Many years ago — I think it was in NetNewsWire 1.x, but it could have been 2.x — I got an email from a writer (who I won’t name) letting me know he was writing a book about Mac apps, and he planned to write about NetNewsWire.

I thought this was great! I thanked him, of course, and let him know I’d be happy to answer any questions.

Some time later — memory suggests it was just a couple weeks — he wrote me about one of the entries in the “Sites Drawer,” the feed directory that appeared in the app. (Yes! In an NSDrawer.)

It was a feed that reported on and promoted LGBTQ civil rights, including marriage equality. (Which wasn’t the law of the land at the time, which must have been around 2004 or 2005.)

He objected: he would not write about the app as long as that feed was in there. He apologized and said his personal convictions would not allow it.

I was proud of the feed directory. There were about a thousand feeds, and we worked pretty hard on it, and we made sure there were conservative as well as liberal feeds in there. (We didn’t try to make it 50-50, but we did make sure blogs like Instapundit were in there.)

Anyway: I didn’t remove the feed. (I don’t think he asked directly: he just laid out the consequences — no write-up — of my not removing it.)

I don’t know, because I never went looking, to see if his book got published. He had published earlier books, including one that I had actually learned a lot from, years prior.

No kicker here. Just a story.