On Jan 18, 2008 4:00 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/01/2008, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
The Foundation announcing support of some random YouTube-clone startup is really the final straw. They have now /officially/ abandoned the vision of free content.
Would you care to justify this assertion with anything? I see a particularly *pointless* decision, but no-one's eating any babies here.
Generally the words "final straw" would preclude baby-eating. It's a straw, a issue that takes a set of issues over his own *personal* threshold.
For any random disliked action it's fairly likely that it will be *someone's* final straw.
So that Chad feels this issue was the final straw for him shouldn't guide us much, but his (snipped) position "When Flash itself becomes open-source, I'll join. Until then, I'm not touching it and I encourage the community to do the same", no doubt also held by other looking at his message and thinking "right on!", is worth our consideration.
I sympathize with Chad's frustration, but I don't share his grim outlook on that particular issue. Even in the most negative interpretation of Kaltura Wikimedia remains clearly committed to freedom and the free formats freedom requires. If you dismiss this commitment over one or two confused issues you'll lose the opportunity to help ensure that the commitment remains and can be realized over the long run.