It’s good to make mistake if you can learn from them, it’s a shame it seems Chris didn’t get it yet though.

So all I’m saying is that Chris is a person, with available contact info, and the same could have been done for him. Now if he had not responded, or refused to acknowledge what was said, or didn’t handle it, then the situation could have been escalated.

I think it’s too easy to start a campaign against someone when it’s someone you don’t know. And the real point I realized when talking to Ralph was the amazing power we have at this time. I can start an international movement right now, without even leaving my chair. I have something like 1,700 twitter followers. If I blog, 20,000 people will read my words over the next week. I’m not bragging. Those are just numbers. I’m sure many of you have similar or better numbers. And once a hot subject hits the retweet circuit, I’m sure it can easily reach millions. Within an hour or two! That’s incredible power. More than most individual people have ever had in history. Hell, even more than most governments or press agencies have had in terms of speed and instant reach. We need to be careful how we use it.

If Chris actually added something new to either toolkits or the example he modified, this would be valid. Instead he showed something entirely un-original, which essentially comes bundled with the FLARToolkit and an example and claimes he actually wrote software. Obfuscating the reality; this was a demo of FLARToolkit with Papervision3D as a visualizer, which he merely modified to add the TED Video and a different 3D model then the original example.

In your analogy, the Sex Pistols would have changed some of the drum-riffs in the Ramones song, this being enough to make it “their own”.

No matter if they helped with the exposure of Punk music, it would have been called plagiarism in that scene, or at least highly unoriginal and unjust to claim your own. (Even if they printed in small print that it where covers on the back of the album).

Let’s agree to disagree.

Here’s a crazy analogy: Sex Pistols made punk rock big. Sure, they totally stole it from The Ramones ,but I dare say that if the Sex Pistols’s manufactured version of punk rock hadn’t been presented as they presented it (which I don’t recall them ever going out of their way to credit The Ramones)… then punk rock wouldn’t have become the movement it had. Analogies aren’t always great for arguments–and, really, I’m not so much arguing here rather pointing out that we should actually give some props to Chris for promoting the technology–even if his vicious intent was to take all the credit for it (which I really doubt).

On Keith’s point: is a twitter-mob a good or bad thing… well, that’s very interesting. I think like other new vehicles for “news” it will get sifted out one day. However, I don’t have a lot of faith this happening any day soon.

For justice we need to be factual.
Chris Hughes went quite a length to get himself on stage at TED, as he describes in his blogpost about TED. Let’s ignore the tone which he uses in that specific post for his sake and say he had something genuinely novel to show. Unfortunately he didn’t.

What he showed on stage was a modification of a tutorial made by someone else. A tutorial which is showing off how to use FLARToolkit and Papervision3D. He modified this demo to show a ted video and a 3D model (which he apparently took from somewhere else).

I liked the comparison I saw somewhere else : It’s like replacing the google logo on the google search page with a Ted logo and then showing of the super sorting algorithm this incredible thing you programmed off.

A better comparison would be that he would demo the Quake 3D engine for the first time, where his contribution would be opening up the texture pack and modifying it to show TED logo’s.

That, on itself isn’t bad, as long as you give proper credit. Now, let’s say he actually ommitted it by accident. Why does he then say things like “I programmed”, “We managed to introduce”, etc. It’s all over in his talk. This is not just an ommision, it’s an attempt to take credit for work he just hasn’t done.

Furthermore in the subsequent TED interview, in very clear wording, he takes credit for porting ARToolkit to Flash. His self supplied sourcefiles and by his own (way later) addmitance, this is using FLARToolkit, which he had no hand in what so ever.

Let’s see it’s all a slip up, and in all fairness he was trying to show a demo of these two opensource projects….why would he until this point in time still say that his work was “Based upon FLARToolkit and Papervision3D”. Why would he not say; I modified an example I found online. His work is not based on anything, it’s a demo of the work other people did. He did not do any actual work, but in every possible way he seems to want to obfuscate that fact.

I find the likeness you are striking between hossgate and hughgate unfair. Actually, I’m quite happy with the result the twitter uproar caused right now. Would TED actually have had removed his video and talk based on his input alone ? Would they have done it if 3 developers would have whispered about it? No, the rectification was placed based upon this uproar. Can we question the uproar about the Iran Elections in the same way ? Even is the cause is right, we cannot leverage the power of new media to rectify a standing issue.

Also, I have sent Chris Hughes a very clear email about how I feel on this. He has yet to respond. The blogpost addition he has made is just further obfuscation of the actual truth, and I do feel the interview should be rectified (as well as that Chris should apologize), for the clearcut statement that Chris was involved or responsible for the porting of ARToolkit to Flash. It’s just not true.

Persons are always different in extreme situations. I wouldn’t say that Hughes is a bad guy now because he did that: but he acted wrong at a bad time. He was given time to excuse and act – and his reaction was not closely covering the damage. If he is that much into open source he should be aware of open source licenses (which he seems not to be). From your description (without meeting Hughes) it sounds like he is as much of a fan boy of open source, as he is fanboy of himself who(reading the source code) doesn’t seem to really care what he publishes(and how) open source.

Now that the flash mob is such a fast/unforgivable one lies in the guruism – imho. People follow others and believe they are gods and don’t fail or are not humans. I invested 25 minutes to verify what I got from his presentation – I don’t think many other did: They show immediate solidarity to opinions. I agree that its a scary thing but on the other hand – If those things were really injustified then the people forget about it very fast … perhaps it would even turn out against the person inflaming them.

Btw.: I think he could have avoided a lot of the bashing by a comment box at his blog or by answering tweets properly or by a open letter.