More on manuals plus rescue

[Jason Scott]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 4:28 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:

> On 8/20/15 10:48 AM, Jason Scott wrote:
>
> I'll answer the questions about the Internet Archive's presenting of
>> bitsavers when I calm down
>>
>
> You're right. This is the last post I'm going to make on this. What
> happened
> has happened, I'm not happy the way IA has presented my work, but there
> isn't
> anything I can really do about it. I'll keep uploading new work, and
> hopefully
> the documentation with survive in some form, which was the whole point for
> doing
> it in the first place.
>

And I'll make this the last post that I do in this mailing list on this
subject. These poor people don't need to see this, this ridiculous "feud"
which is basically you disagreeing with how I imported documents into the
IA's system, and then stewing on it, in stone cold silence, for years and
years, and then killing hell-knows-how-many projects we could have
collaborated on because you "hate" me. But I'm setting the record straight
and I'm making it clear what's going on here.

A long time ago, I mirrored bitsavers at textfiles.com. It's been working
fine, with the occasional rsync hiccup, all the years hence. Every week,
incredible new documents come out from your work.

In the beginning, you gave a very distinct impression, in person and in
e-mail, that you were not 100% comfortable being attributed directly as
"the guy" who was doing the scans. I remember this clearly. You also saw
the amount of items that archive.org was putting up, in various realms, and
additionally have sat in a room with me in 2013, in which you saw me give a
very long, very raucous speech about the importance of the work being done,
and we spent at least 30 minutes or more having one-on-one conversations
about techniques in scanning. Apparently you did this while hating me. Not
once did you bring up anything resembling animosity. Not once did you
indicate you weren't happy with the IA approach (for example, I'm going to
make sure it doesn't call itself a "mirror" and will from now on be called
a "collection", a distinction 8 people care about but which is
near-instantaneous for me to do). That you would spend two whole days with
me at PRESERVING.EXE and not bring up, informally or at any point, your
issues with the Bitsavers collection, is just shocking.

In blindness, I'm going to make some changes/modifications to the IA
system, which may be inadequate in your made-up metrics that I had no idea
about. But I'll do them, because in some small way I hope it moves towards
it being slightly less offensive to the realms you have said so far on this
list, that is, accessibility and attribution.

But to a greater good and realm: How many of these feuds do you have going
on? How many one-sided wars are you waging? How many people are walking the
earth thinking the world of you and the work you do and they have failed to
play the internal hopscotch game of failure you're laying on them? Do I
have to be the guy that asks this? It appears that our relationship is
destroyed forever, from what I glean from your words on here. But if I can
maybe spite you to reach out, to drop a note, to send a damned sentence to
someone else you "hate" to have them fix the thing you're letting annoy
you, so be it.

I honestly love you and the work you do, Al. Come on.