Dave Winer's Userland Deal with NYT Digital

Userland Software Founder Dave Winer explains his company’s deal with New York Times Digital, in which people who use Userland’s blogging software will have free-access to The New York Times’ paid-access online archives. We’re previously questioned the Times’ business model for this deal. Later, at the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies Conference last week in Boston (where Winer and we were speakers), we’d heard behind-the-scenes talk that the Times’ had offered Userland (and only Userland) the deal for two reasons: (1) to quiet the outrage of Winer — one of the world’s most prominent bloggers — after the Times’ put all its old stories’ hyperlinks behind the paid-access firewall earlier this Spring and (2) to gain Userland’s expertise in creating and maintaining a Rich Site Summary (RSS) daily feed of New York Times news stories.