Secret Cabal Mailing List

I was reading through some stuff and came across this gem from the revered Scott Merrill aka Skippy about creating a private mailing list that only commiters can see:

“We (the committers) can discussion patches and contributions by others in a way that won’t get polluted by those people, and so their feelings wont get hurt as we discuss their contributions”

A couple of initial thoughts:

• This is a FANTASTIC idea. The revered leaders need a place to discuss the hoi polloi without worrying their pretty little heads.
• Will be perfect for gossip and collusion as well.
• The existence of the list should be a secret as well. (Does it already exist?)
• If people bitch about there being a list, we can just say it doesn’t exist but email and cc: each other all the time to basically have a list.
• Finally, I WANT IN. Please please please please please please please please please.

I think my contributions to the blogosphere and Habari documentation warrant my inclusion into the secret cabal, and I will gladly submit myself to any hazing you bad boys have in mind.

Where’d all the losers come from?

Oh wait, that’s WordPress.

The all are welcome attitude of Habari that originally attracted me to the project is now attracting other former rejects, however now it’s ones that I think are not cool.

Case in point one: NuclearMoose. What has he ever contributed to any project, besides rambling posts about why he is or is not contributing? Is the rumor about him scaring away female contributors to WP true?

Case two: spencerp. Who the hell knows what this guy is saying half the time? Isn’t he the one that used his mod status on wordpress.org to hit on some chicks, and he got kicked off wordpress.org and install4free? Does he know how to quote an email? I hope you all welcome me here is the definition of needy and codependent. (On the bright side, he actually got Habari running.)

Maybe we can start a rule where only people who were actually wanted in the WordPress community would be allowed in the Habari one, before we become a haven for WP rejects. When do the cool kids stop being the cool kids? When they start hanging out with all the uncool kids.

Slippery Slope

So I’ve started studying my daily Habari emails, and I came across this blasphemous thread started by none other than one of our most revered founders Owen Winkler.

Let’s go line by line:

“I was bored”

Why on earth would you be bored when you have the most exciting project in the world to work on??? Oh wait…

“I put in the stuff I liked, took out the stuff I didn’t like, turned it all into HTML with a little DHTML and CSS, and baked it for three hours. Discuss.”

OH MY GOD HE JUST DIDN’t

This is exactly what the Matt-devil did to Shuttle!!!!

Now, I love Owen like he has lips like Angelina Jolie. But if you look at the crapfest 2007 that is WordPress it is clear that the MDevil just took the parts he liked, took out the stuff he didn’t like, and turned it into HTML. I thought this was everything we were trying to protect against. How DARE we make decisions like this without voting and without approvals of the designers! (Especially Khaled!)

The blasphemy continues:

“> 5. Color scheme need a little more work. (I like Khaled Design)

You guys keep working on that. I’ve got software to get to a dev-preview state by the end of the month. I’ll take a minute or two to nitpick over colors later if I need to.”

What the fuck!! You disrespect Khaled and people with good taste in one sentence? We should never trade speed for quality.

Finally the revered founder Chris J Davis says:

“Owen brings up a good point here at the end. Most of you who are new might not know that we are shooting for a Jan 31st Developer Preview Release. We (being Owen, Scott, Rich and I) really want to hit this first release deadline hard.”

The only thing that will hit hard is the thumping sound of Habari dying if we push out something that isn’t beautifully designed.

Also, I am worried by the arbitrary release date decision that was made without any public discussion. I think there should be a public vote ON A PUBLIC MAILING LIST about the release date, otherwise we suck just as much as WordPress.

New Avatar

I have a new avatar based on the most beautifulist Habari logo ever made from my idol Khaled of course.

By the way, I’m not sure why there’s all this arguing over the logo and stuff on the mailing list. First, only comitters should have a vote, right? All the people who aren’t commiters should just let the people with voice in the project just vote on the best stuff, which hopefully isn’t a pumpkin.

Or even better, why not make the logo an option? We’re not tying ourself to any one database or templating system why constrain the genius of this project in one logo? When people install or first visit our yet-to-be-domained site we can ask them to pick their favorite and then set a cookie and always show that to them in the future.

Or even better! When they set the cookie we can track which one they choose and then in 6 months make the official the one with the most votes, assuming of course the project leaders don’t veto it.

Number of Habari Blogs DOUBLES!

I don’t know when this happened, and I apologize if in my breathlessness I make a typo or two, but I just noticed that the number of live Habari blogs has DOUBLED. See for yourself! Now we have the revered CJD who brought the code that makes us sob in happiness, and a fanboy (no offense, David! Someday you might be an evangilist like me.) powered by Habari.

At this rate of doubling, we will have the entire world population using Habari by March 12th, 2007, at which place we will storm into Automattic’s headquarters and force Matt to type an apology USING HIS CRAPPY WYSIWYG to every single person who has ever been subjected to reading or writing a pressed word and the entry will be broadcast to millions of WP dashboards across the world.

But no one will read it.

Web 10.0!

Fellow Habari believers, I come to you with a modest proposal. There is currently some disagreement on our mailing lists about which browsers should support. First off, we should never disagree with each other in public (after this), it gives the enemies confidence. They are watching.

Second, as to which browser we should support, I say NONE. That’s too web 2.0, and since we are already 5x better than any other project out there, we need to focus on web 10.0.

We should use the power of AJAX and javascript and DHTML to create an interface which transcends browser and puts the user into a experience like no other. Clearly the only way to do this is with XUL. There has already been the brilliant suggestion that the interface simply be an Atom API client.

What if it was an Atom API client, but in XUL so it worked perfectly on every platform and we could do an interface so awesome only Khaled could design it. And he will.

I apologize, I know your head just exploded from the awesomeness of this idea. Before you comment, remember, they are watching.

First Comment!

I just got my first comment from the great wank himself! Wank, I salute you. If you are ever in NYC I will whistle a taxi for you.

All you people not commenting, every time you don’t comment I kill a pingback.

Khaled Speaks!

Khaled, my idol, has spoken, and kind of rhymes, with Rumble in the Jungle! Please go read and ponder every word of this essay.

All done? I could just quote every sentence Khaled wrote and say “Amen!” after it, but I will leave that as an exercise for the reader on your second read.

I only found one flaw…

“Don’t be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP.”

I am wholeheartedly trying to kill WordPress for abandoning me while throwing conferences and dotcomming and being all hip in San Francisco with your Castro and your independent coffee shops. Guess what? Most of the world doesn’t live in San Francisco! We don’t care about your iPhones and pods and.

“But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn’t feel like there was a void to be filled?”

I would happily fill any void with you.

“We’re pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it’s ideal for people wanting to contribute as it’s got a completely different structure in it’s development, in that it’s a meritocracy.”

Amen! (Editors note: Sorry I couldn’t help myself.)

“It’s a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto’s everything or has final say in everything.”

Especially if that one person is the antichrist. Here is proof:

Left: Mike Little, the true founder of WordPress and all that is good. Right: He Whose Name Will Not Be Spoken, autocratic destroyer of all that is good.

A few words on idiots

When I first came across this post, A few words on Habari, I cried for two hours.

Not because this infidel dared criticize Habari or suggest it will be anything but a perfect success, but because of the sad sad sad life this person must live. As a sign of pity, I will take quotes from his entry and tell you why they are LIES!.

“Initially, I heard Habari on Chris Davis’ blog, later readings informed me that in fact he was the first person who broke the news, and also I believe currently the principal developer on the project.”

Sorry, you are not worthy to read Chris Davis’s blog. First lie.

“but over the days more Habari related posts emerged on blogs of couple bloggers who are important contributors in the WordPress community”

Wrong again! We weren’t important contributers, we WERE the WordPress community! All of it! It’s like a ghost town there. If you go to wordpress.org today it loads extra fast because we aren’t there!

“Personally, as a developer, I sometimes struggle with this problem [impotence] too.”

Wow, TMI dude. You should wash the WordPress off, it’ll clean that rash right up.

“I am really happy to see Habari being created and developed.”

After this entry, the only thing that will convince me of this is you tithing 10% of your salary to Skippy and Khaled.

“I hope the project does not step into the fate of other failed open source projects.”

By fate do you mean the RAGING SUCCESS of other Apache wannabe projects like Excaliber and Hivemind. Then COUNT ME IN. (Editors note to other Habari developers: Excaliber and Hivemind are really cool names, and I think the latter really describes our vibe, maybe we can destroy the other Apache project when we join and steal their name. We could probably get their logo too.)

A little background on your illustrious author

(Editors note: After the oppressive nature of WordPress pushes this post off the front page, it will live forever at about.)

Hello, I am the most passionate user and developer and documentor of Habari in the world.

Why am I called Habari Wank? In Swahili, “wank” means “big big fan,” so every time you come to my blog it’s like “What’s up, big big fan?” I also registered it to prevent any awful blogs like this one from starting. The only way we can truly triumph over our enemies is by silencing them.

Just a little background on myself, I was originally a user of Blogger, then Greymatter, then Blogger again, then Movable Type, then b2, then b2evolution, then Dotclear, then Google Blogger, then Squarespace, then Typo, then Textpattern, then WordPress, then LifeType, then Wheatblog.

But more recently, I started off on WordPress, where I was drawn in by the promises of free stuff without having to contribute back. Then, as the fabled Shuttle was taking off, I looked into the sky and saw the like. Several hours later when my eyes recovered, I volunteered. I was not worthy at the time.

Then I saw the light that was Inksmith. Look at all those faces, it will be a success! Khaled, my idol, posted about it. I put my email in the announcement list, and I wait to this day for news of the great coming.

Finally one day I was stumbling drunk through the streets of New York, and I found myself in the 24-hour Apple store clicking blog to blog wistfully and thinking about ending my sad, rejected existence. Finally, I came across a blog post by the great Chris Davis. I have written about this day in my autobiography already. It spoke of a new world, one where we would crush the oppression of WordPress, free ourselves from reliance on MySQL, and bring to the people a project that WAS NOT the same as all blogging software out there, because it was MADE OF PEOPLE! They said anyone was welcome, and finally I had found my place. I had been accepted by the same people who had rejected me before! I was worthy!!

Here I stand before you, no longer alone, but united in the coming a new age of blogging technology which will make all other things which attempt to use the letters B, L, O, or G tremble in their Birkenstocks. WE ARE HABARI!