waste _other_ people's time than his own. If Bowerbird was really interested in establishing an alternative to XML markup, he would have fired up emacs and started coding his reader. In a month or two he would have shown us the first prototype. If the thing really was heaps better than XML, we would have acclaimed him and considered changing the DP formatting rules to his format. Of course, flamewars being his favorite pastime, he got nowhere with his reader. Furthermore he wastes the time of other volunteers and newcomers to this mailing list by luring them into yet another endless discussion of the exact same topic we already had plenty before. (The topic being: the self-celebration of His Royal Highness Bowerbird.)
bowerbird 11/06/03 you're already over-budget and severely behind-schedule [...] i have written such a program, and i'll have a beta version soon.
Bowerbird first announced his reader on 02/14/03.
-- for immediate release -- [...] bowerbird intelligentleman announces an open-source project geared toward creating an o.e.b. "presentation system", i.e., a cross-platform reader-program that will allow users to read o.e.b files. [...] bowerbird further indicated that he is fully confident that the effort would bear fruit quickly, since he has previously programmed a wide variety of electronic-book applications.
http://www.gnutemberg.org/pipermail/libergnu.mbox/libergnu.mbox That was 20 months ago. Since then we saw a lot of announcements but never a line of source code. (Note: he says "Open Source" in his press release, and he also says OEB, which is an XML application.) If Bowerbird was in good faith, he'd published some source code immediately after his announcement to have people review it and comment on it. As it stands, nobody has ever seen one single line of his alleged mother of all readers. (All we did see were some `screenshots' probably done with Microsoft Paint.)
bowerbird 11/06/03 so you better know i'm prepared to deliver.
I defy Bowerbird to publish the source code of what he has done in 20+ months of development. Hic Rhodus, Bowerbird, hic salta! Prove to us that you can build a better reader. Don't give us any of your lame excuses but deliver now or be silent forever. (Lame excuses we already had include: I won't show you because you are so nasty.)
bowerbird 11/06/03 in a phrase, it's time to put up or shut up.
Of course, this rule again applies to other people, not to Bowerbird himself: he did not put up and never will shut up. Conclusion: Bowerbird is a kook (def: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/K/kook.html ) who knowingly wastes the time of volunteers who could otherwise do many useful things for PG. And he has got nothing to show for it. And now, for the enlightenment of the newcomers, and for the entertainment of those of us who know how hard Bowerbird has been working and how much he has achieved in this short year, Bowerbirds posting debut on gutvol-p of nearly a year ago ... unabridged.
i've been writing some apps for project gutenberg, so i subscribed to this listserve this evening, and i went back and read all the posts for a full year, just to get the flavor of what has gone on here...
boy, what a waste of time... :+)
it reminds me that i firmly believe us users should file a class-action lawsuit against you computer overlords for all the time and trouble you have dragged us through in trying to transition us to x.m.l.
you're already over-budget and severely behind-schedule in delivering on the things x.m.l. was supposed to bring us, and we haven't seen even a fraction of the promised benefits.
this isn't flame-bait, 'cause i ain't even gonna argue with ya. i've concluded it's a waste of my time to even _discuss_ x.m.l.
there are 10,000 e-texts in the project gutenberg library -- 4,000 more than there were when you had your last flamewar -- so you've got lots of opportunity to show the value of x.m.l., just get to work, and let us know when you're done doing markup.
heck, don't even bother to contact us then, just go right to work making some x.m.l.-savvy _viewer-programs_ for us end-users, because it doesn't do us one bit of good to have marked-up files if we don't have any viewers that can make use of that mark-up.
in a phrase, it's time to put up or shut up.
and yes, i realize you'll throw that challenge right back at me, so you better know i'm prepared to deliver.
i say we don't need much "markup" -- sometimes _none_ -- to turn project gutenberg's plain-ascii e-text files into a slick electronic-book experience for end-users, if we only put a little bit of intelligence into an e-book viewer-program.
i have written such a program, and i'll have a beta version soon. so i hope i've pissed you off, because i _like_ hostile beta-testers; i trust them to step past the polite praise and tell me what's wrong.
that's enough for now, i gotta get back to work. and so do you...
-bowerbird
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org