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Scott Klement wrote:
But I don't see how that's FUD. It's an opinion. I'm entitled to my
opinion, aren't I?
An analogous situation to this happened a couple of times on PIPORG-L:
Some years ago, a somewhat arrogant young organist was "permanently
exiled to the Land of NOPOST" after categorically describing the organs
of Abbott & Sieker (a builder known for willingness to work on a low
budget if necessary; I understand Donald Knuth's home organ is an A&S)
as "piece[s] of junk," without giving any reason for the statement.
It would have been perfectly all right if he'd said he didn't like A&S,
or found their work to be cheap. It would have been perfectly all right
if he'd said said that one or more specific A&S instruments were pieces
of junk, provided he backed up his statment with something factual. But
instead, he phrased his rather uncomplimentary opinion as a sweeping
statement of fact.
Something similar happened on the same list this past December: somebody
else crossed the line between stating an opinion and making a broad,
unfounded, and defamatory statement.
Back to the matter at hand, I have made no secret of my disapproval of
RPG/Free, or that I consider it to be inappropriate to completely change
the most fundamental syntax of a programming language without changing
the name of the language, or that I think the effort spent on that
project would have been better spent on upgrading the old AS/400 PL/I
compiler from a tiny subset PRPQ running in OPM to a fully implemented
ILE LPP (since most of /FREE is just PL/I elements grafted on to RPG).
But I don't say "RPG/Free sucks; don't use it."
And while I make no secret of my opinion that Java would have been
better, had it been based on Object PL/I instead of C++, or that much of
it was poorly thought out, or that it can be a tad slow (but compare a
purely interpreted BASIC sometime!), and I've even cited a cartoon I've
drawn, that made fun of the language (I also have one that makes fun of
RPG, by putting some OPM RPG code on a stone tablet!), but I don't say,
"Java sucks."
So let us simply be a bit more vigilant when choosing our words, when we
express opinions that could be considered defamatory.
--
JHHL
midrange.com
