Hiatus Over

The hiatus I blogged about a few weeks ago is over. So here's what's going to happen.

1) There will be no more entries on this blogger.com page. I'm done with blogger.com
2) dOgBOi on Tech has changed to "The Misadventures of dOgBOi." I've decided to expand my focus.
3) For now, I'll be hosting my blog on baywords. That won't last forever, but it'll do for now.

On Hiatus

I'm going on a brief hiatus to reevaluate this blog and what it means to me. It's not going to be long. Perhaps 2 weeks, no more than 3. But I have to take a serious look at myself in relationship to the internet.

My beliefs are pretty strong, and I stand by my ethics. Not everyone will agree with my ethics, and that's okay. What other people think of me is none of my business. What's important is that my ethical bar is set high and I try to meet that bar everyday.

One of my biggest concerns is intellectual property: I don't like it. Copyrights, patents and trademarks make me pretty much sick, nowadays. That's not to say that I don't think people should make money from intellectual property, but the wrong people are making the money. Trent Reznor notwithstanding, most of the money from music goes directly to the labels. If I create something and you promote it, why should you as the promoter get more from my creation than I do? When my best friend suggested I create a “dOgBOi Enterprises”, I didn't know why that bothered me so much. Now I do. It's branding, it's marketing, it's monetization. That's not what I'm about. I'd rather be well than well-off. With that in mind, I have to question whether I want ads on my blog. Probably not. The license here is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike. Somehow, ads don't seem to fit into that model in my mind.

Another concern is that this blog is hosted by Blogger.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google.com. I think I fell hook, line and sinker for the whole “Google does no evil” line. Well, storing people's information without their explicit consent (and no, using the search engine is not explicit consent if you don't have that information clearly displayed on the search page) seems a tad “evil”. Operating in China to make a profit is more than slightly evil. Selling out ethics to profit is ALWAYS immoral Google, and I don't want to hear that you're doing a greater good there. Bull. The greater good would be to do no business there. Period. Google Apps Engine seems like a good deal, a place to build a brand. That is, until it's large enough that you have to start paying Google. Then guess what you find out. Your app won't work anywhere else without major changes because of the backend. So you're stuck with a costly rewrite or a costly subscription fee to Google. Monetization is one thing, forced monetization is another. Oh, and stop reading my email to send me targeted ads. It's annoying. I don't care if it's a bot doing it. Email is private. If I could convince all of my friends to use GPG, I would, and every message would be encrypted to prevent just that. Google's efforts to block the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is entirely self serving, and while I'm no fan of either, it's selfish to promote your personal agenda of what may be good for the web community as a whole. (Who knows if it'll be good or bad. We just don't know. Don't assume that if it's bad for Google, it's bad for the rest of the community.)

The plan, as I see it, is as follows: after the hiatus, I'll continue to blog here for a time while I write my own blog engine. Then I'll find a host somewhere (probably the EU) that does no business with China. If I can't, I'll host the thing myself. There will be no ads on this new blog, and the blogging engine will not support, nor will it ever support, adding ads. It'll be open source, of course, and freely available to those that want it. The license will explicitly state that ads will not be allowed on any site that uses the engine. Otherwise, do with it what you will.

I can't, in good conscience, continue along the path I was on. Google is the least of my issues. Most of my problem is with how I've been operating, and it ends now.