4 ms·

Obtvse was open-sourced for a reason: so that people could take it and modify it and use it however they'd like. This is open-source working.

by unalone 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago
You keep telling yourself that.
- unalone 15y ago
  I don't see what's so difficult, Thomas. A clever, smug person posted about a project of his and behaved poorly when people complained about not having access to it. So somebody else cloned it – not to steal the thunder, but to let people use the program. Now it's been cloned again and spreads a little further. I'm sure the guy that open-sourced it considers this a victory, inasmuch as the idea has spread even further. If Dustin's stopped sulking about his little change-the-world club being subverted and opened up, he's probably happy about this too: this idea that he came up with and worked on is so popular that people are making an effort to spread it further. If his actual idea is even greater and grander, then when Svtble opens up people will flock to it and thank him for it. Everybody wins.
  - mattmorgan 15y ago
    You have to give him some credit that he is using this opportunity to defend Curtis and build a powerful relationship when everyone else is slamming him. People don't forget it when you defend them when few others will.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      I don't know Dustin Curtis or care particularly too much about Dustin Curtis. What I remember about him was that he wrote a blog post about American Airlines that got a lot of play that I found simultaneously smug and naive in that infuriating way designers sometimes have, and that he spent a lot of time making all his blog posts look different. What I don't like is bullying. This whole site spent a week chasing a YC company around with a pitchfork and torches for stealing designs from a well-known company, but when some guy writes some promo copy that enough people here don't like, HN manages to spawn a meme that the same copying is somehow liberation for the cause of open source. People are allowed to choose who they associate with. Dustin Curtis does not need to "open up" his little club. For crissakes, you're writing this on the message board of an exclusive club that won't have you as a member. "Powerful relationship with Dustin Curtis". Sheesh.
      - unalone 15y ago
        Copying is liberation. You're freed from relying on the original instance. The issue I took with Dustin wasn't just the idiocy with which he decided making a pretty blog equated to somehow creating the future of journalism. It was how, when people on this site complained about his copy, his response wasn't "it was a joke" or "this is still a private beta" but "good, my marketing worked because you'll remember it". If Dustin didn't want his private little club to go public, he could have chosen not to write about Svtble at all, and we'd have no idea of what it looked like behind the scenes. Once he went public, his ideas became a part of every "club" that cared to look at them, including ours. You are always responsible for what you do in public. Always. It's twisted to look at the response as "bullying". Somebody copied a public idea and released it to people who didn't have access to it yet. Partly in response to Dustin's saying, "You know what, I don't care if I offend you, as long as you pay attention to me." The only way that the open-sourcing was bullying was that it turns out Dustin does care about offending people after all. Not that he seems to have learned anything from this, other than "people on that web site don't like me and that sucks."
        tptacek 15y ago
        Give me a fucking break. If he didn't want to be chased around by a pack of trolls, he could have just chosen not to write. What a detestable sentiment. Feel free to score yourself another 20-50 karma points by cheerleading this bullshit. I'm done, I hope, with this thread.
        unalone 15y ago
        You started this conversation, Thomas. You don't get a break when you're the one actively participating. I don't mind seeing interesting ideas freed from smug people who'd rather hoard them publicly. I don't mind seeing interesting ideas freed from anybody, really; by simply stating an idea in public, you're setting it free. But I especially don't mind when it's Dustin Curtis, whose ideas are small enough to be freed so easily and whose ego is huge enough that we get such an overblown response. (In response to your post-edit: Nobody's trolling him. They're creating a service which, it seems, many more than just 6 people want. Why is spreading a good idea considered trolling?)
  - neilparikh 15y ago
    I think there's one important distinction to make here. Dustin Curtis wasn't the one who submitted the link to hacker news. So, he wasn't really saying how awesome his product is, ans then saying that we can't have it, as many people said on both the Svbtle post, and the Obtvse post (at least not to Hacker News). I was still annoyed by the wording by the post, but I think the fact it wasn't meant to be posted to Hacker News should be taken into consideration.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

Obtvse was open-sourced for a reason: so that people could take it and modify it and use it however they'd like. This is open-source working.

by unalone 15y ago

Obtvse was open-sourced for a reason: so that people could take it and modify it and use it however they'd like. This is open-source working.

tptacek 15y ago

You keep telling yourself that.

unalone 15y ago
I don't see what's so difficult, Thomas. A clever, smug person posted about a project of his and behaved poorly when people complained about not having access to it. So somebody else cloned it – not to steal the thunder, but to let people use the program. Now it's been cloned again and spreads a little further. I'm sure the guy that open-sourced it considers this a victory, inasmuch as the idea has spread even further. If Dustin's stopped sulking about his little change-the-world club being subverted and opened up, he's probably happy about this too: this idea that he came up with and worked on is so popular that people are making an effort to spread it further. If his actual idea is even greater and grander, then when Svtble opens up people will flock to it and thank him for it. Everybody wins.
- mattmorgan 15y ago
  You have to give him some credit that he is using this opportunity to defend Curtis and build a powerful relationship when everyone else is slamming him. People don't forget it when you defend them when few others will.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I don't know Dustin Curtis or care particularly too much about Dustin Curtis. What I remember about him was that he wrote a blog post about American Airlines that got a lot of play that I found simultaneously smug and naive in that infuriating way designers sometimes have, and that he spent a lot of time making all his blog posts look different. What I don't like is bullying. This whole site spent a week chasing a YC company around with a pitchfork and torches for stealing designs from a well-known company, but when some guy writes some promo copy that enough people here don't like, HN manages to spawn a meme that the same copying is somehow liberation for the cause of open source. People are allowed to choose who they associate with. Dustin Curtis does not need to "open up" his little club. For crissakes, you're writing this on the message board of an exclusive club that won't have you as a member. "Powerful relationship with Dustin Curtis". Sheesh.
    - unalone 15y ago
      Copying is liberation. You're freed from relying on the original instance. The issue I took with Dustin wasn't just the idiocy with which he decided making a pretty blog equated to somehow creating the future of journalism. It was how, when people on this site complained about his copy, his response wasn't "it was a joke" or "this is still a private beta" but "good, my marketing worked because you'll remember it". If Dustin didn't want his private little club to go public, he could have chosen not to write about Svtble at all, and we'd have no idea of what it looked like behind the scenes. Once he went public, his ideas became a part of every "club" that cared to look at them, including ours. You are always responsible for what you do in public. Always. It's twisted to look at the response as "bullying". Somebody copied a public idea and released it to people who didn't have access to it yet. Partly in response to Dustin's saying, "You know what, I don't care if I offend you, as long as you pay attention to me." The only way that the open-sourcing was bullying was that it turns out Dustin does care about offending people after all. Not that he seems to have learned anything from this, other than "people on that web site don't like me and that sucks."
      - tptacek 15y ago
        Give me a fucking break. If he didn't want to be chased around by a pack of trolls, he could have just chosen not to write. What a detestable sentiment. Feel free to score yourself another 20-50 karma points by cheerleading this bullshit. I'm done, I hope, with this thread.
        unalone 15y ago
        You started this conversation, Thomas. You don't get a break when you're the one actively participating. I don't mind seeing interesting ideas freed from smug people who'd rather hoard them publicly. I don't mind seeing interesting ideas freed from anybody, really; by simply stating an idea in public, you're setting it free. But I especially don't mind when it's Dustin Curtis, whose ideas are small enough to be freed so easily and whose ego is huge enough that we get such an overblown response. (In response to your post-edit: Nobody's trolling him. They're creating a service which, it seems, many more than just 6 people want. Why is spreading a good idea considered trolling?)
- neilparikh 15y ago
  I think there's one important distinction to make here. Dustin Curtis wasn't the one who submitted the link to hacker news. So, he wasn't really saying how awesome his product is, ans then saying that we can't have it, as many people said on both the Svbtle post, and the Obtvse post (at least not to Hacker News). I was still annoyed by the wording by the post, but I think the fact it wasn't meant to be posted to Hacker News should be taken into consideration.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]