No, Shame on Daya Baran

First, go read this screed against Tim O'Reilly:

WebGuild: Shame On You Tim O'Reilly

I'd like to point out that we emailed Daya about this continuously leading up to the meeting asking him to talk to us about the name, and he refused to do so. So now he pouts when we boot him.

We were very happy to host the meetings, but when the leadership of a group gets weird, we'd rather not host them anymore. Webguild isn't the first, nor is it the last group, that we'll both host and then not do so.

Google isn't a hotel, for god's sake, we don't have a duty to continue or to ever offer space to a group. Once we do decide to allow a group to be hosted, we make it clear that this privilege can stop at any time and that there are no guarantees. Most groups say "Okay, thanks for the hosting in the past" and find other venues. There are plenty of them in the valley.

I've been on both sides of this problem, hosting dozens of groups over the years at Google and before at VA Linux, and in 2000 I ran a linux users group and we were always vigilant to be a good guest of the companies that hosted us. That included answering any and all queries when posted to us.

Tim did not tell us to remove the Webguild from Google. He doesn't have the power to do so. Daya did by not responding to our queries in a timely fashion. DeWitt, Myself and others decided that Daya's behavior would reflect badly upon Google at some point. We were clearly right.

What Daya says in arrogance is what I call asking people to be accountable for their actions.

Sheeze.