[beepbooptheory]

Language is great and rich and all that but you forget too quickly that it's a two way street. Nothing gp said implied that they didn't know the idiom. Indeed, it seems obvious to me they were just being concise, which is perhaps a virtue of prose you could benefit from.

[KAMSPioneer]

As an outside observer, it seems reasonable to assume asveikau missed the figurative language. The original phrase used was "dead in the water," which as noted does not imply death; however the response alleged that death was (rudely?) what the original commenter was talking about.

Seems blown out of proportion, at least partially because of missing figurative language. The above wall of text seems a long-winded, somewhat tongue-in-cheek way to say "yeah I didn't say that."

[hasmanean]

Not everybody understands English 100%.

The guy in the old west who drew his gun and said “them’s fightin’ words?” He probably didn’t enough English to understand the whole sentence but picked out a few words which meant to him “fight.”

[KAMSPioneer]

Of course not everyone understands English perfectly. Even among native speakers it's easy to misunderstand (especially on a web forum). I wasn't making a judgement.

Anyway, it was pointed out that the same user that said "dead in the water" did indeed comment upthread that BSDs will "end up dying," so goes to show that I wasn't paying attention.

[asveikau]

I am a native English speaker raised in Washington DC.

I am literally pointing out that Wayland enthusiasts love to gang on X11 as "dead" as a put-down and anybody who still uses it is evil or something. It's a toxic attitude that I've seen a lot here. It should ... pardon the metaphor .... die.

[necovek]

I think one should allow others to look at the entirety of the thread started by bitwize, where they claim:

> ...the BSDs will really end up dying,...

That wasn't very figurative, even if "dead in the water" was. For all it's worth, bitwize might have been using that figure of speech inappropriately when they really meant "dead".

All this to say that even as an outside observer, one can read exactly the same things differently, so perhaps we should all get off our high horses and start riding ponies or bicycles (what? :)) — I mean, back to the discussion at hand.

[asveikau]

> As an outside observer, it seems reasonable to assume asveikau missed the figurative language.

No, I didn't miss it at all, and this is a weird take.

However, its appropriateness as a metaphor does have to do with the literal meaning. Even a less maintained software project with a longer-term deprecation roadmap that still has millions relying on it is not "dead". This very article is talking about how the *BSDs are putting more maintenance into that tree than upstream, and those are actually signs it isn't a total dead-end; they've done that maintenance over the years because it's valuable to them. But bitwize was calling it dead in an attempt to put it down. I've found this particular brand of negativity is very common in Wayland enthusiasts. It is like ad hominem in software maintenance discussion. The source is available for anyone to hack on and use, or not, as they please. There's no sense in ad hominem attacks, exactly as bitwize engages in above, for that.

To be honest, the attacks like this remind me of the XZ backdoor. The sock puppets in those mailing list threads complaining, I would say whining, about "dead", "unmaintained" libzma were channeling the exact same energy. Cool it down. It's not necessary.