Wedge

Public area => Development blog => Topic started by: Nao on July 28th, 2011, 01:45 PM

Title: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Nao on July 28th, 2011, 01:45 PM
I don't know about you but I don't like beer, so I'd choose a free coke instead. Can't I?

Oh yeah, what's this post about already? I read something over here(http://adminbb.org/threads/smf-very-slow-at-development-dying-slowly.1877/). At one point, one of the members says that he's not interested in Wedge because it's not free. When asked why he thought that, he mentioned the sidebar slogan:

Performance! Features! Reasonably priced coolness! And a hard-boiled egg!

I felt a bit stupid when reading that. I know that my sense of humor is mostly harmless™, but this is a case where it might be. See, when it comes to jokes I'm a big fan of British nonsense (something I share with Pete), and I tend to quote them a lot. And it just happened that I recently read a book by Sir Terry Pratchett, Night Watch, in which people were looking for a motto for their newly founded republic, and they chose that: "Truth! Justice! Reasonably priced love! And a hard-boiled egg!"
I simply re-used that in my slogan collection. The script will randomly pick one of ten silly quotes, and this was one of them. I found that 'reasonably priced' was a funny metaphor for Wedge -- you get it for free, so it's a reasonable deal. Of course, it only works if you already know that Wedge is free. Uh.

So, I just replaced that line with another British nonsense example free to any price indications. Anyway, the good news is: at least someone reads these slogans. <sigh of relief>

If my little story needs a conclusion, which is probably the case at this point, it is this: don't forget that Wedge is free, and will remain so. It's not that we don't like, or need, money. We just never built Wedge for money. We built Wedge to be what SMF should have been at this point. We didn't want money in the first place, and we still don't. We're doing it for ourselves. We pay the price for everyone else, so that you can spend the money on Pratchett books instead. Just enjoy the thing, you silly lawn ornaments™!
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Rustybarnacle on July 28th, 2011, 05:01 PM
If you don't want the money can I have it?  :)
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Road Rash Jr. on July 28th, 2011, 05:25 PM
Wedge is free? :yahoo: Damn what a concept, and here I was about to give up my first born (now 63) so if you can accomplish the impossible you're welcome to him. :whistle:
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Nao on July 28th, 2011, 06:04 PM
:lol:

Well it's not 'news' that we're free, we've been planning to go free from the very beginning and never wondered otherwise, but I felt I needed to make that statement again because my 'joke' may have been found as confusing.

Oh, BTW Tah Zonemaster ("Dr. Deejay"), you said over there that you'd get in touch with me about the slogan... You never did ;)
Also, I'm not banned from sm.org, I'm only post-banned. It doesn't change a thing, but it does mean I can still log into the website and make modifications to Aeva Media. (I'm pretty sure that's the only reason they didn't perm-ban me... After all it's their most popular mod by far... Would have been a PR disaster to actually perm-ban the guy who maintained it :whistle:)
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: DoctorMalboro on July 28th, 2011, 06:35 PM
This is the first blog post I actually find really funny (Sorry Arantor :P ).

I hope that Wedge shows how SMF is a good base, it just needs some further development...
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Nao on July 28th, 2011, 06:59 PM
Quote from DoctorMalboro on July 28th, 2011, 06:35 PM
This is the first blog post I actually find really funny (Sorry Arantor :P ).
Hey, you should be sorry for me, I make most of the lame humor attempts in the blog :whistle:
Quote
I hope that Wedge shows how SMF is a good base, it just needs some further development...
Further development and constant refining. I'm still in awe at how much needed to be done. Really...
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Dr. Deejay on July 28th, 2011, 07:33 PM
Quote
Oh, BTW Tah Zonemaster ("Dr. Deejay"), you said over there that you'd get in touch with me about the slogan...
o_O Meh, I must have forgotten :( Sorry for that ;P U forgivez meh?
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Nao on July 28th, 2011, 08:10 PM
No harm done hey!
I should be looking out for wedge links more often. I just found a blog post about us! :)
Posted: July 28th, 2011, 08:08 PM

http://i-diagramatics.com/2011/07/wedge/
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Diagram on July 29th, 2011, 01:59 PM
Quote from Nao/Gilles on July 28th, 2011, 08:10 PM
No harm done hey!
I should be looking out for wedge links more often. I just found a blog post about us! :)
Posted: July 28th, 2011, 08:08 PM

http://i-diagramatics.com/2011/07/wedge/
Which means I really should've registered an account here before leeching all the informations into a rather noobish blog post!  :eheh:
I'm honored, even though I actually picked to blog about Wedge because I have no other topics to blog about. Thanks for your comments in my blog post and also godboko71's for clarifications.
Looking forward for the release!
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Arantor on July 29th, 2011, 02:02 PM
The one comment I would point out is about themes; while they will need work in porting, if we kept total compatibility with SMF themes, we'd be limiting ourselves in what we could make Wedge capable of. Consequently we took the decision early on not to worry about compatibility with SMF code to free us from dancing round trying to keep compatibility and still pushing boundaries at the same time.
Title: Re: Would you rather have free speech or a free beer?
Post by: Nao on August 1st, 2011, 10:12 AM
Quote from Diagram on July 29th, 2011, 01:59 PM
Which means I really should've registered an account here before leeching all the informations into a rather noobish blog post!  :eheh:
Doesn't matter, you're still, AFAIK, the first guy to ever actually blog about Wedge :P
(i.e. posting on a blog to raise Wedge awereness.)

Given how Wedge links are being censored off simplemachines.org, it's the only way we can make ourselves heard of.