This is it on Winer, unless he pulls another stunt before I catch my breath. He's tiresome. He is his own health problem, and he has blasted the blood pressure of untold numbers. So I have to get away from his twistedness. It isn't healthy. And Dave, although he wouldn't care anyway, isn't the only one out here with glass balls.
But first, a word to my blogger friends who were part of the weblogs.com "community."
I have several friends who were affected by Winer's latest slash-n-burn antics. I'm addressing you here, to say thank you to YOU. Not to Dave, or to the buddies of Dave who have run to his rescue in email and in "servertude." I am glad that they are there--glad that Dave has friends like those--not just for Dave, but for you all. Because without those tempering forces, your wonderful writing could well be gone by now. Way gone. (Or revised and enhanced for you and uploaded in the middle of the night).
Thank you to you weblogs-dot-comers who have written with such passion these last years. You are the ones who have made "weblogs.com" mean something. A server with nothing on it has no value. It is worth the price of a server. It is not something you fight about, dig down and pound fists about, care about, love. It's a piece of hardware. The reason this is more than a hardware failure or outage is because of what's ON the server--Your voices. And regardless of Dave's ongoing revisions to what happened, I'm not comfortable with what was done to you without a second thought.
No matter where you live, whether you follow the Winer trail to Cadenhead or you decide to take this opportunity to forge new alliances, move into new neighborhoods, try new tools, your writing means something to me, and to the larger blogging community.
I will read you. I will link to you. No matter where you go.
So, back to the title of this post... If I were you...
If I were you--and you have to trust me that I have put myself in the very mindspace you've all been in over this last couple days--there is absolutely positively no way I'd hop over to Cadenhead's server and make it my home. I would not make the leap of faith necessary to assume everything will be okay over there because Dave's paws are off of it. Rogers doesn't see a problem with Dave's taking down 3,000 sites without notice. He says that he will have a users policy that will spell out such things. If you go there, make sure you read it. But if I were you, well....
There is no way, no way, no way. I would not allow him to upload my content. I would request that dave follow through on his "Non-Negotiable" deal--his published offer--to export your files to you, and I would haul ass as far away from that shit as I could.
Now that's me.
You may have other ideas.
Although Dave says he wants nothing to do with weblogs.com hosting or puttering around in Manila, um, he has been known to change his minds. The whole Dave/Userland enmeshment is not, from all that I have read, defined enough for me.
Do you trust him? Do you trust them? Does it matter to you?
It would matter to me. I would say, Nah, Dave. No thanks. I'll stick to your original, non-negotiable, one-time-only offer. And I want my Data according to the July 1 "commitment date" you've referenced in your most recent audio post. Or before. Since you're making great progress.
That's it. If I were you, I would be so ready to kick ass that my foot would already be in my boot and winding up. Of course, as I said, that's just me. And I'll link to you (and actually FIX my links to you, "Murphy-Willing") no matter where you land.
Now, go do the right thing.
