LiteStep and customization in a WIRED article

It was over anyway? Oh well, … say, it’s just a history :) Yes, we have gotten some lessons from this article and talks on everywhere in the community. At first, Joel D. Parker (rootrider) at floach wrote in his rant against the authour as follows.

First off, let me make it clear that this article is not just about shells or Litestep. It’s about changing the GUI, namely skinning. Shells are just mentioned as a sort of extreme type of skinning. The problem is, there’s way too much wrong with this article.
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So, I hear that Headius was interviewed for this article. Well, I’d sure like for someone to point out to me where his interview fit in with the rest of the article. All I see is a couple paragraphs about how LoneRunner hacked Windows to create Litestep. And no, he’s not still the head dev of Litestep… in fact, I don’t think he ever even coded after it was released under the GPL (GNU Public License).
<snipped />
*sigh*   Did I read that right or does the article say that Stardock‘s new DesktopX is “the same as Litestep except that it’s not as hard to configure”? I mean, I swear that that’s what it said. EXCUSE ME!!! Haven’t I seen Brad Wardell himself say that DesktopX is not meant to replace your shell. It’s only meant to compliment it. Where does this guy (the author) get his info?
<snipped>
Alright, how come this article doesn’t list URL’s for anything!? I mean, say someone has never heard of WindowBlinds before and wants to know more about it, or where to download it. Well, good freakin’ luck since there’s no link to it anywhere in that magazine.

The Wired! Article, 16-09-2000, 07.19

Generally speaking I will agree 90% with root, but I didn’t think that the article intended to review or introduce shells in general. The problem was, to take shell replacements as a way of doing skinning in extreme level, although shells might be an extreme way of customizing… I don’t know the strict sense of custo but it may make a sense for people.

And after that, szcx codemonkey wrote the following reply to root, in LS mailing list.

<snipped…>  the article is about skinning. so why are you so suprised they used quotes from poag over headius? authors interview a LOT of people for articles, 90% of which will never see print. that’s just the way it is. poag’s comments were probably more relevant to the article.

[Litestep] root’s rant…, 19-09-2000, 07.08

and demigod’s reply to szcx codemonkey.

Bowie Poag has NOTHING to do with skinning or customization at all. He creates TILE SETS!!!!!! Give me a break, it was written poorly, the facts were horriblely wrong, it was written without any real imput from thepeople who really count.

Re: [Litestep] root’s rant…, 19-09-2000, 07.59

Yea, once I worked in a small publisher for a magazine, so I will have to say that szcx codemonkey’s reply must be a fact in there. Almost over 80% of materials for writing something should not be appeared on anywhere in the result, even in terms of academic situation. Comparing these two comments, there would be a difference of difinitions for a word “customization”. Tiles and wallpapers, demigod says, are not subjects in the main stream of customization. On the other hand szcx will argue for the opposite sense in this case. To use wallpapers is not to skin over something, neither to skin over desktop. So, by the definition, Poag’s comment in the article must be worthy anyway, but it will lead us to something another sense from our meaning of “skinning”. But in the wider sense of “customization”, szcx got a point. And that’s a subject which would depend upon whether this article intended to treat what…

Finally, I will quote a comment from Charles Oliver Nutter (Headius), currently the head of LiteStep Dev Team.

My personal gripe is that after several interviews and follow-ups, we were led to *believe* that there was going to be a lot more coverage of LiteStep. They even went as far as to confirm quotes with me several times, and stated that LiteStep would comprise a “substantial” portion of the article. Intentional or not, we did not see what we expected.

However…all press is good press, and as long as LiteStep and LS.net got mentioned, I’m happy overall. The errors made were irritating (LoneRunnr hasn’t had a thing to do with LiteStep in how many years? I can also attest that next to none of his original code is still around – it’s his spirit that lives on), but it’s better than no mention at all. We will persist in driving LiteStep as strongly as we can – with the ever-present help of the community.

Re: [Litestep] root’s rant…, 19-09-2000, 14.29

If you want to read the article, please take my text version from here [note on 2010-02-28: now it is not available]. But now it might be an illegal one that would violate against the law of copyright in US. So, I don’t assure you that this version would be here forever :P