3 ms·

Can someone shed some light on the back story here?

DannoHung 17y ago
Yes, yes. I am rather disappointed at the number of screeds which I've had chance to read which go something along the lines of, "I am so ANGRY that this HAPPENED and I won't tell you any details so just be ANGRY with me!"
pragmatic 17y ago
Is this about Twitter or something else?
jerf 17y ago
Dave Winer got fed up with Twitter going down and has been pushing for decentralized Twitter/microblogging. He did not create this idea, nor does he claim to have, but he's been spending a lot of time and energy pursuing this over the past few months. As usual, a lot of nothing happens at first since nothing is developed, but then over time you start to results. Presumably, on backchannels we're not seeing, he's getting contacted with those "offers" that he is complaining about now that he's having some success, all involving the "proposition" he describes. The problem is that Dave has been around for decades now, still occasionally talks about how Apple "locked him in a trunk" a long time ago, and basically has the wisdom to avoid this problem now, having learned the hard way. He loved the Internet at least in part because he saw it as the platform vendor that could not lock you out. (Sort of a virtual platform vendor.) This is far from the first time he's made this complaint, so at this point it seems he's pretty justified in calling this a pattern. Many people have many different opinions of Dave Winer, and these opinions are frequently not without some justification, but two points should be remembered: He really has been around a long time and has experiences that should be considered (in particular, if he's saying something is a trap I'm inclined to take it seriously), and he is a doer, that is, one who does things, not just talks about doing things. (If he taught me anything, I would say it was "Stop talking and start doing", which has served me well.) His implementations aren't always the best technically, but they do things. He didn't invent the idea of XML-based newsfeeds, but he is basically the guy who built the tools to make it happen in an open manner. (Which is why I could claim a couple of days ago that I've been reading RSS feeds for nearly ten years; it will be ten years next January. I was reading RSS when it was only Dave's software that could generate and consume it.) So, that's the current backstory, to the best of my knowledge. No guarantees it is complete or correct, but I tried.

Yes, yes. I am rather disappointed at the number of screeds which I've had chance to read which go something along the lines of, "I am so ANGRY that this HAPPENED and I won't tell you any details so just be ANGRY with me!"

pragmatic 17y ago

Is this about Twitter or something else?

jerf 17y ago

Dave Winer got fed up with Twitter going down and has been pushing for decentralized Twitter/microblogging. He did not create this idea, nor does he claim to have, but he's been spending a lot of time and energy pursuing this over the past few months. As usual, a lot of nothing happens at first since nothing is developed, but then over time you start to results. Presumably, on backchannels we're not seeing, he's getting contacted with those "offers" that he is complaining about now that he's having some success, all involving the "proposition" he describes. The problem is that Dave has been around for decades now, still occasionally talks about how Apple "locked him in a trunk" a long time ago, and basically has the wisdom to avoid this problem now, having learned the hard way. He loved the Internet at least in part because he saw it as the platform vendor that could not lock you out. (Sort of a virtual platform vendor.) This is far from the first time he's made this complaint, so at this point it seems he's pretty justified in calling this a pattern. Many people have many different opinions of Dave Winer, and these opinions are frequently not without some justification, but two points should be remembered: He really has been around a long time and has experiences that should be considered (in particular, if he's saying something is a trap I'm inclined to take it seriously), and he is a doer, that is, one who does things, not just talks about doing things. (If he taught me anything, I would say it was "Stop talking and start doing", which has served me well.) His implementations aren't always the best technically, but they do things. He didn't invent the idea of XML-based newsfeeds, but he is basically the guy who built the tools to make it happen in an open manner. (Which is why I could claim a couple of days ago that I've been reading RSS feeds for nearly ten years; it will be ten years next January. I was reading RSS when it was only Dave's software that could generate and consume it.) So, that's the current backstory, to the best of my knowledge. No guarantees it is complete or correct, but I tried.