Some time ago, somebody claimed that providing condolences to the family of a recently deceased person was insulting and improper. I disagreed. Quite why Mark thinks that that is any sort of criticism of their views on death is beyond me, as is why he thinks I have anything to do with the bank account that enjoys the name "Debian UK"[1].

But anyway.

The one clear thing that we can draw from the thread on debian-private was that Andrew appeared to believe that offering condolences on behalf of the project implied that he was in full supported. Which is plainly false. Many things are done on behalf of the project without every individual member supporting them - for instance, Mark is vigorously opposed to Debian UK being granted a trademark license, even though Branden (and therefore the project) granted one. The key difference here is the difference between consensus and unanimity. "The project believes" is a statement of consensus - "Everyone in the project believes" is a statement of unanimity. Andrew objected to someone wishing to pass on the "condolences of the project". If they were planning to say "Everyone in the project is united in providing their condolences", he might have had a point.

[1] Other than being in the same pub when it was organised in the first place, and having been given some amount of money from it in order to represent the project (whoops!) at the Gnome Advisory Board meetings. I'd like to apologise to Andrew for not asking him in advance whether he objected to anything I said there. Or maybe not.