March 2005 Archives

Seems WordPress is reliving some of what it was like to be Six Apart around May of last year. Funny since many of its community where the chief antagonists then. Quite frankly I think they are getting off easy considering their offense is far more unethical and dishonorable then anything Six Apart ever did.

Andy Baio reports:

Wordpress is a very popular open-source blogging software package, with a great official website maintained by Matt Mullenweg, its founding developer. I discovered last week that since early February, he's been quietly hosting at least 120,000 168,000 articles on their website. These articles are designed specifically to game the Google Adwords program, written by a third-party about high-cost advertising keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes, and mortgages.

Essentially, as I read the explanations to these actions in the ensuing comments, WordPress is hard up for cash to fund the project and was quietly taking money from a company trying to Internet trash into cash. Baio caught their hands in the cookie jar.

Many are calling it spam and others a scam. I'll just say its quite shady and a damn shame that this will mar the reputation of a project. Developers deserve to eat, but there are many many more ethical and honorable means.

I find it highly ironic that it was some of the WordPress community's most prominent and active members that were so blatantly opportunistic and criticized SixApart for trying to charge for their work (which is far more ethical and straight-forward then what happened in the WordPress camp) in the name of open source and freedom.

Not that Six Apart's execution was perfect. It had a lot to be desired and I said plenty on that. I'm not saying open source is bad and commercial software rules either. What I am saying is that I think there needs to be more consideration, understanding and balance to the economics of software development and how a highly successful project may not become victims of its own success.

I find it rather odd that the court of public opinion (and we know how large and vocal that court is in the blogosphere) has been seemingly less concerned about this infraction. What is the community saying? That open source by any means supersedes ethics and class?

Matt Mullenweg is unluckily (or is that luckily?) on holiday in Italy. However Jonas Luster, the first employee of the Wordpress Foundation, posted a response to the news and particularly notes Jason Kottke chiming in on the post. This quote was quite a kicker:

WordPress development is expensive. Start with a server and hosting, add Ping-O-Matic’s needs (PoM is the default for most WordPress and Drupal installs, today, and a large number of MovableType blogs) go on to figure that some of the developers have dedicated a seizable amount of their time to this effort, and you see where money might be needed.

It might not occur to Kottke, but maybe Matt felt that without some financial assistance, WordPress could not be sustained as a free project (in every meaning of the word), and realized that donations won’t cut it.

There is some news! Does this mean Six Apart is not the second coming of Microsoft after all? That they kind of knew what they were doing and were only being realistic?

Live by the sword. Die by the sword. I can only think that Matt can only have a new found appreciation for what Six Apart was trying to do in May 2004.

I received an email message from Bob Parsons President and Founder of Go Daddy that was sent to all of its customers today. It begins:

Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Well this only confirms what I suspected from their recent trashy Super Bowl ad campaign – they aren't exactly the brightest company around. If my memory from my American History classes serves me correctly, there is NO guarantee to privacy in the constitution. A quick search of its text confirms that the word privacy isn't mentioned let alone guaranteed. Whether the framers of the Constitution never could have imagined the issue could become what it is today or it's a Fox Mulder-esque conspiracy doesn't matter.

Its not like I'm for invasion of privacy – I'm quite opposed to it and think it needs to be taken more seriously by our leaders. Its just that I like having my facts straight in an attempt to sounding credible and intelligent. Perhaps some Go Daddy staffer can show the good Mr Parsons how to use Google before he gets in a snit like this one and lashes out without thinking.

Here is a smattering of soundbytes, links and observations I scribbled while powerless at ETech 2005 Day 1.

Soundbytes

• Make Magazine poll of the first 4000 subscribers found the average age is 35 and the average income $108k. (Tim O'Reilly @ Fireside Talk Press Conference)
• If you acquire them don't f**k them up. (Tim O'Reilly @ Fireside press conference referring to large corporations buy innovative scrappy startups and pioneers.)
• Threats to emerging technology: Government and politics impinging on technological evolution. The past always tries to kill the future." (Tim O'Reilly @ Fireside press conference)
• 40% of eBay listings come through the [Web Services] API (Adam Gross - Building Applications Without Software)
• WS-I Basic Profile is a must read best practices document for those creating web services. (Nelson Minar - Building A New Web Service at Google)
• A very important rule of REST: HTTP GET must not have side effects. (Nelson Minar)
• Sending nothing is hard. (Nelson Minar discussing web service interoperability issues.)
• Data bindings are the key technology for SOAP. Its not quite there to were he'd hope it would be though. (Nelson Minar)
• I'm sure those updates will be finished very quickly. (Jeff Bezos after inadvertently clicking Yes to a Windows Update completed restart? dialog box.)
• You petition the FCC to rollback time or al least buy it for you. (Rael Dornfest - press conference)

Interesting Links

• Ruby on Rails
• Flickr Colr Pickr
• A9 OpenSearch (ZDnet Weblog Coverage)
• Walking Tour of New Hamsphire
• http://we-make-money-not-art.com/
• EyeToy

Quick Observations

Rick Rashid's From the Labs: Microsoft Research presentation reminds me that Microsoft has some brilliant engineers – why some of this brilliance doesn't make it out into their products is likely an organizational issue and the crushing weight of legacy business and shear stubbornness.

Nelson Minar in his presentation notes that Flickr supports SOAP, XML-RPC and REST protocols saying I'd like to see more of that. Curious that the AdWords API that Nelson designed doesn't take this approach. Also two points that were overlooked in his presentation.

1. SOAP can be RESTful
2. The Flickr REST API isn't its RPC using HTTP and a non-standard XML format. REST is document-centric which is on the opposite end of the spectrum from RPC.

Word to the wise. If you ever screw up and really need someone to mail you something critical like, lets say the power cord to your Powerbook that you forget to pack for the technology conference you are attending on the other side of the country, never ever EVER trust the US Postal Service to get it to you overnight. Government bureaucracy makes for bad customer service and poor customer satisfaction.

Here is an added point I left out of my earlier O'Reilly weblog post (my thoughts on B2Day's Is Firefox Doomed?) as to not complicate matters or get off topic.

What if Yahoo! or Google offered a browser based on Firefox?

What impact would such a move have on adoption? Given the popularity of both web properties and their ability to ship software more effectively, it is quite plausible the answer is a great deal.

This measure would be a natural evolution of their toolbars whose functionality would be folded into the browser UI.

Not only could such a development potentially erode Microsoft's browser share and challenge them to keep pace, but it would also could hurt their bottom line by slowing OS upgrades and new PC sales by giving consumers one less reason to upgrade.