Halleluja

Die langersehnte Antwort von Tim O’Reilly ist nun da: Web 2.0 Service Mark Controversy

Tom Raftery must have noted the discrepancy between the friendly email from me that he quoted from and CMP’s letter. In fact, the next line of my email, which Tom neglected to quote, was “Best of luck with your event.” A number of people in the comment thread drew parallels to my amazon 1-click patent protest, but they left out one important point: I wrote to Jeff Bezos privately first, and went public with my complaint only after he’d given me the brush off. Given that Tom and I had previously had a conversation where I wished him the best of luck with his conference, while the lawyer’s letter came from CMP, I would have thought that he would have wondered whether the right hand knew what the left hand was doing before launching and then encouraging the torrent of net vitriol that’s come our way. He did call CMP to talk to the lawyer who wrote the letter, but he never contacted me. While he acknowledges that the letter was from CMP, he used O’Reilly’s name in the headline and repeatedly throughout the piece for maximum net impact. So while we owe Tom an apology for heavy-handed tactics, I think Tom owes us an apology for the way he responded.