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It's a fragile Internet, David -- made up of people and machines and software. Doing the best we can. Four years of free service is a pretty good deal, and we're going to help people transition. The usual flamers are throwing rocks. Someday we'll grow up and start helping each other, but that day hasn't come yet.

David, you left out a bit. A big bit.

I really can't believe what I'm hearing from you, and not hearing from Doc, who's still up and running just fine while voices like Tom Matrullo, Craig from Booknotes, Dean Landsman and others were shut down without warning today. Hopefully sometime after July 1st they'll get their words back. If they ask REALLY NICELY, during this "one time offer."

Let's see what folks say once they get, when they get, if they get their years worth of work back.

David, if you went to post today and found out your blog was gone, without any idea it was going to happen, and that sometime in the next couple of weeks you might get it back, if you don't "whine" about it, what would you be doing tonight?

And how about Doc, who mysteriously was spared the shutdown?

I read a book once that you guys might want to go back and re-read. It had your names on it.

Th worst bit is that the lack of notice makes it really hard for those bloggers affected to take their audiences with them.

I have just switched blogs to typepad and been able to put a warning message on the old blog and domain map to the new one - these guys don't have that option.

Jeneane and Euan, what can you do to help?

Well, let's see what I can do to help, Dave. I know a little about technology.

First, in your audio blog you mention something about your DNS server:

"The DNS service provider just can't handle the number of different domains under weblogs.com. We had to put them all in one place, and they had to be on one of my servers."

Exactly what was the problem, and why is this different after the move? Would see if there was a DNS limitation, this would exist before the move, same as after. Perhaps you can get some good advice if you give specifics.

But it sounds like you had to place the sites on a single machine,and the performance sucks. But you all had to know the performance was going to be an issue before this move. What was different that all of a sudden you had to just shut the servers down?

Finally you're saying the only way to solve this will require programming for a couple of months, and you can't do this for health reasons. I had no idea you were sickly -- so sorry!

But what exactly will require months of programming? To the point where you had to pull the sites with no warning?

We're willing to help, but you have to give specifics.

I'm using a DNS service provider, UserLand operates their own DNS.

Re the things you think I had to know, well, I didn't.

There are plenty of DNS providers that can handle far, far more records than the weblogs.com server would require without any effort whatsoever; I would have thought that EasyDNS, the provider that appears to be serving weblogs.com's root file, would be one of them seeing as they're one of the biggest registrars there is. So if that's really a problem, there are options that can solve it.

Just meant that a bit of warning of the move would have helped the guys make plans Dave

Dave,

While I can understand the situation (moving, hosting costs, etc.) that you're in, I still believe it's not wrong for people to toss a little fire on this one. Just as you are concerned and struggling with the situation, a lot of people who have put a lot of efforts into their writing, design, etc. have at least temporarily lost that work - and only found out because someone told them offhand or they happened to go try and post something. I think if it's something that's been developing for longer than just this weekend, it's not out of the question that a lot of the bloggers affected would have done what they needed to do weeks ago over a slow process in order to migrate elsewhere, rather than vanish from the Web - if they had known there was a problem. You stated that "The usual flamers are throwing rocks. Someday we'll grow up and start helping each other, but that day hasn't come yet." I disagree - The rocks have been minimal, if they've even gotten beyond the pebble stage. In fact, there is barely an outcry at all in the blogosphere, which is downright surprising.

I also respectfully disagree with you on the "growing up" point. Just as people band together to flame folks on the Internet, they band together to help out if there's a problem. I've seen numerous posts by bloggers who have domainspace that have offered some up for displaced bloggers, including from Jeneane (who posted a comment above). I would gladly offer up some space on any of my sites if someone needed to post in a temporary home.

Most of this is legit criticism that a lot of people who I think have their heads on straight. I think everyone involved is in a tough situation, but it's not out of line to think that people will be annoyed, irrelevant of the reasons.

What am I doing? 1) Holding you accountable. 2)Offering any weblogs.com bloggers onto allied to post in the mean time if they'd like.

What are you doing, Dave? Do you know?

To David, there are only about 45 people so far who have missed their sites enough to post a note asking for them to be moved. Not thousands.

One thing I was going to suggest is that the people who are up in arms over this, calling it murder and such, step back and wait 30 days or so and see how it turns out. You might be surprised what happens.

Dave - while you make an excellent point about the number of folks who have responded so far, it's kind of like arguing about locking people in the engine room of a boat that's sinking in order to save the rest - you can't win.

I would also hypothesize that if, perhaps, Google never came in and swept up Blogger, Evan and company ran out of funding, and blogspot went down. If one blogger, let's say Atrios (who is, I know, a big example - but not uncalled for being that everyone is still clamoring about a few bloggers, including Doc Searls, being up at this point) has his site vanish. What do you think would happen then?

So it's not that there isn't a ton of people banging down your door - if one person tries to do so, it feels like too many to a lot of outsiders. Let's put it this way - everyone learned a REALLY good lesson this week. Back up your stuff.

And to Tom, sorry, I don't accept your logic, and if you were the constant subject of flaming, I doubt if you would either. Try the Golden Rule, Tom. I've always thought you're a decent guy. Reflect on that for a bit.

After reading all the comments and listening to DW's audioblog, I think he honestly meanty well and is grappling with a situation that had clearly become difficult for him.

As for the style of implementation and communication of same, well ... Dave has his own style. As he pointed out, reflect on that for a bit. Style and tone are critical aspects of communicating effectively with each other in the blogosphere.

That wasn't too specific, Dave.

First of all, the issues isn't one of DNS, is it? After all, these sites are all subdomains, aren't they? Is there a problem with having that many subdomains?

What I think you're saying is that you couldn't split the weblogs.com subdomains across servers, and therefore put them all on one. And the server you moved these to is much smaller than the one you had at Userland, and to help service, you shut down the free weblogs.

Here's a suggestion -- shut down weblog.com, the pinging service. Not seriously -- shut it down for a couple of weeks and let the folks get their stuff and do their redirects and move mroe gracefully, and then start it again.

There are other pinging services that can take the load for now.
And you didn't even seek to explain what happened until a few of us posted on it.

The point I'm making is that I suspect this was not a technical problem, or not entirely a technical problem. Hosting these people for free or not, you let some good people down. You behaved in the same manner that you accuse others of behaving and seem to think you can do so with impunity, and managed to convince some of your friends that you can do so with impunity.

I look at you and I think to myself, what would Dave do if this happened to him? His weblog was arbitrarily shut down like that?

Whatever any of us are saying now wouldn't even begin to compare to what you would probably be saying if this had happened to you.

Sorry, meant to say, 'no seriously...'

In the interest of not continuing to bombard Mr. Weinberger's blog with comments, I'll make one last statement.

It's fine that you disagree with my logic - perhaps it's flawed, I'm just giving you my perspective. That's the whole point of this blogging thing, isn't it? I have yet to flame you on this subject, and have made sure to post both sides of anyone's situation - including Rex Hammock's (who had praise and criticism all in one) - when I did write about it. In no way, shape, or form have I not been "decent" on the subject, IMHO. Sure - perhaps you have received 900 emails from flamers that absolutely 100% is ridiculous - but I felt after doing some due diligence on the situation, reading the comments and posts that were barely out there, and trying to reach you via email through your site, that it was a legit topic to post about. It's obviously a bad situation that you were in, otherwise there would be no way in the world you would have taken the tactic you did.

Sure, it's not 500 people offering hosting, but if you don't consider a couple people saying they would host others a "help," then that's fine - but I think it is. Perhaps the "flames" outweigh that in your inbox, and that's fine too - but it doesn't mean that everyone hasn't "grown up" and met whatever expections you have for the masses.

As for the logic, I don't know which point you're talking about, but if it's the point about blogspot vanishing, I think I'm 100% dead on, and I'll stand behind that till my webhost dies a horrible death. So whether or not you consider me "decent" after posting is definitely unfortunate - and I would consider it a loss on my end - I still don't see how I've said anything that wasn't constructive - our outwardly hurtful towards your situation. If I've mis-stated one fact, then tell me - but I don't think I have.

I do have to say that you've been very stand-up about this, and it's great to see you following this thread (and I'm guessing countless others) this morning. I just think that it shouldn't be surprise that a lot of people are quite bothered by this sitation. But just as you said, it's not a business, it's a person - completely understandable, as you were in a crazy spot - unfortunately, many of the users weren't aware of the fact that userland wasn't involved until Sunday.

David, per your comment:

"Second, why the two week wait? That's going to be painful for the thousands of bloggers, many of whom are my friends. Again, I assume that Dave is correctly estimating the amount of work it will take to package up several thousand sites. If I thought he were either incompetent or making people wait out of meanness, I'd flame him."

Dave Winer had said that he was going to package these up in one day:

"So I just did the best I could, which was to say, if you make a request by July 1st, then I will go through that list of all the sites that are there on July 1st, and I will create exported versions of those sites on that day."

David, per your comment:

"Second, why the two week wait? That's going to be painful for the thousands of bloggers, many of whom are my friends. Again, I assume that Dave is correctly estimating the amount of work it will take to package up several thousand sites. If I thought he were either incompetent or making people wait out of meanness, I'd flame him."

Dave Winer had said that he was going to package these up in one day:

"So I just did the best I could, which was to say, if you make a request by July 1st, then I will go through that list of all the sites that are there on July 1st, and I will create exported versions of those sites on that day."

Dave detractors:

I had many of the same thoughts until I thought about the problem from a technical perspective: notification isn't as easy as it seems. Manila has a the email address of all of the site owners, but how many of them are valid? If you sent an email to 3000 people at the same time, you run a good risk of blacklisting your servers, a risk that Dave at Harvard can't afford to take.

Let's set aside the email issue and assume that each and every email was valid. Manila has a method to send a bulletin to the membership group, but that can be disabled by the site owner, leaving us a contact dead end.

Tack #2: write a script that harvests email messages and sends notification. Hmm, back to spam risk to Harvard.

Tack #3: write a script that changes the home page of all of the individual sites to show the original content as posted but with a forced "disclaimer" at the top that the site will disappear in 30 days. Not really an option since you'd have to write and debug the script and would still (Murphy's Law) leave some out in the cold.

The real problem is contact with the user. How do you accurately and quickly accomplish that? I think Dave thought it through and made the best decision given the tools he had to work with. Another argument: why didn't UserLand keep the sites running until the content could be removed? Same problem as above.

Basically, the situation sucked and Dave was willing to take the abuse that some are heaping on him. This way, UserLand can be left to focus on enterprise software and not free websites.

Thanks, Dave for taking it in the shorts so the web can move on.

Well, now this just gets more curious all the time -- Dave is splitting subdomains across machine, and all the now defunct weblogs go to one IP address, the same one that feeds weblogs.com pinging service; all the Radio weblogs.com sites go to another IP address.

Being a tech and curious, exactly what happened with this Dave? I've always liked to keep up with these situations. And like I said, I may have to good, helpful suggestions for you. I'm not Rogers or a part of your RSS board, but I know a thing or two.

What say, you put up a nice, detailed technical overview of what's happening and see if you can't get the help you need.

Tom says you've been stand up about this -- I'll agree IF you go into more of those details I asked for.

There is something here that is byond the issues of Dave and hosting and flaming.

Sound files are not readable, not searchable and not quotable. They are like text in image files.

More thought and discussion needs to be done on this.

Steve Kirks -- easy:

A note in scripting.com. A note saying what was rearrangement of machines was happening with Userland. A note saying that with this move, things might go wrong.

A note giving people just a little warning that servers were being switched. A note saying that Userland can no longer afford to provide any form of free service, and that this could impact on the existing weblogs.

A note describing the technical issues so that the rather impressive group of people that read Dave, including people on the board of most major internet technologies, might provide help -- and they would, you know.

A note after the fact in scripting.com that this happened at all. Dave Winer is quick enough to point out the faults in others.

Dave, saying, just once: "Sorry I had to do this."

"Sorry this happened."

That there was no warning is a bit odd.

There is an announcement in bureaucratese on the Userland web site:

"LOS ALTOS, CA -- May 17, 2004 -- UserLand Software, Inc., the venerable weblogging and web content management company formed by Dave Winer in October 1988, today announced the execution of a transaction whereby certain of its assets and operations were acquired by a new corporate entity. The new company, UserLand Corporation, acquired the assets and operations of UserLand Software related to the products Manila and Radio UserLand, plus the "UserLand" brand name and website. The new company will operate under the name "UserLand Software". In the transaction, the old UserLand Software retained significant assets including the Frontier technology code base and other technology and assets developed by UserLand Software over its more than 15 years of operations. As part of the transaction, UserLand Software agreed to change its corporate name to something not incorporating the term "UserLand". Other terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Scott Young, Chairman and CEO of the new company, said that the transaction resulted as a consequence of a number of decisions made after Mr. Young and several other experienced technology executives took over the management of the original UserLand in November 2003.  "There were a number of reasons for the transaction," said Mr. Young, "but ultimately, the board believed that the transaction provided the best structure for the company's go forward business.  This structure allows the new team to concentrate on operational issues while allowing Dave and the original UserLand to focus on the future of the Frontier technology code base.""

http://www.userland.com/stories/storyReader$211

One would have to be a much better reader of bureaucratese than I am in order to understand that implicit in this announcement is that "weblogs at weblogs.com are going to be closed down."

One thing that does surprise me is the lack of reaction from the new Userland: I would think it would be a *huge* black eye for them to have lots of websites that they had hosted for years vanishing without notice.

Hanan: Someone out there will transcribe this. Then it will live forever.

Dave seems to think we are so smart when we are agreeing with him. He thinks we are dummies who wont read an essay when he has bad news. When the little guys criticize Dave he cries "flame".

"Flaming is the practice of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting to a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are often posted in response to flame bait."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_war

Hostile? Insulting?
No.
Ticked off. Upset. Disappointed.

"Thanks for taking it in the shorts"??? Doc's post? Its interesting how Dave's audio announcement sounds like a PR flacks cop-out and no one wants to admit it. Funny how the bloggerati seem to be circling the wagons.

Dave made it clear in his 'voicemail to the blogosphere' that he did his best, but you know it was free and what more do you little people want from him?

A little respect.

Make a single DNS entry weblogs.com that looks like this:

*.weblogs.com. 14400 IN A 63.211.182.18

It's wildcard DNS and that one entry will allow anything.weblogs.com to resolve to the box.

For those others who are curious and who, like me, can't easily listen to audio files at the office, Jeneane has posted a transcript of Dave Winer's audio post: http://tinyurl.com/3536a

Matt, I think a better approach would be to run the redirect on the weblogs.com server. The IP addressing has already been split, which is why Doc's weblog is going to one machine, and the free ones elsewhere. Rather than redirect to old.weblogs.com, just redirect as people make their move.

I also have the software to do this, and have been using it at my site for two years now -- but it's Perl, not PHP. But I'm not going to host this because I don't know where I'll be in a few months and would not like to leave people hanging. More than this, though, is the issue of accountability.

If Dave agrees to do this, he can have my software and I'll even do the redirect entries for him. All he would need to do is put it on his machine.The resources to run this is trivial and any one of us will help Dave install it.

But I think the responsibility for this resides with Dave. It's true he's been hosting the folks for free -- but no one asked him to, he volunteered. However, once you start something, you have to see it to the end. You just can't decide one day, "Up, did that, no longer fun, moving on", leaving others to pick up the pieces.

This is one of those times when a technical solution doesn't abrogate the social consequences. But I think your offer to run redirection is a generous one, Matt.

I think Brad hit on it; at no point did UserLand or Dave come out and say "Weblogs.com now belongs to Dave Winer, the person, rather than to UserLand". I can't argue with Dave that it's unreasonable for a sickly person with a bum ticker to keep all those sites running. But it was never announced clearly that UserLand didn't own Weblogs.com any more. The original pages made it clear that UserLand was responsible for the service, which could reasonably be seen as promotion for its Manila product. So this is also UserLand's fault, to the extent that UserLand is a separate entity from Dave Winer, individual. And while it's now clear that the two are distinct, it has not always been so.

As I am just discovering this thread (thanks to Steve Kirks who deserves a blogger-medal-of-honor for the help he has extended to me and others) and since I was mentioned in it, I decided to jump in with a comment that may be redundant with other comments here by others and what I've said other places.

First: I am not here to flame Dave, but to praise him. Thank you for all the wonderful space you have provided me the past three years on which I have maintained my weblog. (By the way, sometime later today, I should be "live" at www.rexblog.com).

But the nuances of the corporate structure of Userland and properties it has created, now owns or has given away, and the employment status of Dave Winer, are, frankly, complex to those of us who don't care to keep up with it. In Dave's audioblog, he says he is founder and former CEO of Userland, but that he does not work there any longer. However, he continues throughout the message to use the pronoun "we" when referencing Userland. So, even he is somewhat confused by the nuances. I say this merely to respond to those who might suggest there is some universal awareness that Dave Winer is a person and Userland is a company and Userland can host websites like Doc Searls' at doc.weblogs.com, but that other weblogs.com sites can't be because it is owned by a person, Dave. See, it's a little confusing to understand the foggy corporate relationships of what is "ownable" in a virtual space.

I know there is a valid reason why "doc.weblogs.com" is hosted by Userland and still running, while "rex.weblogs.com" is not hosted by Userland, because it is owned by the person, Dave.

But please, it is not a flame to be asking why.

Bottom line for me: I am in no way complaining about fees or commercialism. I want Userland to make money and Dave to make money and every blogger who wants to, to make money. I would happily pay Dave a monthly redirect fee to point rex.weblogs.com to www.rexblog.com on its new servers.

My solitary complaint is that I was given no heads up to back up or alert the five readers of my weblog what was going on.

I transcribed it last night, as soon as he put up the audio post. It's here.

I'm wondering if there's a distinction between the paid Radio accounts that include hosting at a weblogs.com subdomain and the former free weblogs.com accounts.

This would seem to be the only logical explanation for some "foo.weblogs.com" sites still being up.

Scoble's blog, for example, parses as: radio.weblogs.com/0001011/ or:
scoble.weblogs.com/

...and both are still up. Does this mean that Robert pays for his hosting at Userland? Or, as a former director of marketing for the company, is he classed as a permanent friend of Userland and, therefore, exempt the hosting fees?

I've no issue with either of these, btw. It makes perfectly good sense for Userland to continue to host the blogs of certain friends of the company. But I'm not sure this fits into the logic of dividing the commercial from the non-commercial parts of Userland...

Radio sites are served using a static server (like Apache) and the Radio Community Server running under Frontier. That allows Dave to point "radio.weblogs.com" to the UserLand server and then Apache figures out the balance. Easy to maintain, etc.

Remember, folks, Dave is a programmimg expert, not an expert at webhosting, DNS, computer, networking or comic books. That means that he'll do the best he can, but is prone to making mistakes, as we all are.

Me? I'm an expert at DNS, webhosting and networks. I would have done it differently, but he didn't ask me and it's none of my business.

I am offering free help/webspace to displaced weblogs.com people.

http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/000969.html

I can't help everyone, but I'll do my part to help a little.

A long time ago I took a displaced manila site under my wing. It;s now under Http://news.blogfootball.com/ DW was great and extermely cooperative. It;s clocking 6000 page builds an hour at peak times.

If anybody is really stuck, I;ll do the same again. But, my advice: get your own domain name, then things will be better for you.

Mail me at steve at cybersaps.com with your root — when you get it, and your domain name, or heads up before.

I guess an apology is out of the question. Even a "free" service is obligated to alert users of impending doom if not a graceful wind-down.

Just curious, how would you alert 3000 people that their sites were about to go away, supposing that most of the sites were created four years ago. You think most of the email addresses work now? Did you think about spam? And btw, quite a few of them didn't work four years ago. Steve Kirks wrote about this hours ago.

Anyway, in the meantime Steve Hooker has offered to help transition sites. That should be pretty painless. There's a pointer on Scripting News.

And Erin Clerico and Rogers Cadenhead are teaming up to make an offer. Basically people will get a free trial period and be able to download their sites. So with any luck the emergency will be over soon.

A note on scripting.com last week, Dave. That's all it would take. A couple of notes about what was happening before you started moving people around.

And less of an attitude about how inconvenienced you are by these people.

BTW -- where was that technical info I asked for? After all, some of these people aren't going to want to be shepherded into another hosted solution that they can get a 'free trial' on. I'll help anyone that wants to move to GPL based Wordpress or Textpattern, in their own space, with their own domain.

"Just curious, how would you alert 3000 people that their sites were about to go away..."

Damn! If only someone could invent some kind of push format that you could regularly pick up and had, like, news in it... I bet that'd be really good for this!

Folks-Maybe my making the transition from academia to "business" has given me some perspective, but I think I would have thought this all along...here's what this looks like to me....

for 4 years, everyone's site at weblogs.com existed more or less because Dave put in lots of personal time and money to make it happen. Instead of complaining the day this ended, you should have thanked Dave every day for 4 years that it didn't.

You didn't deserve any notice. You didn't deserve anything from Dave. What you got was because of his good heart. Be appropriately grateful.

Dave ... since only a handful of people out of all the sites have asked for a backup would it make more sense to allow those folks onto the site for backups? Say a 24 hour window?

Your bandwidth shouldn't take much of a hit and the folks who are daily users would be able to make it happen.

"You didn't deserve any notice. You didn't deserve anything from Dave. What you got was because of his good heart. Be appropriately grateful."

Paul ... I call BS.

You are right that this was a free service, but look at the context of this decision. The man who is responsible for bringing weblogs into the public and developing a widely adopted system of sydnication simply cuts it off.

What would that be like? A father killing his son? Probably too much, but maybe taking off a finger?

The context of the decision is what needs to be considered I feel. Dave has indicated there are issues past what he has said. I can understand and accept that. It's a trump card.

But, please, do not frame your arguments in that this was only a free service.

Actually, I'd say it was only a free service. Let's not get carried away. I could see a justifiable anger with Mr. Winer over, as other people have said, the way this shutdown was handled. And I don't think he's ever willing to directly say "this could have been handled better, I'm sorry." This is an unfortunate trait.

But come on. People's fingers *aren't* being cut off here, guys. I have no doubt that Mr. Winer is trying to do the right thing by all his users. As with most of the battles that seem to storm around him, the fights are less over what he does than how he does them.

A question I don't honestly know the answer to -- doesn't Radio work by storing everything on the local system and pushing it to the hosting service? (I seem to recall that when I was testing it a while ago.)

Now I'm going to buzz home and back up my LiveJournal, I think. :)

I love the logic that nobody should complain because dave was sooo nice to host the blogs for four years. It Makes absolutely no sense. It's entirely possible (and highly probable) that people can both be appreciative AND annoyed that he just decided to pull the plug. They're not mutually exclusive at all.

Would've been wise to communicate to the users (isn't that what dave got on the SixApart's case for not too long ago?) and then figure out which of the 3,000 sites were stale. Shut down however many of the stale ones are necessary to keep the server up, and then give notice to the active ones.

Of course, what do I know? I'm just some childish flamer because I don't agree with Dave.

Friends of Dave should probably be considering either an intervention or a suicide watch about now.

The signals are everywhere.

"But come on. People's fingers *aren't* being cut off here, guys. I have no doubt that Mr. Winer is trying to do the right thing by all his users. As with most of the battles that seem to storm around him, the fights are less over what he does than how he does them."

Watts,

Meant it as an analogy given the context of who was involved. Do you not agree it's a little odd the person who is responsible for an industry would do this?

You have a very good point about the method.

I harbor no ill will towards Dave at all. He's a leader in a field that has meant a ton to my corner of the world. His ideas and visions of what could be with weblogs and more importantly RSS have meant a great deal to me.

It's disconcerting further information about the circumstances haven't been communicated as I think it'd avoid lots of the nastiness.

"You didn't deserve any notice. You didn't deserve anything from Dave. What you got was because of his good heart. Be appropriately grateful."

I call BS^2

Dave got as good as he gave. 3000 blogs on his "free" server was a big testbed for the technologies he was trying to develop, evangelize and sell. It was a huge marketing kick for him -- just as the fact that people are picking up WordPress right and left is a huge marketing kick for the developers, and why they (rightly) point to how heavily trafficked they are.

Yes, the free service was a generous thing to do. Yes, he was within his rights to yank it with no notice. But it was still a jerky thing to do. One of Dave's "things" is that he hates it when someone's being jerky to him, but doesn't recognize it when he's jerky to others.

And all the excuses -- including the heart condition -- sound pretty hollow. This was some corporate wrangle; some people backed Dave into a corner. He had to make some moves, fast, and didn't have time to plan properly. So he just charged in, tried and failed. Then he posted a grumpy note about it, and told people about what was going to happen after it already went wrong. And told them to be happy about it.

The technical problems perhaps could have been mitigated -- or not. We'll soon see how good the engine is, now that Frontier's source is to be released.

The communications problems, well, there's just no excuse. There's the entire freaking Internet at your fingertips, but you can't think of a single half-way effective way to get a message out? Pleeeeze.

At the end of the day, it's Dave's thing to handle. But he -- and he alone -- shredded what was left of his reputation. Who wants to do business or work on tech with someone who plans and communicates this badly?

Dave asks:

"Just curious, how would you alert 3000 people that their sites were about to go away, supposing that most of the sites were created four years ago. You think most of the email addresses work now? Did you think about spam? And btw, quite a few of them didn't work four years ago. Steve Kirks wrote about this hours ago."

Dave,

Perhaps you could have blogged the problem and asked for suggestions...or asked for help in spreading the word.

I can't speak for the old blogs hosted on weblogs.com that haven't worked, I can only say that I actively blogged there nearly daily for over two years and am growing senile so I really appreciated having my weblog content to help me remember things (thanks to the Google gods for caching it all). I had backed up a couple months ago, but look forward to receiving the missing gap from you.

Again, as I've said continuously for the past 48 hours and many times over the past couple years, I am grateful for the free space and was hopeful that my blogging was contributing-back to the "community" and providing a good example for the magazine publishing industry people who are my blog's five readers of what can be accomplished using the platform you created. I know that may not have had a direct financial benefit to you, but perhaps it could have benefited Userland, the company you founded, or blogging, the movement you helped to create. I would have gladly paid a hosting fee if ever asked. I did not realize that I could have escaped being orphaned had I been using a Radio account. I would have instantly signed up for that solution if given the option. My bad.

But, hey, no bigee. I have experienced real challenges and problems, so I fully realize that losing a few hundred blog posts for a few weeks does not rank high on the misery index. Just a nuasance and reminder to always back-up and mirror.

As for the future of hosting blogs as a business model, there is little doubt this little blip of a problem will encourage those seeking a hosted solution (individuals, educational institutions, corporations, associations) to go with deep-pocketed sources they perceive will be around for the long haul...ironically some of the same companies that have been so ridiculed by, well, I'll stop there.

I'm kinda surprised at the absence of the new Userland from the scene. If you're running a web services company, the last thing you want is for lotsa sites that had been using your services to suddenly shut down with no warning for reasons that people find hard to explain. That's hard to recover from. And answers like, "Well, responsibility for those services was never transferred from the old Userland to the new Userland," are awkward to give...

Oh, yes, and one more thing: Steve Kirks (www.houseofwarwick.com) is my hero. When I'm back up blogging I'll tell why. And if if were not for Dave Winer, I would have never met Steve Kirks. So there's one more thing I wish to publicly thank Dave for.

Winer,

I am not a blogger with your site, or any other you maintain control over (Truth be told, I have no weblog site...).

However, after reading the news stories about you, about how you are going about this situation you created, and some of how you handle yourself in general, I have to say I'm fairly insulted. Which is a pretty neat thing as I normally don't get that way when me or people I know are not directly concerned.

Now, you will probably nuke this message just because, according to stories I've read, you have done that sort of thing in the past. On the other hand, you might leave this message now that I have said that on the whol idea "I know that you know that I know" sort of thing. This way you can capitalize and say how you are such a nice guy over this comment.

Anyway, You did handle this situation poorly, and quite insultingly to many of the users you extended an olive branch and invatation to use your blogging service. A lot of people trusted in your and your service.

I've read things along the lines that your server could not handle the stress of who-knows-how-many-users hitting (3000?) it at once to get their site saved as much as possible. Well I would thing the solution to be simple, really. You claim that you are a good developer and such. Why not write up an automated script to zip up someones site and email it to them? Or how about zip it up, then leave their site as a link to download when they visit it and thus move thier life somewhere else. Hell, you could do something like this for your users: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/weblogBackup So it isn't like the technology doesn't exist already (and you didn't already have a hand in it...)

Also from what I've read, you could afford either of these solutions. Other solutions too I'll bet. You didn't, however, and now you make all your once users have to play nice to you to get their site back. While they might be playing nice and up till July 1st when you email them their sites, it will all be differant on July 2nd as they reveal themselves with their true feelings with no fear of oppression. But what do you care? You got them to get down on their knees and beg, and that must be quite an ego trip there.

Anyway, I'm done... Goodnight.

Four years of free hosting has NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER!!! Even the crappiest, bankrupt dot com wound down in a more graceful fashion. That's what respectable people do!!!

Oh, I think I have discovered a pattern behinds peoples suggestions and Dave's response.

Person one give a reasonable, feasible response.

Dave spouts off some esoteric none sense about some utopian paradise.

Person two asks for clarification.

Dave ignores them.

Person three gives another worked out suggestion, that again sounds feasible.

Dave says something about he though they were better then that.

Then Dave .... "blah, blah, blah."

My, it's a endless cycle. Let's hope someone gets they help they need.

Curse you, Winer. May you strive to repair your image. If you don't I'm sure someone will turn of your blog. Just to see if you don't mind.

But that would be alright wouldn't it?

It's too bad about Dave. He's in a tight spot. Not that I believe he really cares deeply about this, but there's no doubt his "legacy" has been seriously (and permanently?) tarnished because of this. I suspect wots got people all in a tizzy is that there doesn't appear that there was real genuine EFFORT to let people know in advance. Post your intentions on scripting.com anyway even if you figure a scant portion of weblogs.com folk read it. Tell all your buddies who have popular blogs (I'm sure you know plenty); they'd help spread word.

Good garsh a'mighty man, SOMETHING. To throw up your hands and claim (in effect) well, it would hardly have made any difference screams indifference. I will bet loads that that's not wot you specifically intended, but it sure comes off like you couldn't be bothered. And people would rather be hated than ignored. It seems you're dealing with a flotilla of serious issues in your life right now, and I think there's plenty of sympathy for you. However, there's a lot of folk now feeling badly stung by someone they considered a friend (even if they didn't know you from a hole in the wall). Instead of getting your back up, you should apologize for not fully considering the effects of your actions and be more aggressive about getting help to remedy the situation. Full technical disclosure seems like a good start.

Note: I can be misinformed, but I've read quite a few articles on this incident, so I hope I've got my facts straight.

So what seems to be the major complaint is that someone who spent the last 4 years hosting all these blogs... for FREE... has decided that he can't do it anymore (for whatever reason, it's really none of your business WHY he doesn't want to do it anymore). You all have decided that, since he provided you all with this FREE service for so long, that he's required not just to give you access to the blog data that's on HIS computers, but that he has to give you that access NOW, instead of at whatever pace he decides he can do.

Did Weblogs offer a backup service? If so, then not having the missing blog data is your own fault. If not, what the HELL are you doing using it as your host?

I sympathize with your (temporarily) lost data, I really do, but geez. You want to flame someone? Try the bonehead who doesn't back up his OWN blog. Hell, I do that, and I PAY for my hosting, with at least some recourse to regain my data if they decide to stop hosting.

End result? You get what you pay for, only you got a lot more than that (up to 4 (5?) years of hosting), PLUS the opportunity to get your data in a "little while". Please, keep complaining though, it might just make Dave decide it's too much trouble to send out all that blog data. I know I've been muttering "ungrateful wretches" under my breath, and I haven't even been hosting you all for free for years.

Btw, to whomever out there might be hosting other blogs for free still, let these posts be a warning. When you quit, you won't be thanked.

I've posted a short essay about the shutdown over at LawMeme. I have sympathy for Dave personally, but I think the shutdown is a huge professional embarassment for a guy who wants to have his opinions about weblogs listened to.

I have great sympathy for people who are providing free services to the Internet community and are overwhelmed by the pressure. I thought that Adam Mathes took an unfair beating when he threw his hands up on Organizine; I have no idea how Matt Haughey finds the strength (or time) to keep Metafilter alive and humming. Dave Winer isn't legally required to keep Weblogs.com going, and he's not morally required to, either. Dave Winer, the guy with health issues, has every right to shut it down.

But this isn't just about Dave Winer the guy, it's also about Dave Winer the guru. Dave Winer the guru is trying to build out weblogs and weblog standards for the benefit of the world. Dave Winer the guru has strong opinions about how that building out should be done. And Dave Winer's credibility as a guru depends on his reliability and thoughtfulness in other weblog matters.

He planned poorly, he put a low priority on the needs of his existing users, and he explained the need for the change poorly. None of these recommends him as a reliable authority on the technical or social future of weblogs.

Why has no one pointed out the obvious?

Time ran a huge piece on bloggers and blogging. DW was not mentioned prominently in it. DW took his ball and went home.

Isn't this kind of behavior typical for DW? Yes, it is.

Wow - that really sucks for those who used weblogs.com.

Damn! If only someone could invent some kind of push format that you could regularly pick up and had, like, news in it... I bet that'd be really good for this!

Would you name that service Atom or RSS ? Which name would you choose ?

And Dave Winer's credibility as a guru depends on his reliability and thoughtfulness in other weblog matters.

He planned poorly, he put a low priority on the needs of his existing users, and he explained the need for the change poorly. None of these recommends him as a reliable authority on the technical or social future of weblogs.

Bingo, Grimmelmanm! Circle gets the square. People like Tanker are the type who smirk at conned senior citizens -- oh they "deserve" it cuz they ought to have known better. Of course (I assume) Dave wasn't out to bilk anybody, and of course he has the right to shut down the site, silly billy. It's way in which he went about it that has cheesed off a lot of people. And yea verily, they have a right to be pissed off.

When this kind of (apparent) indifference to how actions will affect users comes from someone who has as much industry clout as Dave (rapidly waning as it is now) it sucks especially hard. It's behaviour you'd half-expect from some never-heard-of-it, fly-by-night operation. Not from someone (once) held in high regard. He really has to come out and apologize if he wants to escape this PR nightmare. Spit out an honest mea culpa and then he'll have the right to tell everyone to quit b*tching.

If you want to retrieve a Weblogs.com site now and have some expertise with writing scripts to extract text, go to to google and enter

site:YOURNAME.weblogs.com -UNIQUE

So you can search for

site:tom.weblogs.com -flibberty

and you can then use a scraping package to download the cached pages linked from Google and use a script or a text editor to extract text. Not easy but simple.

"How Not to Shutter a Service: Weblogs.com Goes Dark" from Yale Law School's LawMeme. Very well said. - http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1496

>>Did Weblogs offer a backup service? If so, then not having the missing blog data is your own fault. If not, what the HELL are you doing using it as your host?

Tanker, thanks for asking that question. As far as I know you're the first to do so.

The answer is yes, weblogs.com did offer a backup service, and we did ask people to back up their work. It's a feature of Manila.

I totally agree about the wisdom of using a service that does not provide you with an easy way to get your own data. I've been burned by this myself in the past, have learned it many times, the hard way.

It happens that data crashes and you don't have a good backup, and one shouldn't be too hard on oneself when that happens (it happens to pros too), but the last thing you want to do is blame someone else for your failure to backup.

If nothing else comes from this, let it be that. Knock wood, praise Murphy, I am not a lawyer, my mother loves me, and all other disclaimers.

Winer,

Yeah, but this isn't an example of data crashing. This is an example of you, without notice, dropping every user like a bad habbit. As you have just stated that your service DID indeed offer a backup service, then once again it falls on you to being a failure in letting people use it when they needed it the most: Right before you were going to shut the place down.

I'm forced now to really slide with 'Patrick' when he made this post:

"Time ran a huge piece on bloggers and blogging. DW was not mentioned prominently in it. DW took his ball and went home."

That was it sounds like now... You got mad and took your ball and ran home to 'mother.'

Data Crashing of its own accord is a hardware failure of some sort, and thus could not have been seeing coming, and thus is no ones fault, really. Nothing to get mad over, that's life, and sorry. You on the other hand knew this was coming, you could have given the users, who were in the dark, a chance to get out before it was to late.

As it stands you are a hardware failure as you have acted as such, and bad hardware gets thrown away eventually.

You made a claim that you are a person, not a company when you brought this stuff down. Congradulations on being the first person acting more selfish than a company.

DW is just a person who once offered a free service, with no promise at all to get that service up and running forever. It was HIS thing, then it was HIS right to shut it down. Of course he could have warned everyone, from John Doe to Mr. George W. Bush if he wanted to, but the fact that other people enjoyed and/or used Weblogs.com doesn't mean he HAD to act otherwise (of course he could, but if he wasn't in the mood for it, then ta-da and see ya later if ever).
This case is analogous to a painter who exhibits a wonderful painting, and then, one day, he enters the Gallery in which the painting was exhibited, and takes it home, and better yet: he burns it. No one will ever enjoy the sig