Zed has principles and follow them. His personal brand (I don't like the term, but I am not a native English speaker and have difficulties to come up with better) is not going to suffer, the opposite. He is just requesting respect for his work and the basic copy rights to be followed.
I don't like the term either. Reputation is a nice substitute, although it lacks the connotations of treating a person as though they were a corporation-style entity with a marketing department.
... which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons I hate the phrase "personal brand."
I would disagree about his personal brand, actually. I think that this is an example of Zed -- part and parcel. (And let me say right from the start, I love this guy's work and all that he brings to the table.)
Zed has given immense amounts of code and work to the web community as a whole. It would be characteristically unlike Zed to not defend his work from what he views (and many others, I assume, including myself) as a savaging of his work.
So if you view it from that perspective? This is just par for the course with Zed. I, for one, appreciate someone who is so passionate about their work that they go to such lengths to defend it.
* I, for one, appreciate someone who is so passionate about their work that they go to such lengths to defend it.*
The ironic thing is that Zed's letter is similar to Bill Gates's letter to hobbyists 30 years, yet Bill has been historically flamed by the hacker community (requiring me to pay for software, is a larger crime than me stealing it). I wonder if identity politics play a larger role than ethical admiration.
I don't think anyone is arguing against what you're saying. It's the manner in which you do it. When I'm in the grcoery store and someone leaves their cart in the way I usually say, "You're blocking the path, could you move it?" Never had an issue. I could also say, "Jerkwad, would you move your cart, or continue to be a classless lowlife and I'll have someone from the store move it for you?"
I just find people to make such pronouncements to be over the top and people I generally would not associate with. And unfortunately there are people like that. It just felt like Zed trended that direction, IMO. And clearly it appears that many in HN think its perfectly acceptable.
Well, considering he is doing blank templates and did a "how to" blog post, I think he is being more reasonable than anyone should expect. What they did was rude.
I've been disappointed with the tone of some of Zed's comments here on HN, but this one struck me as perfectly polite and reasonable. His brand quality just got a big boost for me. I appreciate principles. Not everyone has to like every brand, and appealing to the least common denominator isn't always the best strategy.
Really? I read it differently. I thought both Zed and Martin came off as passionate, and relatively well-reasoned. Nothing Zed said here seemed over the top or out of line considering the context. Hopefully people who read over the exchange imagine themselves waking up to the same scenario.
Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped by this exchange.