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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

Hold on here, let's call a spade a spade. Your project has its own doofy .com name, calls itself "alpha", and was rolled out on a web site whose primary function is to connect people who are trying to launch online business ventures. So to wave the bloody shirt after Craig stated that RSS feeds for noncommercial purposes are golden, is a little disingenuous.

As others have pointed out, Craig's whole m.o. appears to be preventing people from building for-profit businesses on top of his site. Craig is anti-business. That's his prerogative. You obviously disagree with his philosophy, but a difference of opinion is not cause to go around calling somebody evil. He's done more good through his site and the $$ he generates off his site (which gets plowed into his foundation) than you, me and the next 100 people who read this combined.

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  He's done more good through his site and the $$ 
  he generates off his site ... than you, me and the next 100 
  people who read this combined.

Careful, the right combination of 100 HN readers might throw a monkey wrench in your calculations. =)

Fortunately for you, I contribute little so the next 99 have to play catch up.

Grandparent was at 22 points when I saw it, so unless >1/5 of the people who saw the comment voted it up, I wasn't in the first 100 readers.

I don't know if Craig is "anti-business" or not, but it doesn't appear he's "anti-making-a-ton-of-money"

Check out the tax returns for the foundation: http://craigslistfoundation.org/about.html

It's safe to assume the site makes a whole lot more than $650k/year, so not a whole lot of it goes to the foundation. Where do you think the rest of the money is going?

If Craig himself isn't anti-business, he certainly hired an anti-corporate CEO. See my favorite line from an online CEO bio:

"Possibly the only CEO ever described as anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist..."

http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster

It would only be disingenuous if there was any kind of commercial aspect to the site as it stands. There was none, and "rolling it out" on HN is merely asking for feedback, not trying to sign up paid users.

In the email exchange I've had with Craig, not all of which I've posted, I've asked him to clarify on this point:

"Oh, and about being noncommercial. A bunch of the RSS mashup sites I've seen, like Craiglook, throw up advertising presumably to cover server costs or make a few bucks. If I didn't want to go that route, would asking for donations be acceptable ?"

In his response, he said he can ask. I said please do, and that was the end of it. So for CL to break things when there is absolutely no sign of commercial purpose is a little unnecessary in my eyes.

I hate to break it to you, but it doesn't matter if there is no 'sign' of commercial purpose. Are you a non-profit? If you are, let them know. In my experience they'll hear you out.

Slay,

Just don't post any advertising from your site. I think that worked fine for Craiglook.

Futhermore, Yahoo pipes seem to be working fine with craigslist. Are you sure it's not your site being blocked ?

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