Sunshine has a way of revealing the dark shadows below the surface. The rays shine, showing so much of something you could not see before. Ever see a great fish swim by deep in a river pool? All you can see is its dark shadow. But sometimes, when the light is right, you can see the whole shape of the fish. It's spots, rainbows and sometimes, a scar or two from a battle long ago.

I guess that is why I am watching, looking for what the sunshine reveals about podcasting and its history. With just a little sunshine, I am learning more about the shadows below the surface, the ones that say so much about the players involved, but also the podcasting community, myself included. ( Interesting take on this in Adam Curry Daily Source Code.)

I can't judge these guys, Adam Curry nor Dave Winer and each of their takes on the history of podcasting. More so, I wonder, what does this debate mean for all of us as the history of podcasting continues to unfold? How are these past events shaping what happens today?

For instance, with a bit more sunshine. I am getting some glimmer of what happened between Adam and Dave almost a year ago in Miami. I now have some understanding for why suddenly, after talk of being like brothers, Adam and Dave inexplicably split, with nary a mention of each other and what had come to pass.

Here's what Dave had to say on his road trip to Miami, dated Dec. 28, 2004. This is from a cached page on Google. I would link to the original post but Dave's archives for this time period seem to be down. Here's what he says:

Anyway, talking with Adam yesterday I remarked that people seem to like getting ideas from him, but they don't like getting them from me. Then I talked with Scoble at length, and he said something similar about himself, that he works hard to be liked, and that I don't. The weird thing is that Scoble is just beginning to get the taste of people not liking him, but any good editor will tell you something's wrong if you're a reporter and everyone likes you. And if we're citizen journalists, I guess we have to get used to this. Anyway, it's really hard to get motivated to deliver more innovative shit, knowing that it's going to be just as hard the 53rd time to get people to suspend their disbelief as it was the 1st. It's not surprising that Fortune skipped our contribution. I'm constantly written out of the story of my creative life. Should I continue? Why? This is one of the things I'm thinking about while driving.

And in the next post...

BTW, I love Adam and Scoble like brothers.

(A note on this, Dave and Adam had known each other for almost four years, dating back to this post, when Dave talked about meeting Adam and the brainstorming session they had about what Dave termed virtual bandwidth.)

Dave traveled on to Miami, meeting Adam, Ron Bloom and others in early January. The four days that followed, lead to a split. From Curry.com::

For days we had heated discussions about the future of Podcasting and it was clear that the differences of opinion were vast.

It was also clear that no one from the group (which included 2 investors) wanted to work with Dave but me. It was a very uncomfortable time for me, and at the end of the week I told Dave I wasn't interested in setting up a business anymore if we couldn't get the business people on board. He freaked out (in a restaurant) and demanded that if I got a television show out of the press at the time, that I would have to pay him his 'share' and drove away without saying goodbye. That event made me realize I had made a wise decision. Some people you just don't want to be in business with.

Podshow, which was started months after the Miami meeting, is not the company Dave and I discussed and it wouldn't be where it is today if we had followed Dave's vision. In fact, he shunned the entire idea and even the name outright. We made a clean break in Miami and Dave apparently can't accept that.

Part of the 'work' that Dave and I did under our so called 50/50 agreement was on audio.weblogs.com, which I promoted relentlessly. Where's my piece of the $2.3 million that Dave received for it? He didn't even have the courtesy to toss a bone to the server admin he promised to 'make whole' upon a sale for setting up the infrastructure gratis. And there are more Winer stories like this flowing into my email box.

All of this is not a "whatever," kind of issue. It's not about these guys making fools of themselves. It's about us all and what is happening as the stakes get higher as more money gets into podcasting. I disagree that someone needs to tell these guys to behave. That's not anyone's job.

If we did look at it as an issue about behavior then we'd all be a bunch of drones, minding our manners, making sure all is secure and quiet. Instead, we're discusing the issue. Look at what has come out of the entire debate:

* Dave has repeatedly been critical of Wikipedia in his blog posts about the podcast revisionist issue. The discussion has surfaced all kinds of debate about the online encyclopedia. In response, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, has decided that anonymous articles may not be created at Wikipedia.

* The debate about podcast revisionism is flowing more sunshine into who out there really are the pioneers, the ones who started creating new applications and services as well as the foundation for what a podcast should be.

So,I say, bring on the sunshine. Let the discussion grow, weeds and all.