Ning maroons users in dispute with Widgeteer: Open source comes to the users as the last resource
In the ugly dispute between Ning and Widgetlaboratory, the innocently bystanding users are (mostly) well. Widgetlaboratory used to sell widgets for around $30 per month and is the most popular widget creator on Ning. Users who have spent quite some money also on WL widgets to build up their social networks were left with nothing, when Ning decided to remove all widgets created by the popular premium developer because of some violation of Terms of use without notice. While the parties continue to “communicate via blogs” (Ning and Widgetlaboratory), the bold move is the one of WL to open source all their widgets and thus giving the users the control they need to keep up their networks.
We believe that our customers have the RIGHT to OWN their sites, OWN their site content, OWN their own code, and OWN the right to not be terminated, threatened or cajoled by ANYONE, especially a hosting-company executive.
Whatever the issue between the two vendors really is (and who is right), the users benefit from open source.
Tags: free beer, free speech, open source, social networking, Web 2.0
September 19th, 2008 at 9:47 am
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