Wow I can almost hear the band playing in the background with fireworks exploding. Mike will not be intimidated!!1!

One thing this post has been good for is that the strawman (37S is the suxors) has come full circle with Michael now saying the people “attacking” him are trying to change what TC is. Almost as entertaining as The Hills.

If you people need attention so bad, get a dog.

Like I said, I think this issue is important and needs to be discussed. If you think it’s important, too, get into the discussion in a real, credible way and write a blog post saying your side of things.

It’s absolutely pointless to try to bully me into submitting to the 37S cult. I believe that cult is dangerous for new startups to fall into and there needs to be a counter viewpoint out there for them to consider.

You guys can keep ranting all you like but I’m done here.

Like you really love the comments attacking you….yeah right. You clearly have a monster-sized ego and think you can intimidate folks from taking shots at you and your company’s content. It seems to me like you operate using the same strategies of George Bush to crush all dissenting opinions.

Similar to your other major $#$-up with the Jason TV thing evolving EMT, you obviously do not accept the fact that you are now a journalist and have to demonstrate journalistic integrity to maintain credibility with your readers.

Your post is a direct attack on 37S because they called out a RIDCULOUS post by Nick.

I look forward to the day when a new site run by a real journalist with integrity puts you in the DEADPOOL.

I hope you don’t start your pror practices of deleting comments here because you classify them as SPAM…executive privilege part of your Bush playbook, eh?

37 signals are masters of the freemium model. The price of their products scale proportionally to the value of them to the client. They’re success as a poster child of web apps and legions happy customers are testaments to this.

They fired a ridiculous and sensationalist blog post in our direction. I fired back.

If this blog post was part of your rebuttle then the fact you used the news of a pay-for rss reader going down the dunny to prove your point is kinda week.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the point you’re trying to make about 37s, but by using feedlounge as an example, you pretty much shot yourself in the foot and made me no longer have any faith in the credibility of your post.

It’s too bad that you didnt put that comment into the initial post when it went live so taht your readers on the rss would know why you really created this post.

So from now on we must always wonder if a TC post is for real or a get-back attack.

Is that really what you think TechCrunch readers want?

Please stick to the tech/Web 2.0 reporting and leave the pissing matches to private email.

Remember the 37S mantra, which is effectively “you must charge for your software or else you are stupid and you are hurting those of us who charge.” Charging for software often makes sense. It also often does not. In those cases where it doesn’t, we point it out. And 37S goes on the attack.

You can see this post as an attack on them, but it is really just an attack on their cult and ideology, which I think is dangerous and stupid. There are many ways to make money on software. Those that don’t charge are not necessarily wrong.

You should also read their post, which I linked to above. It was the first shot in this most recent volley between us.

http://www.37si...2-fleeing-free?

Jason says software is valuable and so the customer must pay. If everyone listened to Jason Fried, we wouldn’t have Skype. Or free webmail (before hotmail, we didn’t). Or any of the other free desktop or web applications that we all use every day and make our life better. All of those free software products were created with a profit motive. Many became massively successful and made their founders a lot of money.

Now, back to the disagreement. I went no harder at them than they went at us. I doubt they are losing any sleep over this, just as I didn’t over their post. We’re all big boys and able to handle a little disagreement. They fired a ridiculous and sensationalist blog post in our direction. I fired back. And the next time I see Jason, I’m sure we’ll shake hands and have a beer.

Different viewpoints are fine. I value the fact that our readers feel free to disagree with me so vehemently. By contrast, discord is not in general permitted by the community that comments on their blog. You must join the cult or get slammed.

I’ve said this many, many times. You can disagree with me. You can comment to that on this blog. You can even stop reading. But you are not going to change the way I run this site. I write what I believe is true and I will continue to do so.

For a privately held company with no published earnings and regularly bloated user numbers (which surprise surprise include free accounts) if the proprietors of Feedlounge did base their decisions off Jason Fried’s comments then is that really Jason’s fault?

http://feedloun...to-say-goodbye/

Understand Arrington lives in a walled garden (think Hollywood).