Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

13 Mar 2011, 11:31 a.m.

Well, Actually

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2011 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

A few weeks ago, I was catching up with a friend, and he remarked that one reason he likes open source software is that it doesn't have marketing. At this point I said, I realize now that I haven't told you that one of my jobs is marketing for an open source project. He self-consciously backpedaled a bit, and we both laughed, and he clarified that he hates marketing based on lies. And I'm not doing that, so we're cool.

Then last night I saw Rango with some acquaintances (thanks for the recommendation, Jed!). Afterwards, as we discussed the references, and adaptations, and movies and narrative and crossovers and references, one of them made a slightly inaccurate remark about copyright and I stayed myself from issuing a primer. And I realized she didn't know that one of my jobs is grantwriting for QuestionCopyright.org.

I have become Marshall McLuhan coming out from behind the cardboard. As Leonard put it: "You know nothing of what my work is!"