[WFS-India] The original 'sin' on a mailing list

[Indranil Das Gupta]

Dear all,

I admit to having committed a fairly grave $subject. Apologies to the
group for that. However, there has to be a limit to the level of
bullshit and misbehavior, especially when it comes directly from the
list admin.

I'll explain that in a moment.

My wife Stephanie was added to the mailing list without asking her,
even once, if she wanted to be mailing list.  No matter how great the
effort and how relevant my wife's work with KDE may be, it does not
justify spamming. No. there was no private email, no invite to join,
no nothing! One fine day, she starts receiving these mails from
wfs-india m/l.

As the founder member of Indo-CAUCE (antispam organisation against UBE
and UCE), I know enough how to take down such offenders. Further IT
Act w/Amendment 2008 gives enough legal teeth to do that. However, we
both decided not to take any such offensive stand, even though we had
a fair idea who had added her. The logic was simple, innocent others
would unnecessarily suffer for the misbehavior of someone who should
have know better. Since then several of the founders have informed me
in private that it was Mani who did this mischief.

For all the loud proclamation of being against bigotry, the
non-technical discussions on this list have have had oodles of that.
The current event on he website states that there was 'various
hilarious discussions' and 'coordination issues'. If disagreement in a
public debate is to be termed as 'hilarious', with the assumed
endorsement of the founders, i do not know what do people mean when
they say they are against 'denigration' and 'bigotry'.

Lets take another case in point. In my earlier draft of the guidelines
I had written -

<quote>
Bigotry:  Denigration or display of bigotry, even as off-colour jokes
towards any particular community,  group, gender or country on the
list are not welcome. For example,  blond jokes, sardar jokes or
accusing a member that you disagree with as 'acting like a male
chauvinist pigs' equally have no place and space on this list.
</quote>

This was erased out by Mani as an obvious example of unsuitable text
and I was fine with that.

Why is it that it is Mani who goes on writes - "the rat of rat race is
different from the nun of a religion." [2].

Who is the bigot here?

FWIW, Swami Vidyanathananda aka Mahan Maharaj, a monk with RamaKrishna
Mission (Mahan Mitra, PhD in his previous 'avataar') is the 2011
recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award for Mathematical Sciences
[3]

Are *only* atheists are entitled to FOSS? What is wrong with being a
"nun" or a 'monk' if it is someone's personal choice? What is wrong
with religious beliefs and practices as long they do not impinge on
others' right to believe otherwise

Yes, none of the above absolves me for breaching my personal code and
the basic premise of m/l etiquette and for that I'm truly sorry.


References
==========
[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/wfs-india@lists.openhatch.org/msg00190.html
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/wfs-india@lists.openhatch.org/msg00176.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahan_Mj

regards
-indranil das gupta
-- 
Indranil Das Gupta

Phone : +91-98300-20971
Blog    : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog
IRC      : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net
Twitter : indradg

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