There’s an analogy that Shelley uses every so often that for one reason or another, started rumblings in my brain this morning: kicking the baby squirrels. This came up most recently in the continuing discussion of the Movable Type 3 licensing brouhaha.
Mistakes in licenses are serious things. Folks are right to question these. People who plan on using Movable Type in the future should continue to question confusing language in the licenses.
What’s sad about this though, is that the ‘baby squirrel’ phenomena is still in effect for Movable Type and the Trotts and Six Apart, when I thought we’d grown beyond that.
What do I mean by the ‘kicking the baby squirrel’ phenomena? When we address technical issues or question pricing, and you perceive it as an attack on the people, that’s accusing us of kicking the baby squirrels. If you perceive any criticism of a company or a technology or a person’s writing or opinions, as an act of overt hostility, and respond with personal insults in return, that’s playing the kicking the baby squirrel card.
Obviously, there’s been a lot of this going on recently. For all the people who looked at the restrictions of the licenses and raised holy hell, there were also quite a few who lambasted all of us who were upset as simply being whiny, spoiled children, complaining because we weren’t getting what we wanted for free, throwing tempertantrums, and refusing to pay.
Of course, that’s patently ridiculous. Few if any of the posts I’ve read (or written) about this have been from people unwilling to pay for MovableType — just from people unwilling to pay what they saw as unreasonable prices with draconian restrictions, which, coming from a company that’s historically been seen as one of the “good guys”, took us all by surprise. Yesterday’s clarifications should do a lot to help that and calm things down, but if there are still questions to be asked, there’s no reason to stop asking them.
What this really reminded me of, though, was what has been passing for political discourse in the US lately. Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more of the “us versus them” mentality, where “us” seems to be defined as those who slavishly follow Bush and his cronies, and “them” being absolutely everyone else, foreign or domestic. Agree with Bush and his policies, and you’re fine, but question any of them, and suddenly you’re unpatriotic and a traitor.
It doesn’t matter that those of us who question generally do so because we’re concerned, because we want to see this country do well for itself, do well for others, and be respected in the international community and by itself. It doesn’t matter how serious the questions are, how serious the concerns behind them are, or how they are presented. The mere act of questioning is enough to condemn us.
Sound familiar?
I haven’t bothered to look into whether the political baby squirrel protectors overlap with the technological baby squirrel protectors much or at all, and just off the top of my head, I’d assume that any overlap would be entirely coincidental, and not have any real relevance. It’s the attitude that disturbs me, though, and I really wish it was one that we (collectively) could get over.
iTunes: “Fuck It Up (Did You Ever Get the Feeling?)” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1995, 3:42).