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What should we do about Barrabas's current request?
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The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @04:28PM
NCommander, there is an irc log that shows you agreed to pay for start up costs. Disagreeing on what those start up costs entail is one thing. Deciding later not to pay is dishonest.
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday March 10 2014, @04:46PM
And part of the expenses include "gifts" to NCommander. Barabbas is expecting NCommander to pay for those gifts. That's not quite "dishonest", as such, but my English vocabulary isn't broad enough to come up with a word for that.
NCommander has rightly agreed to pay for everything that was necessary to or useful for the start-up of the site. Right from the early days. However, the goalposts keep moving.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hubie on Monday March 10 2014, @05:14PM
If they were given as gifts, then "petty" comes to my mind, or "ill-mannered" (if you count hyphenations as a single word). You don't give gifts with strings attached; if they have strings attached then they aren't gifts. He would come off much better by setting a "take-it-or-leave-it" price for whatever assets he controls instead of including stuff like this and trying to justify he's only trying to do the right and fair thing. Or auction it off if he wants to maximize and potentially profit from what he's put out. Don't unconditionally give your girlfriend a sweater then demand to get it back if you break up, or if you do, don't try to pretend you're not being tacky when you ask for it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mmcmonster on Monday March 10 2014, @05:18PM
Err... Let's look at the big picture.
$2K is chump change. You could probably raise that on kickstarter in half an hour.
Give him the cash, but make a legal document out of it requiring him to give up all claims on the 'intellectual property' (yes, I see the irony here) and assets associated with this site and the associated software, database, and hardware.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 10 2014, @05:37PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fnj on Monday March 10 2014, @06:20PM
If a legal document is part of it, then we're not talking about $2K any more. It costs $ to draw it up and get it right. And it implies commitment beyond $2K + costs to draw up. There is only a point to a legal document if you are prepared to back it with legal adjudication and enforcement in the event it becomes necessary. And I feel safe to say that is not what what anyone had in mind when this audacious venture was undertaken.
I understand reluctance or caution at this step. All of me fundamentally cries out "#$^%# it, just pay it and be done with it", but life experience says "here there be dragons". Not in the sense that any personality is necessarily a dragon; just in the sense that events and feelings are at an ominous stage. I'm talking out of control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @07:19PM
I can envision years down the road a situation like Facebook had with the Winklevoss twins. Barbarras could surface again years later claiming NCommander "stole" his idea while the $2k payment was only for recoupment of the startup costs.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Toaster42 on Monday March 10 2014, @06:54PM
In US English the non-PC idiomatic expression is 'Indian Giver'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver [wikipedia.org]
All higher forms of thinking come from neural connections built by solving the kinds of problems encountered in math.-Md
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @09:13PM
That would be your solid impression, I take it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by stderr on Monday March 10 2014, @05:20PM
NCommand is not the one being dishonest here.
Let's look at some of those expenses [soylentnews.org]:
Cost: $48.13, but are 3 AltSlashdot domains (2 of which were never used) part of the start up costs of SoylentNews?
Cost: 14.83, but what is that number for?
Cost: 178.20, the email, wiki and forums were hosted there at one point, but it's unclear how the cost got so high. The main site, http://soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org], was never hosted on BlueHost, but on NCommands Linode servers.
Cost: 441.14, but those were a personal gift from Barrabas to NCommander. Should NCommander really pay for a gift to himself? Should they even be part of the expenses for SoylentNews?
Further down, under "Ongoing expenses", we have:
Cost: 125.00, but as far as I know, neither the staff nor the community was ever asked, if we needed or wanted those.
Some of the "Linode 1024" and "Linode backup" entries in that list are also stuff Barrabas got without consulting the staff and community.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2, Insightful) by boltronics on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:18AM
That makes sense. If you're not going to consult the stakeholders (in this case the community, technical leads, etc.) and purchase things on your own dime, that's the risk you accept.
I think that this general rule of thumb probably applies pretty much anywhere, so for Barrabas to think otherwise seems somewhat arrogant and selfish IMO.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!