"You will hear from my attourney next"

Making legal threats to open source projects about seemingly everyday words, such as "weblogger", is the straight way to the community purgatory. So learned Weblogger.com's Erin Clerico after he almost engaged his paper-pushing calvary on Dave Johnson's open source Roller Weblogger project.

"I take it by your attitude here you are ready for a fight. You will hear from my attorney next."

Luckily, Johnson quickly got the assistance of a few well-positioned hawks that called Clerico on his Instant Madness Trip and brought him to shame. That doesn't spell good news for a company that lives and dies by it's stature in the weblog community, which, more than anywhere, is renowned for standing up for little guys getting bullied by big guys.

Hence, Mr. Weblogger.com quickly realized his terrible overreaction and, somewhat to his credit, quickly backed down and issued a public apology (on his personal site, though, not weblogger.com). Good for him.

Regrettably, it goes to show that you don't need to be a mega corporation to act like a megalomaniac and issue legal threats without thought. You only need to be a mega corporation to not care a rat's ass when you get caught.