[pp.int.general] So Piratpartiet does not care about Pirate Manifesto?

[Valentin Villenave]

2008/8/23 Carlos Ayala <aiarakoa at yahoo.es>:

> So, RIck, stop now torpedoing the Pirate Manifesto -defamating PIRATA in the
> process- and start contributing to it. Regards,

I know I'm not in a good place to take part in this discussion, but if
I may just throw in a word of peace...

Carlos, I am aware that none of the French Pirates has been
contributing to the Manifesto for the past months, and I sincerely
feel terrible about it, since the Manifesto is one of the most
interesting and exciting projects we have at the moment. You obviously
have spent much time and energy in it, as well as in inviting and
encouraging us folks to take part in its writing; however you must
keep in mind that many of us have to face other issues in our national
parties and in our personal or professional lives.

Please, please keep that in mind, and do not think that lack of
participation has to mean a lack of interest.

As for Rick's mention, I think he had obviously not enough time to
read the drafts, and to pay attention to the writing process. I agree
his sentence was likely to hurt you, but I do not think he intended
to, neither do I think that he's "torpedoing" anything: come on, who
wouldn't be happy to have a nice Pirate Manifesto well-written,
printed, published, and read everywhere in the world?

Now, to answer Rick's question about the purpose of the Manifesto:
well, I think that RMS' mail clearly demonstrates what this purpose
is. MaryPoppins, from the French Parti Pirate, wrote him a few days
ago just to know if we could include his "Free Software Song" in the
second installment of our music "Pirate compilation" (the first
installment of which we have offered you guys a copy at the Berlin
conference, remember?); he asked us about the Pirate Party, we had a
short discussion with him, and... _what_ does he do next? _He_ _looks_
_at_ _the_ _Manifesto_. That is exactly what the Manifesto is for (as
is the Uppsala declaration, granted): to introduce who we are, what we
stand for, what we believe in, what we're trying to achieve. Isn't it
nice?

We were not able _at all_ to attempt the Uppsala meeting (mostly for
financial reasons, but also because as a teacher I had to be in France
at the end of June). However, we trust the other parties enough to
know you guys are no idiots, and therefore we were confident in the
quality of the work that would be done. I think the Uppsala
declaration is a good document, and some parts of it could/should
probably go into the Introduction of the Manifesto when we get there.
As I told Rick in the other thread, this is not about exclusivity: the
Manifesto is not aiming to say "let's junk all the crap that has been
written before and write new stuff from scratch". I don't think there
is any incompatibility; and I don't think either that already having
some declarations means we don't have to write a Manifesto -- even if
this is likely to take months, or even years: hell, just look at how
much time it took them to write the GPL v3!

So, in a nutshell: please, people, please, play nice and be patient
with each other.

Cheers,
Valentin