Dude, I’m 42 and I spent nine years working on Internet Explorer and the last six working on Firefox. I’m well aware of who Dave Winer is and his history, including a lot of the less savory aspects of his constant self-promotion and “angry old man of the 'net” routine. Once upon a time, I thought he was potentially relevant and he’s spent the last 12 or so years proving that to have been a mistaken view.
I’ve met him in person more than once, including listen to him turn a session at Mozilla into his personal bitchfest about what we were doing wrong (according to Dave). I’m also the first person that told members of the Internet Explorer team that, hey, maybe we should add something to consume RSS into the browser (which IE later did).
I think I come by my opinion of him honestly as a 19 year veteran of the Internet industry and someone who as been on the net since the late 1980’s.
