Plagiarism from msn-pecan

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 1:42 AM, Peter Lawler<bleeter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I tried to comment on your blog, but for whatever reason it didn't go
>>> through (I tried posting again and it detected double post, so it
>>> probably got to the moderation queue), maybe you only want people to
>>> hear your side of the story anyway?
>
>>Yeah right, how about you don't let your imagination fly and go for
>>the most reasonable explanation: it was detected as spam. Thanks for
>>pointing that out, I've accepted the comment.
>
> 'for whatever reason ..., maybe ...'
>
> It's clear that khc wasn't wholly suggesting the censorship possibility.

He didn't suggest any other possibility either, which makes the
comment negatively charged.

>>Did you know the idea would work? How? And why didn't you mentioned it
> in the bug report?
> Yeah right, how about you don't let your imagination fly and go for the most
> reasonable explanation: maybe it was something called 'intuition'. And as
> far as I know there is no requirement to mention the reasoning. Desirable,
> maybe. Required, no. One's always been able to ask after the event, if needs
> be. Best I can tell, the only reason to ask after the event in this case is
> due to your plagiarism and theft claim - a claim that you now seem to be
> stepping away from.

How exactly am I letting my imagination fly? I am not even suggesting
*anything*, I'm just asking questions (in this particular mail). Since
khc has not answered my questions I'm not stepping away from my claim.

There's never a requirement to act ethically, it's always something
merely desirable.

>>As you can see from the story people were complaining in #pidgin, and
>>Pidgin developers didn't acknowledge it as a problem, which points out
>>that if you had that knowledge, you didn't bother to share it with
>>anybody. Convenient.
> Lots of intuitive untested fixes have gone in to Pidgin over the years. What
> is convenient is that this fix related to something you have an interest in,
> convenient that you can make unfounded slanderous, libellous and/or
> defamatory allegations.

Yes, I'm interested on this because:
a) the bug has more than 6 years
b) it affects many users, it's very annoying, and it's hard to
reproduce reliably
c) it was a great coincidence that it was fixed one week after msn-pecan
d) we (not just me) spent a considerable amount of time investigating
and validating
e) the previous "intuitive fix" was clearly labeled as such, and the
bug was not closed, but now it was labeled as a definitive fix with no
explanation at all

>>You have convinced me that you came up with the idea. You haven't
>>explained how you *knew* it was going to work.
> You seem to be seriously suggesting that khc is not allowed to make
> intuitive guesses. Further, you're seeming to insist that if anyone makes
> any kind of change to the msn prpl, they have to fully explain it to you
> before, or during the commit, on the off-chance that msn-pecan may have a
> similar change.

You are putting words in khc's mouth and making assumptions. I've
never heard khc answer my questions, and quite frankly the evidence
clearly suggests he had no idea the issue was going to be fixed until
he saw our validation.

> You continue refuse to have anything to do with the default msn prpl
> directly, apart from telling pidgin users to not use it, or making
> slanderous/libellous/defamatory comments. Given all the above, your stepping
> back from the theft claim and the possibility that khc made an intuitive
> guess, I cannot believe that you can't see why your position is a crock. You
> seem to be an intelligent person. All things considered, is it really any
> wonder that you've been treated with the contempt you've received?
> </rhetorical>

Refuse to have anything to do with the default msn prpl? I freaking
wrote it. Here is an analysis of the current (2.4.7) code:
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/who-wrote-pidgins-msn-not-who-you-think/

The top contributors who's lines of code are still used:
felipec: 42%
qulogic: 18%
chipx86: 10%
khc: 7%
typ0: 5%
mayuan: 5%
other: 13%

I'm not stepping away from my claim. I accept that khc had the same
idea -- just like many other people before him -- but just like
everybody else, he didn't make the commit until he knew the idea would
work -- as evident in the commit message --, now the question remains
open: How did he know? The evidence points out that it was because of
msn-pecan's work, and although I'm open to other possibilities, that's
where my bet is.

-- 
Felipe Contreras