Correct. We did talk about this directly. I remember him saying something like "users exclusively owning their own content is a bit old-school" at one point, but I'm an interrupty-bastard and emphasised that's our culture and those are indeed the terms. Webwit said as much in the past, and I've certainly never faced a EULA update or the like saying Good Bye-bye!
For what it's worth, I don't expect Oliver to do much at all out of the kindness of his own heart. He bought Deskthority and if he wrecks it, that's his investment up in smoke. I do agree with people's general sense he didn't much understand the place and what he was getting when Webwit sold up. That's why me and Jsheradin were urging him to get in there and be an active user, instead of some distant corporate overlord for people to project their worst fears upon. Not much sign of that since we talked, right enough, though he has been chatting away with us three mods via private message at least.
I'm sure he wants to find some way to turn a profit out of DT. He was talking about using it as some sort of community-driven maker platform at the start of our conversation. He assumes we users would like to earn money through our efforts. I pointed out that's the exception to the rule—Ellipse comes to mind, but look at the scale of his efforts!—and really what we're about is a community of like-minded vintage keyboard enthusiasts helping each other out for the fun of it. That's not the easiest thing to monetise! Sure enough, we didn't talk about that side of things beyond that point.
Oh, actually, he did ask "whatever happened to Geekhack?" He's talked to the MassDrop guys—they laughed when they heard he'd bought DT!—but he seems to think GH suffered after its purchase. Perhaps a useful cautionary tale?
You do get the sense the other shoe is still to drop. Quite what it is? I've no idea. He doesn't seem to have an evil masterplan in the works, indeed, he's not much involved in his purchase at all. But at least we woke him up enough that day to get some mods set up!
