One of my inspirations Simon Willison, as well as his excellent deep analysis on numerous web development issues, provides pithy links and comments in from “elsewhere” on his blog. I highly recommend subscribing to his feed.
Today, he shared this quote from Anil Dash:
“It’s clear that, even those who are privileged by access and wealth and the ability to amplify their own voices have anticipated that we’ll all be disenfranchised by the private companies that own and control our networks of communication. And yet, most of our effort and ambition in the technology industry are not going towards building for the open web.”
Anil Dash, The Web in Danger, Nov 16th, 2009
Oh, how clear it is. As I commented on Simon’s post:
Anil is a VP at Six Apart.
Why do images on TypePad not have file name extensions?
Why are there no export features for Vox?
I could go on… I’ve emailed Anil Dash personally months ago about each of these issues. As has historically been the case with my interactions with Anil, I’ve only got hand waving back.
Here are the Get Satisfaction threads on those two issues:
This is something that gets me emotional. Even if Six Apart did not compete with us (WordPress/WordPress.com/Automattic) in some spaces, this issue is one of my emotional Achilles’ heels.
For all of their tooting about the open web, not only are Six Apart’s main services not open source projects, but they have long outstanding issues with locking in their customers.
Being able to get your content and data out is the greatest fundamental of the open web!
Update (later the same day): Announced today at Web 2.0 NYC, Anil is no longer employed by Six Apart. He is now Director of Expert Labs. I wish him all the best in his new job trying to effect change on the greatest scale.
