I just finished reading a recent post to Dave's mailing list. I started to respond from my personal account on-list, and then decided that this one was better posted on the blog.

As the blog has become more widely read, I've struggled with some of the editorial responsibility - we've got a very opinionated team, and some people often say things that others may not like.

Druid's post to the list really irritated me. To answer some of the questions from the post:

> Makes me wonder why they /continue/ to use 'stuff' from
> Immunity when they seem to have such strong feelings
> against your company.

Simply put, "we" don't have strong feelings against Immunity. Personally, I'm a fan of what Dave has done, and, as should be obvious from my own post on the "morally reprehensible" topic, I've talked to Dave about all of their products - VSC, CANVAS, etc. I'm even a regular reader of the mailing list.

However, it seems obvious that not all members of our team feel the same way and I (for one) am perfectly happy with having spirited debate. I brought up Mary Ann's comments because I found them interesting. This issue can be debated either way, and it's an interesting one.

> Perhaps Byron Sonne (bsonne@) isn't in a position to make
> that decision, which leads me to wonder what
> level of PR clearance is required to post to
> the company blog. (:

This is the real point that I wanted to make here.

It's a blog - no PR clearance is required. None. At all.

I'm the one who is responsible for editing the blog, and I'm not going to play thought police here. I won't allow anyone to post anything illegal or discriminatory, but I also won't censor opinions that I may disagree with.

How good would the blog be if I had our PR team editing everything we said? It wouldn't be real, it wouldn't be true, and I doubt anybody would care to read it. I know that I wouldn't want to read a "corporate" blog that was nothing but a bunch of marketing-speak.

At nCircle, we encourage people to have opinions and speak their mind. Even if those opinions are sometimes unpopular. It's what makes it a place that people want to work.

I'm not going to play thought-police with our blog - if I did, would you ever trust anything that we say here?

> Otherwise their stance on the issue holds no merit.

Again - it's not "OUR" stance. It's Byron's stance. I may not agree with what he has to say, but I defend his ability to say it - it's a valid point in an interesting debate.