After reading Andrew’s post a number of times, and reading various comments on it, I gotta say, yes, it appears that we are experiencing two different cities. It’s amazing to me how people can experience the same things, and come away from them with such different impressions.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I may be misunderstanding what Andrew is saying. I have a hard time differentiating between when he is saying something sarcastically, and thus it’s the opposite of what he thinks, and when he’s saying what he really thinks, and it only seems sarcastic because … um … well, I’m not sure.

For example, when Andrew proposed, and set up, the Apache wiki, nobody claimed, for example, that it would destroy the community, that the sky would fall, or that we would get sued out of existence. There was concern that things would be put there that would be embarassing and unsavory. I don’t recal anyone saying we’d get sued for this. I could, of course, be wrong, but it seemed that most of the vitriol in the discussion came from hyperbole on Andrew’s part, rather than from actual remarks made.

But, as I progress through the article, I find myself wondering if we are indeed talking about the same ASF. It’s sad that his experience has been so different from mine.

But when I got to the bit about Lion Kimbro, I found myself frustrated and baffled. Who is this guy? The links go nowhere. Does he want to participate in the HTTPd documentation project? What do these cryptic remarks about wikis have to do with anything at all? And did Andrew really send this guy such a snide, counterproductive remark, engineered to scare him off? Why would he have done that?

I gotta say, Andrew, if you feel ostracised, it has nothing to do with the fact that you are associated with JBoss, and everything to do with the fact that you always feel the need to be so amazingly beligerent in your attacks of things, and come across as so intent to frame yourself as the trodden-down underdog.

I found almost every one of your complaints to be either grossly overstated, or so completely off target as to be laughable. Your complaints about the incubator are aimed at a previous incarnation of it, and not what it has evolved into. Your claims about private mailing lists are simply false. And chasing off a potential contributor to the HTTPd documentation project is really not appreciated.

I have tried, repeatedly, to understand where you are coming from, to sympathize with your complaints, and to find the constructive criticism lurking far, far beneath the surface of your vitriolic ranting. I’m starting to think that I may have wasted my time.