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a funny thing happens when people think you do much less than what you actually do, they hire people to replace you.

that's what happened with adam curry and myself back in 2005. he had no idea what i do, he and his partner ron bloom thought they could save some stock and they thought i was being "difficult" (I guess) by not taking orders from bloom, so they hired a couple of programmers to replace me, and guess what happened. nothing. they wasted $100 million in vc money, and barked up the wrong tree. if they had worked with me they wouldn't have done that, but they would have had to listen to a mere coder.

same thing happened when RSS became a VC thing, none of them wanted to work with me, so they hired "software engineers" and they created products that somehow weren't up to the opportunity. all the companies failed. none of the VCs had the vision or just common sense to bet on the only developer who had proven he knew what was actually going on.

all my career people have been minimizing what we do with disastrous results. go back to my first silicon valley gig, with personal software in 1980. the ceo of the company told me to my face he could do a better job writing the software i was doing, but was too busy to do it. he was full of shit. you had to be really motivated in ways few "coders" are to get a 256K program to run in 48K. (which is what the app turned into when we ported it from the apple ii to the ibm pc) Not to mention invent a new freaking category of software. (To his credit the CEO did think of doing outliners before he met me, though his idea of an outliner didn't amount to much more than a start down the path.)

you can't make things better by giving into the bullshit money people and marketing people and people who took a few college classes in comp sci impose on our craft.

Go some place natural. Alone. Where no one knows you or who you know. Subtract everything that defines you as a pundit or friend of the rich and famous. No gadgets.

Swim. Get massaged. Try being quiet. Talk about your childhood. Find yourself, the person you've been hiding from.

Just be another random person, one of seven billion, because that is the truth. That is who you are. Who I am. Who everyone is. When you really feel it a weight comes off. None of this shit matters.

 Over night Twitter announced that they're cutting off free access to their API, which we depend on in all my products. They made the announcement in a vague way and with just seven days notice. I think there's a good chance they'll realize that this is a shitty way to do it, and will take it back, on one hand, but on the other hand, let's get out of here now. This is not a good place to develop products. I hoped they would leave this part of their API alone, and I expected more notice, but it didn't turn out that way. It is what it is.

A disclaimer, all of what I write here today is seat-of-pants. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but right now I want you, if you use my products, to prepare for a complete shutdown, just in case.

In some cases, esp for products that were designed only to enhance Twitter, they will not come back. For example, thread.center. It only works with Twitter, so when the API is gone, I will just shut it down.

The two products I care about most are Drummer and FeedLand. I will do everything I can to transition them.

Little Outliner which I have left running even though Drummer is a better version of the same product, will not transition.

Both Drummer and Little Outliner have commands to download all your outlines. You should do that now. There's no excuse for you losing any data, and I will not help get your data after Twitter shuts off the API. Take care of yourself. Download your stuff. Now.

For FeedLand there's nothing to worry about. All your data is public, so even if for some reason you cannot log onto FeedLand, you will still be able to get your data because you don't need to log in to get it.

Follow Scripting News for more notes about the transition.

Finally, I am just one person. I won't stand for people treating me like a corporation with a staff of people working on this. I am not more powerful than you are, so remember that when you ask for help. There will no tolerance of abuse.

And if you have questions, here's a place to ask.

• Supporting HTTPS in FeedLand was the plan all along. The rule is if you're giving your identity to a service, you gotta have HTTPS. My commitment is to the web. I think HTTPS is shitty technology, I'm sure Google if they tried harder, or asked me, could have come up with more of a win-win and gotten rid of all the bullshit you have to do, and instead get the user some features that make the web easier not harder and more fragile (two things you get with HTTPS), but it is what it is. They're a shit company, but HTTPS is not Google. I know that. Some people can't seem to get that I get that. Not everything is a political cause. I think they're accustomed to Republican politics where they'll burn the world down to assert their will. I'm genuinely in this for the good of everyone, not just me. And -- I don't blame HTTPS for Google.

My profile on Twitter is something I think every technologist should agree with, like the Hippocratic Oath doctors take.

• I work for the betterment of the network we all share. I'm not trying to get rich or famous, just fix the stuff that's broken. I hope you are doing that too.

It's okay to want to be rich or famous, btw -- I like having money, and if you succeed at being famous I want to warn you there's a downside to it, but more power to you. But if you make technology, you really have to sign on to the first part, or else your work is bullshit, imho of course.

• Supporting HTTPS in FeedLand was the plan all along. The rule is if you're giving your identity to a service, you gotta have HTTPS. My commitment is to the web. I think HTTPS is shitty technology, I'm sure Google if they tried harder, or asked me, could have come up with more of a win-win. But it is what it is. They're a shit company, but HTTPS is not Google. I know that. Some people can't seem to get that I get that. Not everything is a political cause. I think they're accustomed to Republican politics where they'll burn the world down to assert their will. I'm genuinely in this for the good of everyone, not just me. And -- I don't blame HTTPS for Google.

My profile on Twitter is something I think every technologist should agree with, like the doctors take.

• I work for the betterment of the network we all share. I'm not trying to get rich or famous, just fix the stuff that's broken. I hope you are doing that too.

It's okay to want to be rich or famous, btw -- I like having money, and if you succeed at being famous I want to warn you there's a downside to it, but more power to you.

 Having done it with FeedLand, I was starting to think about how to wean Drummer off Twitter identity, and had a stunning realization -- it may not be necessary, since (I believe, haven't tested yet) it might be possible to host Drummer from a FeedLand instance.

I would actually have to do it to be sure there aren't any roadblocks I haven't foreseen. But they're both running the same server software, daveappserver, and once you've established an identity in FeedLand I don't see why it can't be used with Drummer.

Ken Smith was tripping out on the synergies between Drummer and FeedLand. This, if it works, would blow the doors off that. They would be storing their data in the same place. You would be able to open your FeedLand bookmarks menu in Drummer, to start.

I figured something else out. I was wondering what would happen if Twitter broke their identity with developers like me as they did with the clients, how would we transition Drummer then? I don't want people to have to start over. I could ask them to do what I asked FeedLand users to do, is make a connection between their Twitter identity and an email address, as a backup. But this would have to be done before any outage. Something most people probably wouldn't do.

Then I realized we would be able to do what we do now when we want to associate an email address with a domain, ask the user to post something to their Twitter account, some magic string. When we see it in their timeline, voila, we know they are who they say they are and we can move the files to the new server. So we can relax. Users shouldn't have to lose data if Twitter pulls the plug.

One more thing, when Twitter was blowing up, I was getting harassed by idiots (no other word for it sorry) who didn't understand that you can't unwind a connection just by snapping your fingers. Identity is baked into an app at a deep level. And, when it already has users, and has gone through a ship cycle, you can't just flip a switch or everything you worked so hard for would just fall apart. It would be like, for example, making the NYC subway system run on a different track gauge. Sure you could do it, but it might take a few weeks. 😄

It's as if the biggest music label also owned all the players and refused access to music written by individuals and independent publishers with some made-up bullshit about "security." You have to pay them their tribute or be shut out. I choose being shut out.

If your browser requires HTTPS, you won't be able to read my blog.

Also, to lawyers -- if this isn't antitrust, I don't know what is.

The day is coming. Get ready for it. I am ready. I am doing nothing. 😄

• Optional titles.
• No linking.
• No styles.
• Posts are limited to 500 chars.
• No enclosures.

Yes I know some instances don't have these limits, but what matters is the LCD. What can be exchanged with all Masto systems, and the list above applies to the vast majority of instances.

Think about it this way. This is a simple post, expressing a simple idea. Yet neither Mastodon or Twitter can transmit this message. When we really get out of this bottleneck we'll be able to send messages like this one, and we'll wonder why we put up these limits for so long.

Also, I've heard all the arguments. At one point 140 chars was the limit that mattered, if we went over that then it wouldn't be any good. Then we went over it, and communication got better. I don't want to argue about this. Just want to point out that we're still waiting to be set free from the limits imposed by Twitter 17 years ago.