Betalogue

As a very, very, very frustrated user of Radio UserLand, it’s becoming harder and harder for me to read Dave Winer’s pseudo-essays about where the software industry is today and where it is going.

Here’s the latest one:

“Who will pay for software?” by Dave Winer, DaveNet

First of all, anyone who expresses sympathy for the music industry is highly suspicious to me. Whatever happened to sympathy for musicians? If anyone has been getting screwed, it’s artists, and if anyone is guilty of “devaluating” music, it’s the music industry itself.

Then someone whose spell checking software does not catch “dilineating” (last paragraph of column) doesn’t come across as, well, a very careful writer.

Finally, what’s the big deal about such columns anyway? At little more than 450 words, it’s not “in-depth” writing by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t see any insights, any thoughtful analysis — and I certainly don’t see how it takes a great lunch conversation with a insightful friend to “put things together”, when there is so little to put together in the first place.

Most of all, it is, once again, a self-serving piece: “I went to academia to re-find my roots, to find something that worked, to see if it can work again.

Maybe Dave Winer could “re-find” his roots by sitting down with Radio users for a little while and trying to see how frustrating using his software products in the real world can be. (I know, I know, he’s not involved in the day-to-day operations of UserLand anymore… But he’s still promoting the stuff, isn’t he?)

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Tuesday, May 27th, 2003 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.