Zarathud: I don't plan on selling out to the Devil, but I don't plan on courting his worse attentions unless I have to, either. Like I said- diplomacy, man. It's been demonstrated before that, logical or not, he doesn't respond well (to say the least) to negative-toned feedback. He isn't going to read your post and think "Hey, hmm, he has a point, this is a lot more of a stretch than my Battlecruiser games, and maybe I should wait around for a buyer who's more like Volition". He's going to read it and regard it as a flame, and go nuts. Hence, for the purposes of that thread your post is retermed as a flame- it's inflammatory, hence a flame, duh.
At the end of the day, this is not nearly enough of a "big" issue for an honor battle or for much to be enjoyed out of moral victories- ultimately who's right and who's wrong is of little importance- it's who's left, and who gets what. Maybe I'm speaking too soon, but I suspect most people here would rather have the freedom to continue as normal without harassment from some guy with spurious legal leverage over us than have the cold comfort of knowing at the end of the day we were right and he was wrong. It's a bit of a reach to hope that justice will prevail on its own or someone'll swoop down and save us from Smart, so we might as well get to work saving ourselves.
Honestly, I'm not sure what you're even trying to achieve here. If you've read his stuff before, you know he's got his own, very different, perception of the realities around him than you do, and isn't going to take your points seriously. There's no case I've seen where adopting a negative, argumentative tone with him (which you have done, whether it's flaming or not) has done anything more than make him freak and stop listening. There's not any way I can look at it where working him up into a lather is conducive towards getting something, anything we want out of him. Hence... why? Why not adopt a more diplomatic approach that he might respond to?
Maybe you're missing the context, I dunno. This is not some ultimate battle between Good and Evil. Honestly, what he's doing is little more than what all those little kids who plagued the VBB did, with their plans to create a highly subjective Freespace 3 that doesn't seem particularly appealing as so. The Freespace mods can still continue (probably). There's still the infinitely remote chance of someone else coming along and picking up the license. Making trouble for the community in the short term over what's really kind of an absurd point isn't worth it.
Should he express determination to continue on the path of opposition to HLP or the greater mass of the Freespace fanbase, yes, naturally things will change. I'll fight, when I have to- hell, might as well, all my worthwhile causes are dead. But it's not that time yet.
