My Thunderbird add-on is incompatible with a Thunderbird fork called Betterbird. It says so in the release notes and explicitly says there, “Using Send Later with Betterbird is therefore not recommended.”
Nevertheless, knowing that this is the case, Chandler Sobel-Sorenson <Chandler@genome.arizona.edu> of the University of Arizona Genomics Institute wrote to me asking for me to help him with Send Later on Betterbird. In his email he acknowledged that he was using Betterbird and acknowledged that he knew the release notes said Betterbird wasn’t supported:
I was reading over the release notes. I didn’t see this mentioned, but I am using Betterbird 128.12.0esr-bb30 currently and saw that there are issues with BB. Could this be one? I can’t switch back to TB and would like to keep using Send Later so I hope we can figure it out.
That’s annoying and a bit rude, but he was at least polite about it on the surface, so I responded and told him (again) that I do not support Betterbird:
Regarding the issue you are seeing, I am sorry, but I do not currently have the capacity to support Send Later in Betterbird.
This apparently wasn’t the answer he wanted, so he wrote back and asked me again to help him with Betterbird, which I had already told him twice (in the release notes, and in private email) I couldn’t help him with:
That’s fine, sir, I completely understand. Although BB is supposed to be a drop in replacement and not exhibit such errors and the last version of SL was working fine, can you spare a minute and lmk if anything in the error stands out to you? Maybe assume I’m still using TB, does the error make sense or indicate anything to you?
Although his words here seem quite polite, he is not actually being polite. He says, “I completely understand.” OK, let’s take him at his word and assume it’s true that he understands. What he understands, then, is that he has now been told twice that I could not help him with using my add-on with Betterbird, and yet he persisted in asking me to do so. This is the second time he has intentionally crossed a boundary after having it explicitly pointed out to him.
In my next response to him, I was therefore more explicit:
My release notes already say that BB is not supported with Send Later.
And yet you wrote to me about it and asked me to help you with it anyway.
And then I told you (again, for the second time, since I already told you in the release notes) that I couldn’t help you.
And then you wrote to me again and asked me to help you again.
Do you not see how rude you are being here?
Please stop.
Do not create a Send Later issue about this. I will close it if you do, because, again, Send Later does not currently support Betterbird.
That’s when he switched from his work email account to his personal email account <scar@riseup.net>, presumably because he knew the message he was about to send would get him in trouble at work, and sent me the following:
Sir what the fuck is wrong with you? How many minutes did you waste writing this rude piece of shit email to me? When you could have just fucking answered my question, and said “No nothing comes to mind sorry”? I rescind my offer to help you with anything and I will post an issue on Github if I determine it’s most appropriate. Close it all you want, it will not stop me and others from finding solutions instead of being whatever sorry sad state you are in.
When someone is abusive like this to me in private, I name them publicly. Abusive people deserve to be called out publicly because (a) there should be consequences for abusive conduct, (b) the threat of public exposure deters people from being privately abusive, and (c) people who might be put in a position to interact with abusive people should be warned about them.
I had by this point already complained on Mastodon about Mr. Sobel-Sorenson’s earlier conduct without naming him. After his last message above I posted a followup to that earlier posting identifying him by name and quoting the above message and told him I had done so. He then posted several replies on Mastodon claiming I was the one who had been rude. When it became clear that he was not going to admit he had done anything wrong or apologize, I blocked him both there and in email.
All that happened over two weeks ago. Apparently since then Mr. Sobel-Sorenson has repeatedly asked the moderator of my Mastodon server to take down the postings in which I identified him, and the moderator opted to do that this morning. While I don’t agree with the decision to take down the postings, I can understand that it was probably easier for the moderator to do that than to continue arguing with Mr. Sobel-Sorenson.
However, the moderator of my Mastodon server does not control my blog, and this posting will stay up here until/unless Mr. Sobel-Sorenson apologizes.
We’ll just have to wait and see whether Mr. Sobel-Sorenson is fragile enough to now try to convince Linode or Akamai to force me to take down this blog posting.
