[Raion]

Those who are familiar with the other site in question, I'm sorry I have to bring the news in - nobody can seem to leave anything alone, even months after dogs have supposedly slept fine. Clearly, there's still unfinished business, and I feel my personal character is being attacked here.

Today, false accusations of me slandering a former member of this community were levied, along with exaggerated interactions regarding the Discord. I will not link the site and would ask that others refrain from doing so. But I will address what was said in the post. 

The claim is that I slandered a user "Onre", also known as ESP in some circles. I would ask that nobody sends this individual harassment, hate or any messages on my behalf. While I'm not responsible for what others post, my beef with him is rather, well between me and him. 

Onre, and another user Northsky, both Finnish and mentioned in a rant I posted earlier this year, are two of the founding members of the splinter group. Onre originally came into the IRC which was bridged with the discord. He had the idea of "Why not fork GCC?" which if I recall (I don't have logs) I said something to the effect of:

GCC won't accept any changes made upstream
Giving a small contingent of developers power over a lynchpin of development is... well you'll see how this becomes prophetic
What happens when they move on with their lives, as so many old users have? Remember Unixmuseum? Diegel? PymbleSoftware? I do. But most of you guys post Nekochan won't. 

The point is, I was opposed to it. He also leveraged pkgsrc, which is notoriously inflexible on dependency management. This was a huge sticking point for me, along with MIPSPro and MIPS III support. The reason for the latter two is that otherwise you gatekeep people with your solutions to R5k or higher CPUs, and that excludes a large portion of the entire SGI base. At the time, we were still looking at the whole irisware thing, which yeah, didn't work out. 

Anyways, he got upset after I continuously pointed out the flaws, and of course, I did push a big button for developers "Prove to me why you know better." and he basically went off and soon after formed the Other Site along with other members. 

Let me return to my "statements" that are characterized as false, slanderous or libelous, whatever term you want to use. I believe I called them both egotistical, stupid, retarded etc in occasional rants. Who hasn't? That's hardly really defamatory, more just people expressing frustration. I also spoke about how they pitched a bitch fit because I brought up several of these points alongside them, MrThinlySliced and other staff in their little dev spot. I was asked to self-censor, I refused, and I still consider them cowards for not coming to me face to face about it. Because that's what a coward does. 

Next the whole "Linux on SGI" thing. We had an argument on the discord once about someone, can't recall who, was asking why Linux isn't used on SGI and why the support sucks etc. I basically talked about why it's a vastly inferior experience to run any of the BSDs or Linux on SGI/MIPS hardware. It's pretty much, in most cases, very basic graphics support, some 2D/3D support on older cards, other stuff is framebuffer or serial only. Nobody really uses Linux seriously, and I directed users interested to hang out in the Gentoo spots where people like Kumba (whose a buddy of mine) and mattst88 (who was also on the IRC, and was a decent dude to hang around when I became acquainted with him) have documentation and support ready. Basically, I said "Niches for that exist, go there." which is very reasonable, is it not? Maybe a bit more... direct and forceful, but that's hardly a crime. 

Edit: Fuels. These are truly not very good systems and I think everyone here by now can attest to their cheapness. The overall thermal profile of the system is wrong, with the CPU at the front of the case like a Baby AT system (apparently the other chips get hotter, but there were better solutions in 2001 for that) I simply said that I believe that they deserve to be scrapped for parts because they're driving up VPro prices on ebay exponentially for no good reason, and with how much they go for now, they're not really worth our time. Like anything else, it's an opinion, and people should learn that just because an admin says it doesn't mean it's the only right one. 


Next, VWS systems. I've added a category for x86 systems recently, but barely anyone really has beyond a passing interest in the machines, especially since gaming on them is rather a poor experience (conventional wisdom holds they can't support DirectX, though I've never verified this) and they're limited to NT4, old Linux, and Windows 2000 loaded through a custom ARCS-BIOS payload AFAIK. Literally, I didn't have it in scope, so that's why we didn't really focus on these. 

Finally, IA-64 systems. Linux recently dropped support for them. GCC recently announced GCC 11 will remove IA-64 support. Barely any software exists that fully utilizes the IA-64 capabilities. They're pretty systems, granted, but that's about it when it comes to traditional IRIX stuff, hence why we have a footnote category here.

On emulation, I was wrong in the beginning, having negative experiences with WINUAE and Amiga Forever users in the Amiga community, but for some reason people keep harping on this, even after I became friends with the main dude, Mog/MogMiner/MooglyGuy or whatever other handle Ryan H. uses, and changed my mind. Look guys, I realize I'm not perfect. I've been downright incompetent at times, but things have improved, and I feel I've put enough blood and sweat into keeping the community beyond just life support to deserve a little slack cut for me. 

The last few things to discuss. Yes, I added a rule asking people not to link to other competing sites. This is simply because there have been reports of user poaching here, and I want to be clear that's not really what we're about. While I was at least on semi-okay terms with SGUG at one point, they wanted me to list them everywhere, but they weren't even willing to passingly glance at a mention in their discord. Unequal partnerships end in tragedy, which is what all of this is. 

And finally, on GNU. Yeah, everyone and their grandparents know I'm not fond of them. The reason is they've abandoned IRIX. They've abandoned Solaris, HP, and others. They are not our friends, and we should actively be searching for and working on alternatives for when they finally manage to break all of their tools we use. Because they're not gonna shed a tear.

I have laid off the rants and polemic posts on things, and again, I'd ask that nobody send hate to the "Other Site", harass any of its users, or anything of the sort. It's an unfortunate situation that happened in the end, and it's at least mostly my fault, but I don't shoulder other's blame on the issue. I am aware of what is and isn't my responsibility and everyone here and there should know my side of the story. After having my name and reputation scoured for things I did months ago that I was already thoroughly destroyed over for weeks, I couldn't hold back when they decided it was appropriate to bring back up. 


And here's the crying shame about everything. I was at one point considering mediation. Finding someone who'd willingly sit everyone down and hash it out, and at least burn out the lasting frustration and aggression for the benefit of the community, but that's essentially dead today, and not by my hand. This conduct that was done against me unfairly, over of all things a FUCKING python post that had nothing to do with me really grinds my gears. It's unfair to everyone involved, but I can at least safely say, "No sir, I did not start this drama for once." 

I rest my case. If anyone wants to chat about this, do so below. I personally will just try to not pay this any further mind . I just hope that the other site learns time and place. This was... well beyond the time for them to make a public statement and it just shows how toxicity doesn't begin or end with me in this community.