I don't know. I am not sure what to think about that situation.
The attacks were not really that ad hominem. While I see Martins point with the technical reasons and why that annoys him if political reasoning gets accused, his technical reasons are more grounded on policy, and the step from (technically founded) policy to politics is not that far, especially if you are someone who is convinced that your new solutions for something is great and want to see it adopted, which could be Shuttleworths position. And reactions like Intels sabotage is probably not something that is easy to accept with a smile.
And I don't think that you have to apologize for the effect of your actions, but for your mistakes. So it's not necessarily about how Martin feels, but about what Mark said - if that was indeed wrong, for every aspect of wrong. I didn't like his language comment, that was harsh and targeted against foreign speakers.
Also, there were always clashes between Ubuntu/Canonical and Kubuntu/KDE. I don't see behind the curtains, I have no overview who behaves how when they interact directly. But the language barrier and the cultural differences (isn't KDE still a bit german influenced?), and the question who holds the power, makes the situation probably prone to issues like these.
Finally, I don't think it is possible to judge about the technical aspect of the whole discussion without being familiar with the code of those projects, so it's hard to take sides based on that.
I should probably add: I was a team member ubuntuusers.de, the german ubuntu support forum Martin mentions in his post, and remember him a bit from then. This leads to a bit of sympathy, but that was years ago and details are gone, and I parted on bad terms with that team (I hope that expression fits here). So I am always not sure in which direction my history with the Ubuntu community influences my judgement of such situations. Grain of Salt and stuff.
The attacks were not really that ad hominem. While I see Martins point with the technical reasons and why that annoys him if political reasoning gets accused, his technical reasons are more grounded on policy, and the step from (technically founded) policy to politics is not that far, especially if you are someone who is convinced that your new solutions for something is great and want to see it adopted, which could be Shuttleworths position. And reactions like Intels sabotage is probably not something that is easy to accept with a smile.
And I don't think that you have to apologize for the effect of your actions, but for your mistakes. So it's not necessarily about how Martin feels, but about what Mark said - if that was indeed wrong, for every aspect of wrong. I didn't like his language comment, that was harsh and targeted against foreign speakers.
Also, there were always clashes between Ubuntu/Canonical and Kubuntu/KDE. I don't see behind the curtains, I have no overview who behaves how when they interact directly. But the language barrier and the cultural differences (isn't KDE still a bit german influenced?), and the question who holds the power, makes the situation probably prone to issues like these.
Finally, I don't think it is possible to judge about the technical aspect of the whole discussion without being familiar with the code of those projects, so it's hard to take sides based on that.
I should probably add: I was a team member ubuntuusers.de, the german ubuntu support forum Martin mentions in his post, and remember him a bit from then. This leads to a bit of sympathy, but that was years ago and details are gone, and I parted on bad terms with that team (I hope that expression fits here). So I am always not sure in which direction my history with the Ubuntu community influences my judgement of such situations. Grain of Salt and stuff.