Even though this is making all the rounds on the internet, I feel the need to comment. I don’t know why; I guess I must just be bored.

So, evidently Jason Calacanis talked at Gnomedex about Mahalo. And Dave Winer didn’t really care for that too much. But instead of intelligently discussing his issues with Jason’s talk on his blog, Dave apparently yelled out from the back row of the conference room about how Jason was “spamming” the audience.

I wasn’t there. I can’t say for sure, obviously. This is just what the internet is telling me. And we all know the internet is never wrong.

Jason and Dave have been telling their own sides of the story on their blogs; just follow the links provided in the previous paragraphs. Jason says he was just talking about a concept, and Mahalo is central to that concept. Dave says he doesn’t want to hear a commercial message at a conference dedicate to non-commercial content.

Dave’s main argument is that Jason isn’t bringing anything to the table for developers to build on. He likes the open APIs that Google and Twitter bring. Dave doesn’t like any product that only gives him information. He’s always looking for something he can use as a platform, and he can’t build off of Mahalo. I sympathize — it’s part of the same reason I haven’t been able to get excited about Jason’s newest venture. But blurting out that Jason is “spamming” the audience at a conference is not a good way to build support for your cause.

Jason is responding to Dave, but not in the way that I thought he would. Jason doesn’t necessarily seem concerned about the central point of Dave’s argument; instead Jason is drawing more attention to Dave’s outburst and subsequent online rants regarding the disagreement. In a sense, he’s trying to make Dave the focus of the argument, instead of the problems Dave has with Jason’s Gnomedex content.

I have really nothing more to add than to say that Jason and Dave are both acting a bit immature in this situation. I have a lot of respect for both of these guys because they are both so passionate about the internet and are both visionaries regarding web development. They really need to settle this intelligently. Dave needs to be a bit less antagonistic and Jason needs to listen to the concerns more. Both of these guys have legitimate points in this argument. They are simply both being too loud and obnoxious for the other guy to hear them clearly.