Credits (the Utu story)

Utu is a pearl created by the irritants of the Internet.

I needed people like dalvenjah running DALnet as motivation for replacing IRC. I needed the griefers who destroyed Lambda Moo to make me considered the nature of “open” communities and the rule of law in social interactions. I needed the slashdot trolls, mailing list fanbois, zombie botnets, spammers, and other internet dust-bunnies to inspire me to ask this one question:

"Can technology find a balance between anarchy and dictatorship?"

I also have to thank the Ruby community for simultaneously being both a great community and one run by a bunch of evil autistic robots who should never be in charge of an IRC channel. If it weren’t for the Nazi assholes booting me out of IRC in a rage of jealousy for the success of my Ruby projects while they slaved away in obscurity I wouldn’t have been motivated to start Utu. If it also weren’t for the really great people who I wanted to continue talking with in the Ruby community I might have just left for another place to have fun.

The name Utu came from an article I read about an actor from New Zealand who took on Amazon’s one-click patent and actually found prior art enough to get the patent office to review the patent. He did this because Amazon took four days to send him a book instead of three. In the middle of the article he says, “it was time for a bit of Utu.”

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Utu is the Maori word for a tribal system of justice that involved the near trading of revenge and payment for deeds done by others. The system keeps everything balanced in Maori society by enforcing a controlled system of retribution and favor between tribal members. It was the perfect name for my system. It also is the name of the Sumerian Sun god who watches over the dead, and it’s a name for various systems of retribution in some parts of Africa.

Utu wouldn’t exist without the Maori people also, or the man who took on Amazon in a perfect display of how one really pissed off dude can make a difference.

There’s plenty of people who’ve shot me ideas, encouragement, and tried out initial releases as I worked on them. Thanks goes out to all of you, even if I don’t name you directly.

Finally, to the caboose fan club for being the best test users for just this kind of project.