[shiflett]

I'm surprised you blame us for the way Jeff is perceived. The only thing I think we could have maybe done better is omit the links to his actual replies. In retrospect, that might have been better. Our link text is pretty benign, e.g., "Then, we heard from Jeff."

The story is simple. We offered to save the likes of users who asked us to. Jeff objected, so we didn't. We offered to save the recipe data and make a searchable index. Jeff objected, so we didn't. While we might have been surprised, we complied; we didn't want to ruffle any feathers.

I can only imagine that you either object to the fact that we started the Open Recipes project or that we shared the story behind it. Either way, I'm afraid I just don't care. If there are exactly two people who think we did something wrong here, and lots of people who support what we're doing, then I think we chose wisely.

Also, you can't truthfully claim that anything we're doing is competing with Punchfork. (It was shut down at the end of March, before the Open Recipes project existed.) Not that there's anything wrong with competition.

[earbitscom]

Your link text is benign, set between accusations and hyperbole. You could have emailed Jeff with context on what you were thinking. You didn't. You tweeted asking him to DM you about a conversation you wanted to have, not him. He told you he was busy. You could have emailed him context then, you didn't. You posted a page publicly saying you planned to save a bunch of the data from his site. He asked you if you were planning to scrape his data and said he thought doing so was uncool. You didn't answer the question. You said you weren't doing anything uncool, which is a matter of opinion, not a clarification of fact, and again acted as though it was his responsibility to pursue clarification from you.

Your approach was wholly unprofessional. The reason it pissed me off is because I know what kind of person Jeff is to those entrepreneurs who approach him professionally, respectful of his time. He is completely approachable, super friendly, and incredibly generous with his time. The reason he wasn't here is because your approach lacked common courtesy and respect. You acted as if he owed it to you to reach out and discuss your project. He doesn't. Then you all but slandered him in your post, paraphrasing him with things like "So long, suckers," which is something that anybody who knows Jeff knows could not be further from his attitude about anything.

I'm glad you came around to respecting Jeff's request. It's too bad you didn't approach the situation as reasonably from the beginning. I get tired of seeing good people have their name tarnished around the community by people whose sense of entitlement leads them to paint a one-sided picture of someone who has worked so hard to contribute to the community, simply because they didn't get what they wanted, how they wanted it.

I don't think having an easily incited mob of trolls supporting your view validates what you've done. I think if you take a step back and look at the situation subjectively, you'd realize you owe Jeff an apology.