It’s been several weeks since I wrote my original article on the
subject of plagiarism for Linux Today. Since that time, I have
received many emails from many fellow writers who have had similar
experiences. I had hoped that I would have the time to revisit the
issue again by writing some sort of summary piece to let everyone
know how things turned out. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time
(with some real-life things going on) to put together a summary
that would do justice to the problem and the many people that
emailed in their support. Instead, I have put together this rather
terse summary of what happened afterwards in an effort to provide
some closure to the situation.
Shortly after the original piece was published, both
Néstor Lucas and BarraPunto released statements, reprinted
in Linux Today’s message boards.
After those statements were issued, it would appear as if the
matter was dropped. Instead, Mr. Lucas and I continued to have
several private conversations via email. My goal in these exchanges
was to not only find a solution that would be satisfactory to me
personally, but also to find one that would allow the community to
benefit. Mr. Lucas, despite his alleged sins, benefited his
community and the Linux community through his various writings for
Linux Actual, including the article about Linux 2.4. So, it seemed
natural to me that the ideal solution to the problem would be to
leverage his writing ability and my own to write something
beneficial to the community together. This particular bit of logic
may seem strange to some, but after much thought it’s what I
decided to do.
After a bit of discussion, Mr. Lucas and I have decided to work
together on an article, probably for a future edition of Linux
Actual and/or Linux Journal. Both are paper magazines with similar
audiences (as I understand it, I could be wrong). Of course,
neither of us actually work for these companies or have any real
pull with them, so any article that we work on together might not
even get accepted. In terms of content matter, we’re probably
looking towards writing something about the new Apache but this may
change.
Many of the emails that I received since the original article
have simply asked how I really felt about the situation. Do I
believe Mr. Lucas? Do I believe BarraPunto? To these questions, I’m
really not going to give an answer. I believe that the truth is
likely somewhere in between.
As for the people that asked me advice on dealing with their
problems, I really don’t have an answer. A philosophy that seem to
work for me is “Forgive once. Next time, bring the napalm.”
Fortunately for me, there really hasn’t been a next time yet.
Thanks,
Joe
(Wonderful World of Linux 2.4 Final — Next week! Probably!)