I've responded to Walter privately about this thread. You are correct, and I don't intend to post publically any more on this issue. I am *not* an "official DC spokesperson", as you note.
You previously announced that you weren't speaking for DC and anything more you said would be just hot air. As I'm re-reading this, I've just noticed Walter, having responded. Instead of treating whatever you say as "hot air", he's treating you as some sort of spokesperson for DC and drawing the obvious conclusion. That's dumb - he should know you are just full of hot air, since you are at least honest enough to admit it when you bungle (that is sincere). So I don't have time to polish this up and am leaving the rest unedited in the hope of catching him before he unsubscribes. It's the aggro version which I usually leave for 24 hours before re-writing.
I specifically asked for an "official" reply *not* to be given immediately.
Paul gave one immediately, half of which was bristling and the other half saying that I had a point. Last few messages I saw included him saying:
"To tell the truth, I'm mad at myself for responding strongly, particularly as our position on this is weak. The folks in zcommerce have been doing the work, not DC, so I didn't have much right to get torqued. And besides, his idea has merit."
I haven't (yet) seen messages from zcommerce developers saying they are pissed off. I have noticed one from someone associated with EMarket expressing interest in similar ideas as Walter about some things. That was also the situation a year ago when another one mentioned moving to ZPatterns to be able to support RDBMS access in response to a posting on OpenACS.
Walter's given some answers and I haven't seen an "official" response yet. I got the impression Walter *was* waving some money around. He's certainly in an industry that needs exactly what's been talked about For a CTO with 30 years experience in a low tech services industry that doesn't usually have CTO's, he has a remarkably deep understanding of why. The dotcoms don't need DC's consulting services - they need a miracle. Sectors like where Walter's coming from do. You are talking to him like you don't even know he's one of your customers and want him to be one of your open source developers. Have you even looked up where he's coming from?
It would be odd if Walter wasn't keen enough on getting the job done to help pay for it - and odd if he couldn't see possibilities of recovering the costs from others with similar needs. But he's obviously been doing some research and he *said* he wants to help pay for it while you are abusing him for not doing so, when I'm quite sure you really meant to be abusing me (which doesn't worry me in the least - at least you got it right - I am not offering to help pay for it).
Now he's pissed off - and that doesn't help either.
When starting off this thread I mentioned I'd be going on the warpath on the first anniversary of having raised the issue. That isn't until 6 June and I don't have time to get *really* pissed off until then. So give me a break, please.
If I wanted to get pissed off I'd have got pissed off at being told to read Eric Raymond on what open source is about - but I managed to just ignore it. The only reason I can't just ignore you is because you insist on announcing what you believe I think.
If occurs to me that you might be doing that with respect to DC too.
If an "official decision" has been taken and you've been told to deliver the news the way you are, please say so. Otherwise, please take Walter's suggestion to let it go over the long weekend (and Walter, please take your own suggestion too). Sheesh I'm a *professional agitator* by trade - my role in this sort of thing is to beat CEO's around the head with clubs until they get angry enough to start looking for arguments to prove I'm wrong and they are right, after which I can just move on because they aren't stupid and know what to do when they can't come up with those arguments. It doesn't win friends, but it does influence people. I just don't have *time* to be telling junior staffers not to piss of the CTO of one of their customer's. So many heads to beat,... so little time (sigh ;-)