1. James on April 1, 2005 12:52 AM writes...

I'm appalled at the people bending over backward to defend this practice.

It's very simple: if you can't fund your project legitimately, you shouldn't be hiring full-time developers. There are thousands of open source projects that have no full-timers and still manage to be successful. If you're after money, you shouldn't have licenced your code for free.

It's even more damning that the person responsible is currently on vacation in Italy. He talks about "covering his costs", but yet he can afford such a trip? Please. None of these guys are scrounging, and if they were, it'd be their own fault.

2. Bud Gibson on April 1, 2005 3:29 AM writes...

"we are going to have to find ways to defend against this sort of karmic hijacking."

Haven't we already? Look at all the opprobrium the practice has garnered so far.

I think one reason people defend Matt (the person responsible) is that many derive great value from his product, yet they haven't paid, and he needs money. It's hard to be too hard on him if you occupy that compromised position.

What we really need is a revenue model for social entrepreneurs.

3. Jim Phelps on April 1, 2005 3:44 PM writes...

This is very interestingly like Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom". http://www.craphound.com/down/
(Haven't read it yet? It is a great fun Sci Fi novel that you can download for free).

In "Down and Out", you get Whuffy - positive ratings on the net - and you get services and products and jobs. You loose your Whuffy (ratings) and your ability to get stuff and keep friends dries up.

When the news about wordpress.og reached Google, the wordpress.org page rank went to 0/10. Yahoo! pulled all the listings as well. Suddenly no Whuffy.

It seems that there are two feedback loops to this effect: (1) you supporters will be pissed off and will feel cheated and you'll loose their support and (2) the search engines will get pissed off and will take away your Search Whuffy. Both of which mean your project dies on the vine or at least withers down to a vestigial remain on your web site.

The difference between "Down and Out" and this scenario is that real money came into the mix. The cause was the need for actual money not just Whuffy. Matt and wordpress had tons of Whuffy but you can't buy servers with Whuffy alone. We need a mechanism for converting Whuffy to money -- one that doesn't suck like banner ads or selling email lists.

- Jim

4. Dan Phiffer on April 2, 2005 6:35 AM writes...

Jim: There isn't a scarcity of social currency (PageRank or Whuffy) which seems like it might lead to a difficulty converting it into capital (better than it is, anyway) in a market-driven economy. BTW, I'm in the midst of reading the book and I'm quite enjoying it.

I tend to agree with James on this. Coding is an inherently privileged activity. I don't see why "social entrepreneurs" (if I'm understanding Bud's use correctly) should be rewarded more than they already are. Why should the winners (those who best take advantage of social structures) be given additional compensation? Or rather, how would this bonus compensation help the community?

I certainly can't see a need for the kind of money Matt seems interested in raising. The 'net works in part because of the stability and good faith created by the likes of Apache and Linux. If a project is compelling enough, it seems evident that good hackers will donate their time to make it happen.

5. Jim Phelps on April 4, 2005 10:53 PM writes...

Dan:

I thought the book was great fun. Give Eastern Standard Tribe a read too.

As far as there being (or not being) a scarcity of social currency, there isn't a set finite amount like we think of natural resources or space to build. I think there is a scarcity of area in peak. There are only 10 top 10 spots on Google - the golden region for businesses. People are converting (illegally mostly) that peak area in the social currency curve for money. Thus we have comment spam filled with URLs for Viagra that are placed by people who are paid to do so.

I agree that there is no natural upper limit to the amount of social currency but I do think there is a scarcity of prime social currency. That was what Matt's experiment was all about. Can we push a listing up into the prime top 10 for money.

Ask for the mistake, evil, broken trust part... I think Matt made a mistake. I think people need money. Matt tried to find a clever way to make money. It was better than robbing a bank but worse than running a "fund-raiser". Better than banner ads but worse than a low license fee. It made me decide that I like WordPress enough to send some cash his way.

- Jim

6. Dan Phiffer on April 5, 2005 3:17 AM writes...

I guess I see Google's results as an approximation of the underlying social currency. It's an algorithmic representation of a human (hopefully--not some spambot) interaction, one mediated by hyperlinks. The same is true of Whuffy of course, it being another kind of representation, but at least it doesn't seem to impose artificial scarcity from what I've read so far.

You know, something I should have thought of before posting my first comment -- I'm not sure I really understand what is meant by "social currency." The term itself seems to go against how I believe social interactions work. Ah well...

As for your second comment -- I guess I see a distinction between a bad and an unethical decision. The latter undermines trust in a different way than the former.