Comments on: Critical Self-Examination

By: nathan

nathan — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:30:30 +0000

Andrew—
I didn’t mean to imply you were hiding your use of Microsoft products, simply that it was… ironic. From my perspective, the plugin is important, since it allows users to embed metadata about licensing in document formats that they use every day. Part of CC’s mission is to reduce the cost of re-using copyright-protected material. A big part of that cost is figuring out who owns a work, and embedded, machine-readable metadata is a good way to make that easier.

As to the protest: I guess I wasn’t aware that Microsoft was added at the last minute (I’m not sure they were, I’d have to go back and look at my program). I’m also not sure that as a member of the panel, participants need to be consulted about the addition of other participants. I know that I wasn’t consulted as to whether I wanted to be on a panel with crazy-red-nose-anti-microsoft-ranting-guy. If they didn’t want to appear with Microsoft, it seems the more mature, professional approach would have been… to not appear. But again, that’s my personal opinion.

Nathan

By: andrew garton

andrew garton — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:30:27 +0000

thanks for making the effort to point out what i wasn’t hiding in the first place. yes, i do use microsoft products. i wasn’t so much concerned about the product, but the product placement. who gives a toss about a microsoft plugin and why should a mere plugin be given such a high rating?

with regards to the “protest”, there was a legitimate reason for this and yes, childish, but i feel the response was less childish than the impression that was created amongst some that microsoft representation had to be accomodated on a panel that its participants weren’t adequatly consulted.

i’m surprised that people have been more prone to criticise my report for the microsoft incident. the brand is well known enough to not have to be honed in on a report i felt covered a lot more ground.

-ag.

By: Office Plugin / Self-Examination / OOo follow-up at the law of averages

Office Plugin / Self-Examination / OOo follow-up at the law of averages — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:38:36 +0000

[...] Tom posted an insightful comment to my post from last week regarding the iSummit report. His point was basically bringing me back from snarky-fun-land to reality-land: “OK, so Garton’s an idiot, but what if he makes legitimate points?” (my words, not his) My comments were the result of my initial read-through which pushed some buttons (regarding the paper throwing, accusations that we “helped” Microsoft, etc). I had sort of decided not to publicly complain about the whole “Oh my god! You helped Microsoft!” attitude, but after reading Garton’s report, well, the soap box doth beckon. So a few further thoughts spurred by Tom’s comment: [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 14:50:49 +0000

The document metadata is funny, and the paper throwing quite childish. But you’d garner more sympathy if you addressed the substance of his arguments.

For instance, was the atmosphere too self-congratulatory? Was there enough space for critical self-examination? Should CC have given the MS Office plugin such prominence irrespective of the availability of other plugins (such as the Inkscape CC functionality)? Should Microsoft have sponsored the summit, and if not then what would the implications for the location and scholarships have been?

By: sb

sb — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 01:26:34 +0000

That’s comedy!! Good find. Hopefully this post encourages some people to be less childish in the future.

By: rejon.org : The Jon Phillips Portal

rejon.org : The Jon Phillips Portal — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 17:10:18 +0000

[...] Blog Login Archive + Search RSS 2.0 RSS 0.92 Atom 0.3 Nathan’s criticism of Garton’s iCommons Criticism-lightNathan has a nice rebuttal that points out the irony of Andrew Garton’s armchair criticisms of the iCommons conference. Posted by jon @ 12:09:12 2006.10.06 [...]