[liedra]

I was an editor for freshmeat back in the early 2000s and it was a lot of fun. I was there when fm acquired themes.org and was one of the main people tasked with ensuring the HUGE db of themes was sanely migrated into the fm backend. We had stupidly high standards, and I don't think a lot of people really knew how much we threw out over the years, or how much we sanitised the entries (so much broken English!). We also had to (to a certain degree) sanity check the projects - make sure they looked like they did what they did. One of the best projects I ever had to say no to was a "next-gen compression tool" which came during a bit of a fad for these in the early 2000s and basically converted everything to binary and got rid of the 0s. (Not surprisingly, there wasn't an "unzip" tool!) Nice try, guy!

Another story I remember is all the flak we got when we opened the osx.freshmeat.net section - we got so much criticism about how we'd sold out etc. etc. but it actually turned out to be quite a good repository for OS X apps for a while until iTunes kinda took over.

Good times :D

[chrissnell]

What I remember most about that era was some guys that ran themes.org who lived up in Tahoe and worked. I was living in Texas at the time and wanted so badly to be able to work remotely from a ski town. Virtually nobody got to work remotely back in 2000. Years later, I finally got my wish and moved to Park City, UT and lived that life. Good times. I can only imagine how much fun it must have been in the big-money dotcom days.

[zeruch]

That was Trae and Co. Much as I liked the guy the "fame" he got went way to his head and his contributions were far short of his ambitions. He alienated a lot of folks with his constant demands for what would otherwise be perks for senior engineers (or higher), and mid-day snowboarding excursion... and -to be brutally honest- preening when he visited HQ.

Last I heard he's settled down some and does good work back in his home territory in Georgia.

[contingencies]

Wow, never knew you did that! Hey, since you're in the UK, and he's just passed his two year anniversary, as a fellow Aussie you should make some academic excuses and go visit Assange in London already. I'm sure he'd enjoy catching up on your area.

(Re: reply. Err .. as an ethicist I'm not sure how you actually wrote that! If push came to shove - and I highly doubt they'll give you personal problems for visiting - have you no faith in your institution to protect you? Talk about chilling effects... you have to make sure you go now, so you maintain some self respect and score a fun lecture lead-in!)

[liedra]

Yes, I'm an ethicist, but I also am a realist. In the current HE environment in the UK having a "permanent job" means very little these days. I'm all for bucking the system, but I have to be able to be in the system to effect change, and a lot of that isn't through token activities like this but working to change policy and governance structures (and educate the next generation!). I'd rather have a solid base from which to do that sort of thing than the ability to lose everything. It's not a whistleblower situation, I have nothing apart from a good story to really gain from meeting with him, and it's not particularly a principle thing because I think you have to pick your battles, and this isn't one of the ones I've picked.

[contingencies]

It greatly saddens me to read this, C. Best of luck with your future battles, whatever they may be.

[keithpeter]

"and I highly doubt they'll give you personal problems for visiting"

Er - are you living in the UK?

[liedra]

Given I'm here on a work visa, I'd rather not have much cause for authorities to look closely at me until I've gone for citizenship :-)