I'm guessing that pg's comment was at least partially in response to my own below[0], and you've exactly stated my issue with Curtis and the Svbtle network. There's nothing horribly wrong with the general concept behind Svbtle - perhaps it'll work, perhaps not. It's definitely legitimate enough that it's worth a shot.
But the way dcurtis went about it - the way he worded his initial post on Svbtle, his responses to the Svbtle theme being cloned, and so on, were very off-putting, to say the least. Moreover, the fact that he was so fixated on people copying the theme suggests that he was placing value in the wrong things in Svbtle.
To use a newspaper analogy, is it the layout of the NYTimes that gives it prestige and distinguishes it from your average tabloid rag? Is it the font? Is it the type of paper they use, or the size of the paper? No, it's the content, and the people who create it.
By stirring up such an enormous shitstorm over some people copying the Svbtle theme and creating RoR[1] or WP[2] clones, dcurtis gave up his reputation (which is actually important for running something like Svbtle) in a futile attempt to preserve the uniqueness of the Svbtle theme (which isn't all that important). His best hope now is to spread Svbtle outside the tech community, to people who aren't familiar with him, and thus don't have any impression of him at all yet.
0: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027577
