Saturday, July 15, 2006

Steve Gillmor: "" 

Ben Barren 

Ben is a smart mofo, that's for sure. (As is Nick.)

I don't know why I got a blank paragraph from Steve Gillmor, but I can guess.

Steve works for Podshow and I was very critical of Podshow, with good cause, last week.

As the people at FeedBurner can attest, business models built on centralizing RSS set my hair on fire. At least with Feedburner they do it on an opt-in basis, but even then I think people should be aware of how much power they're giving them, and always be thinking about who owns them, and their motives, and who they might sell out to, and their motives.

In the case of Podshow, I know who they are, and have seen how ruthless they can be with other people's work, not just mine, and how their lack of conscience means they'll do things that I don't want to know about, but since it's in my area of creativity, I have to be concerned. Now Steve had his reasons for making his deal with Podshow, and I've never questioned those here on Scripting News, because it's not my place to. He has a family to feed and house and kids to send to college, and honest to god, Steve is a friend of mine, and I care about him, and I don't care what devil he makes a deal with, as long as he stays friendly.

Steve didn't like what I said about Podshow last week. So be it. Doesn't change what I think about what they did, it was awful, and it had to be stopped, and apparently it has stopped, and that's good. I don't give them the same benefit of the doubt I give others, because I have lots of experience with them. I think they meant to control our podcast feeds so they could sell position in those feeds to advertisers. I don't think they planned to ask our permission or share revenue with us. If their intentions were truly innocent this time, I apologize, but I don't think they were.

Next time, if they want us to believe they had good intentions, they should test the services privately before taking them public. And when they screw up, the apology should be without reservation, and without kicking those who called them on their mistake. If Steve Gillmor thinks I'm fucked up for calling them on it, Steve can think that, no one is perfect, not even Steve.