Okay. This post requires a little background. Ever since I can remember, I have been in the middle of things. Arguments. Fights between friends. Friends that were incompatabile with other friends that wanted to spend time with mutual friends. Hostile customers, hostile coworkers, hostile strangers.
I’m always in the middle.
I was probably a diplomat, mediator, problem solver, social worker, or something else in another life. I do everything that I can to avoid confrontation. When confrontation is unavoidable, I do my best to solve the problem for as many people as possible with the least amount of trauma. It’s what I do, don’t ask me why.
This brings me to the issue at hand. It seems that the CC software licensing debate at burningbird and intertwingly has come to a screeching halt. I feel partially responsible for this, and if you add in my natural behavior listed above, I want to do something about it if I can.
Sometimes we say or write stuff that comes out wrong. Or maybe it comes out right with the wrong inflections or emphasis. We end up saying more than we mean to say. I see Sam’s side. One defense mechanism against counterproductive bitching/moaning/flame wars in projects (open source and otherwise) is to take a ‘put up or shut up’ attitude.
At the same time, I can totally see how Shelly could be upset and frustrated. Weblogs and online collaboration/idea sharing should not be an elitest thing. All of this new communication technology is supposed to make things better, not worse.
I have a feeling that nobody involved wanted to cause a breakdown. I don’t think that very many people knowingly cause stop energy. It happens sometimes. What can the blogging community as a whole do to correct it? We can do our best not to send that email or publish that entry/comment that you made while you were hopping mad. Lets try to keep personal attacks to a minimum. Lets try to see something positive or something that makes sense on ‘the other side.’
I don’t want to turn this into a he said she said kind of thing. I really would like to do whatever I can to help diffuse the current situation and the whole stop energy phenomenon as a whole.
Things are busy today at work, and I don’t have the full time and energy to think about this in more detail, but I’m sure that something can be done. Perhaps consider Bloggers Against Stop Energy (BASE) as a project for my spare time and yours. Feel free to direct thoughts, rants and flames my way.
Update: I really like Simon St.Laurent‘s comment at burningbird:
“Shut up and write some code” should never be an answer. Coming up with powerful and elegant solutions requires thinking harder than that, and talking.