official statement on being kicked out of the ssbc and blocked by dominic tarr

As bokonon once said, everyone has two karasses. One waxing, one waning.

Obviously this karass has eclipsed, because last night I discovered that I've been kicked out of the ssbc by someone. In the email, Microsoft-Github did not tell me who.

And dominic has blocked me.

Now, I was under the impression that the ssbc was a loose consortium, without any formal organizational structure. It has no leader or government.

But if it has no leader, and no structure, and is not a democracy, then who has the power within the organization to kick me out?

As of now I believe that I was kicked out of the ssbc because I asked:

• the developers who said "fuck you" to me on the ssbc call a year and a half ago to apologize for their bad behavior
• for one of the adjudicators of the ssbc grant process to give gb a clear a specific reason why her grant was denied

When I was in San Francisco 10 months ago, someone in the tech industry asked me:

"have you considered that scuttlebutt might be a failed project?"

I asked him to back that claim up with some evidence. He said something along the lines of: "because the developers are already fighting with each other, there's no strong leadership, and everyone wants the project to move in different directions."

Now, I disagree. I think the entire point of scuttlebot is that we can disagree and it still works.

I continue to believe we need to encourage more diverse perspectives on ssb, and not exclude people because they don't agree with an organization.

--

So now, from my position of being expelled from the ssbc by a government or leader that doesn't exist, I'm left here wondering: maybe he was right. Maybe scuttlebot is a failed project.

But then I realize that even though I've been banned from the ssbc and blocked by everyone in Mixspiral, everyone else can still receive my messages!

And if everyone else can still receive my messages, then no -- scuttlebot is not a failed project.

But we still have some work to do, and I have a feeling these two features will not be implemented by dominic or anyone in the ssbc. Why? Because I want them.

We need to implement:

• a full scuttlebot peer in the browser (the holy grail of distributed awesomeness)
• the ability to delete feeds (so that members of mixspiral can get my feed off their computers)

Let's get back to work.

Here's a screenshot of my removal from the ssbc:

Now, I disagree. I think the entire point of scuttlebot is that we can disagree and it still works.

Yes, I can get behind that one thing.