On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 12:32 AM Oliver Hunt wrote:
>
> That’s not how consent works, and the fact that you are not just
> ignoring someone stating explicitly that you do not have permission
> to redistribute their work, you are literally dismissing their right to do so.


I'm not saying that I have consent. I'm saying that I don't need
consent. Like if I'm filming at a local park, and a guy comes up to me
and says I don't want to be in the frame, well I don't need to adjust
my camera position or edit the footage afterwards.


> On the basis of your statements in this thread I have no real choice
>but to say you may not use or redistribute in any form, including by
> obfuscation within a statistical model, any paper that I am an author
> or co-author of.


I'm not saying that I would never ever omit a paper. Like if someone
were to email me and say, "Hey man I was in a psychiatric unit last
week and I published that paper when I wasn't in my right mind . . .
Please could you take it down". That's the kind of the thing I'd
consider. I'd keep confidentiality and not inform anyone (not even
other WG21 members), and I'd reply to the person and say, "Hey you
should email Nevin and tell him the circumstances, maybe he'll take it
down for you; we all have our off days. I hope you're feeling better".

But you seem to be of sound mind Oliver, and to be a reasonably nice
guy. You'd be hindering my work as a WG21 committee member if you
don't allow me to use my program to peruse, search through and just
generally manage your papers. I am not satisfied that you have a good
reason to not allow me to do this. In fact I'd be a little suspicious
that you might be a C# spy who has come to infiltrate the C++
committee to sabotage the standardisation process by submitting papers
and then disallowing people to work with them properly.

I mean really Oliver, person to person here, what are you concerned
about? Do you think I'm going to put ads in my program and get $0.01
every time someone views your paper? Do you think I'm going to replace
"Oliver Hunt" with "Thomas Healy" in your paper files? Do you think
I'm going to edit your papers in places with rubbish code to try ruin
your career and reputation? Do you think I'll copy-paste some
xenophobic jokes into your paper? What really is your boggle with me
sharing a piece of free open-source software to manage papers? I'm
getting the vibe here that your real reason is simply along the lines
of "Because I can". I think you're just doing something along the
lines of what some people call "exercising a right".

Now I realise that I'm not the centre of the universe and that there
are sane rational people all over the world who view the same evidence
as me and come to different conclusions than I do, and that really any
assessment I make of anything is really just an assessment made in
line with my own personality, but for what it's worth, in my own
personal opinion, I think it's utterly ridiculous of any person to
submit a paper to the worldwide C++ community and then to say you
don't want them to use a free open-source program (without ads) to
view it and search through it. But that's just my opinion. Others,
evidently, feel differently.

But hey, I'll try to meet you half-way on this. How would you feel
about the following?

    (1) The Zip file of papers isn't distributed with the executable file,
        instead you're given the option to download it the first time you
        run the program.
    (2) The program starts in "Sincere Mode". In Sincere Mode, you
        won't see any papers by authors who've asked to have their
        papers omitted. The user can, if they want, switch to "Open Mode",
        at which point all papers listed on "https://wg21.link/index.txt"
        become visible.

That way everyone can use Paper Kernel C++ in line with their own
morals, beliefs and values. You can use it in Sincere Mode, and I can
use it in Open Mode. What do you reckon? And maybe my morals will be
different 10 years from now . . . I mean at one point I was getting up
at 4am every morning in a Hare Krishna temple, so it isn't impossible
that I'll revise my mindset again. And of course you or anyone else
might revise theirs too in the future.