Scripting News: The future of UserLand

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

The future of UserLand

It pains me to watch the traffic on the UserLand support lists, because it looks like there's no one but Lawrence at the company these days. The person we hired to be CEO, Scott Young, now has a job at another company, PostPath, and it looks like a full-time job. But he hasn't resigned, and doesn't respond to requests for information about how the company is doing. It's bizarre because I am the founder of the company, one of only two board members, and own the majority of stock in the company. It seems he has moved on, but doesn't want to let those of us who continue to have an interest in the company take care of it.

It seems to me that this is unfair to the users of the Manila, Radio and Frontier. I watch them ask questions on the mail list, and help each other, but what hope is there for the future? Will there ever be a new release of the products? I see small fixes come sporadically, but I don't know where they're coming from.

So I wonder what the users think-- what kind of future should UserLand have? Do you think we should try to revive the company and products, or perhaps it would be better if we GPL'd the remaining software, and let the community try to take care of itself? (Note that I am in the community myself, I continue to use the products.)

Post a comment here if you have some thoughts about this.

Doc Searls pays for Radio. He says: "I have great appreciation for Lawrence's reliable and tireless help over the years."

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:36 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Feb Apr