May 2004 Archives

Eh, don't misunderstand me. I'm not looking for a better blogging system personally. Bryar does everything I want. But I'd been meaning to improve Bryar so that it supports multiple users, and put a nice web front end on editing and posting, and causing Six Apart pain has become my motivation.
– Simon Cozens

What ever happen to every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch? Causing someone or some company pain as motivation for free software is not an itch – it's a neurosis.

At least for me it will be. I swear this will be my last post on the MT license uproar. (I will be making more posts on MT3, but they will be forward looking and cover the new features.)

SixApart has adjusted their personal licensing terms and made some clarification to their licenses. To summarize:

• The tiered personal licensing plan is gone. Personal licenses are ~$70 for 5 weblogs and 5 authors (which is 2 extra authors). Users can buy extra weblogs and authors for $10.

• They also clarified that a weblog is a site and not an MT weblog. So if you use multiple MT weblogs to create one site (blog entries, reviews, photoblog, link blog and other special sections) that does not count towards the number you should be licensed for. This claries that a lot of people who thought they had to pay actually qualify for the free version.

• Active weblogs and authors is defined as posting/updating in the past 90 days. If you create a weblog for limited time, like for an event, and don't update it for 90 days or more it no longer counts.

• The single CPU limitations is removed and was not intended to be in the license. (More on that in a bit.)

I think these changes are more then reasonable and address many, not all, users concerns. There are still many who only want to pay $20 or want unlimited licenses. I don't think that is reasonable though. You can't run a business on that – you can barely eat as a software developer on that. These comments are the ones that I found so disheartneing, and now over time insulting, that I posted in the first place. It illustrates a serious lack of appreciation for how much time, talent and skill goes into a piece of software. Or in MT's situation how much it does transparently to make a users expierence so great.

And yes it is about eating Mark. Not everyone gets a regular pay check to bankroll their million dollar code projects. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to use free software or develop it. (Why would I? I do both.) But I don't think its fair to pounce on them for not doing so. Conversation is fine and freedom is great, but it doesn't mean we all have free license to say rude and hurtful things with impunity – especially to people you claim to like.

Moving on. I started reading some of the reaction to the clarification and revision from Six Apart and noticed a few people questioning how the single CPU terms got in there. Rather then keep posting the same comment all over the place I say it once here.

I don't know how specifically that 1 CPU clause made it in there, but I can take a guess having been a participant of numerous corprorate legal and licensing negoiations.

Most contracts begin from a standard document or a collection of standard clauses. They are rarely written from scratch. (I've never heard of license text being copyrighted. That would be silly.) So its highly possible that the base document was taken from a software license where a single CPU license made sense. Most software companies selling products that run on servers cap them by the CPU.

How does it get missed? A lawyer probably doesn't know what a CPU is or how shared hosting works. In the heat of the moment of a software/project release, those who do are usually preoccupied with other things (like fixing bugs and writing documentation) that they don't get to go over it with a fine tooth comb and little things get missed. Its happened to me personally on a few occasions.

So there is no conspiracy as some always seem to suggest.

In closing this post out, I'll point to a couple of post that I thought were quite good and resonated with how I feel.

• The Collective Deep Breath Jay explains what is a developer's release and why its necessary along with other developer issues most users don't appreciate.

• Movable Type 3.0 Brad shares his thoughts as a developer.

• The Sky is Not Falling Perspective from Jeremy Zawodny, an open source (MySQL) guru,as to why he still supports MT.

• A Comment from Movable Type 3.0 and MT-Blacklist Gee, I could almost insert my name and my syndication plugin and reuse his post. Though I can count my donors on one hand though.

• MovableType, HomeSite and satanic cults Nick Bradbury compares his experience with the ultra-popular-in-its-day HomeSite HTML Editor he created. (I was a user, paying customers and fan.) He says Even if you live in some bizarro universe that equates earning a living with belonging to a satanic cult, if you're really not willing to pay for MovableType, at least have the courtesy to thank them for the free ride up to this point. Nice.

Since I'm getting responses both here and on my O'Reilly weblog, I'll cross post this follow-up.

So I've spent the better part of yesterday and this morning reading email and response to my earlier O'Reilly post. I still stand by what I said and think it generally holds up. There are some good counterpoints being made too in addition to some real rubbish and loony ranting. Let me recap what mostly worthwhile views I've been reading.

• A significant number of users said they don't expect MT to be free and have no qualms about paying for it however the current fees and restrictions are out of line especially in regards to past requests for donations. Most complaints were about the personal licensing. I saw little noise about the commercial licenses. In fact, the commercial users that spoke up expressed support of those licenses as is, noting that their companies pay significantly more for software that does less.

• Many MT users are operating multiple MT weblogs to do things like remainder links, photoblogs, book reviews that essentially for one weblog in appearance. Others are operating multiple weblogs for friends, family and so on.

• Despite the fact MT3 does not have any nagware or crippling code, many people care about not stealing Six Apart by running illegal or improperly licensed copies of MT. (That was a bit encouraging.)

• The damaging effects of the radio silence I mentioned in a past post still continue. Many did not expect the fees. Even testers were not made aware of them. Others pointed to an earlier SixApart post announcing MT3 as a significant and free upgrade. There was no retraction or explanation that things had changed. To a lessor extent some were annoyed about this release being a developer edition instead of a general use version without notice.

• The new terms are unclear in a few places. For instance many hosting with ISPs point out the server they are on have multiple CPUs, however the new license restricts use to 1 CPU. The aforementioned hack of multiple MT blogs to create one physical blog is yet another.

• Conspiracy theorist who equate TypeKey with big brother were miffed that you have to have a TypeKey account to download the free version of MT.

• Some users a don't understand or are accustom to software licensing practices, costs and economics particularly when it comes to servers. Should I users who has one low-traffic weblog pay the same as someone who hosts a dozen and get lots of traffic?

I was once interviewing a musician about his avid fan base and their sometimes negative reaction to his bands work. He said something profound that has always stuck with me. To paraphrase, he said being hated is better then indifference because when your hated at least they care enough to have an opinion. If there is a silver lining in all of this, its that a lot of people still care about Movable Type and Six Apart's products.

That said, there is work to be done and it will be interesting to see how this will play out. I thought a comment Jay Allen made summed the situation up.

To all of this, I can only say, they are a young company and are bound to make mistakes. I know that they are also razor sharp and have the good of this community at heart, so it won't take them long to make these things clear.

Agreed, which is why I think all of this outcry is a bit over the top. It's not like this license came out and the user community said Hey, I have problem with because X or I don't understand Y because of this situation to which Six Apart said piss off, pay up or go away. These licensing terms have barely been available for 24 hours – no time for any company to react and respond coherently. Let us not overlook that version 2.661 is still available and is free without limitations. Also, none of their software has some poison pill or nagware built in either for those who do not acquire a proper license. I'm also really astounded by the evil empire mentality that many has adopted towards a company that in the past has a proven track record of trying to do the right thing. But, I digress.

There are things to learn from this situation as michaelashby commented to my earlier post, Eating Should Include A Balanced Diet. Here are my thoughts to potentially finding a better balance:

• Six Apart needs to start communicating – a lot and soon. Start by explain how this happened in straight forward terms. Also acknowledge that you are listening and are to address the feedback to the new licensing. While the situation seems urgent, the worst thing they could do is rush to a decision and it be out of line for them or for users. I think we'll see that they are not some greedy evil empire as some has accused them of being.

• The prices and limitations need to be tweaked especially when it comes to personal licenses in response to the uproar. To not do something in response to the extraordinary outcry would add more fuel to the fire.

• Offer credits and discounts to donors to move to TypePad. From what I can tell looking at a lot of these sites, many would be better off on TypePad were they get hosting and lot of other features with no limitation on weblogs or authors. One post noted that TypePad cost $180 a year. True, but how much do many of us pay for hosting MT? Dreamhost would be about $120. Pair Networks would cost about $216 – more then TyepPad. (This is a really rough comparison and is to a degree over simplified, but I think it gets my point across.) As part of the program make it extremely easy to transfer a weblog running in MT to TypePad Pro. (The current MT export does not handle templates which I suspect would be a big deterrent to many users migration.)

• Clarify licensing terms such as the single CPU/shared hosting snag many have noted.

• Clarify the term blog particularly in regards to those who using multiple MT blogs to hack together advanced features such as remaindered links, photoblogs etc. If the terms are to remain MT blog, declare a grace period in the licensing for these users while the company addresses this situation with tools/services or a few new license friendly how-to's that remove the need for multiple weblogs.

Reprinted from my O'Reilly Network weblog here.

In the wee hours of the morning today, Six Apart released Movable Type 3.0 to mixed reviews. (More on that in a bit.) This release is being called a developers edition that is not for general public use. It is also not a feature release says Six Apart. In many ways this release is like that of the original release of Mac OS X. There were few new features, but a significant changes to the underlying system that are poised to take the company in a whole new direction.

In that vein, MT is graduating to a platform rather then just a personal publishing system. This is great news and an important distinction for developers looking to extend and enhance MT for various non-traditional weblog uses like I have in my work. Six Apart is acknowledging the importance of developers to the evolution of MT. To kick off this renewed commitment to developers, they've announced the formation of a developer's network, plugin contest (more here), and new less restrictive and more diverse and costly licenses. First the happier side of the news.

Drilling down, new features for developers include:

• The ability to create object callback plugins on pre and post saves, loads and removes. These will come in handy for doing automated mirroring, versioning and integrating subsystems that link to core information.
• A plugin registration API that displays the plugin name and other metadata such as description, documentation and configuration script links in the MT content management interface.
• A pluggable authentication system for comment boards. (The company launched their own hosted system that MT defaults to named TypeKey.)
• Numerous performance enhancements including lazy fetching of data. (Developers can take advantage of this capability in their own plugins.)
• A number of bug fixes. For instance, MTElse works with conditional plugin tags now.

From a user perspective MT 3 features a new lighter-weight interface which takes full advantage of CSS. It also reorganizes the interface to make comment and Trackback ping moderation easier to manage. Comments also have a number of new features which include moderation approval of messages and posters in addition to authentication. Email notifications have become more robust adding a verification step and (finally!) an unsubscribe feature.

Six Apart also announced new licensing which has been quickly panned by the push button publishing community. While there still will be a free version of MT, it is limited to 3 weblogs and 1 author. The reaction has been swift as many decry the new terms (specifically the fees) that run many weblogs with many authors that using MT will cost them. Many of these posts gripe that alternate server-based tools such as WordPress do not support multiple blogs and/or authors yet. What's a bit silly about these posts is that not one so far notes that the hosted version of MT (TypePad) allows for unlimited authors and weblogs (plus many other features not available in MT) at a price that rivals basic hosting packages.

The delineation between TypePad and MT have become clear with this release – TypePad is for general users wanting to blog and Movable Type is for developers and professional organizations wanting to do more then just weblogging.

Of the reactions I've read this morning I think Brian Stearns had the most poignant observation of this furor. Noting many of the initial Trackback pings to Mena's post he writes ...

For me this outlines that a large part of the weblog world was in it because it was free to do for the most part and an easy way to do something innovative (at least when they started). I think a large part of the internet world is cheap and not willing to pay for things so I will not be surprised to see people dump MovableType to start using a free weblog tool or discontinuing their weblogs altogether.

Agreed, Brian. Rumor around the MT community is that Six Apart was collecting less then 50 cents (US) for each copy of MT downloaded. That is absurd for a piece of commercial software!

This outcry raises a bigger more important point which is the reason for my post. As a developer and one who makes a living writing code, this reaction to Six Apart's new licensing is really disheartening and on a certain level frustrating to see. I am a firm believer and backer of open source. I've personally released quite a bit of open source code myself and will continue to do so. However this apparent expectation of the vocal part of community that it is their right to have all great works of software at no cost is bothersome. If users don't have the funds or won't pay on principle for my time, effort or talent – how do I eat?

File this one under a lot of effort went into making this look easy or, depending how you feel, it's about @#?*&!% time! I'm a bit surprised that I haven't been publicly flogged like some other software developers. (I appreciate every one's patience.)

I finally threw down the gauntlet and went into near seclusion to reach this point, but I'm nearing completion of mt-feeds 2.0 (formerly mt-rssfeed). This post is too provide a bit of an update and to recruit some alpha testers to collect feedback. If you are interested and a MT3 tester, please click Reply (link above) to let me know. Since I am an army of one, I'll be keeping the group small to avoid being buried.

This new release represents a complete object-oriented overhaul of the engine that should prove to be more robust, adaptive and flexible so I hopefully never ever ever ever have to go through this again. (I think I may retire if I do.) Since version 1.0 of the plugin was released, both Atom and RSS 2.0 (in its many and varying forms) were introduced and put into use adding an exponential amount of complexity (where is the simple? I don't see it) to republishing syndicated data. In order to better accommodate the sophistication necessary, this project included the development and evolution of 4 CPAN packages – XML::Elemental, XML::RSS::Parser, XML::RAI and XML::Atom::Syndication.

You probably don't (and shouldn't) care about that though. What you should care about is what's new and what's changed:

• It's name to reflect its…
• Atom syndication support.
• Additional support and improved mapping of RSS tags including date tags with native MT formatting support.
• Easier to configure. (I hope.)
• Smarter faster caching of syndication feeds including HTTP ETag support.
• Ability to refresh your subscriptions separately or in the background via cron.
• Internalization of mt-list functionality.
• OPML, XOXO and CSV support of subscriptions lists.
• The ability to render the latest entries from a group of subscriptions.

Unfortunately, because of this substantial change in functionality this version is generally backward incompatible. Namely…

• XML::Parser::Lite support had to be dropped. It was lacked too many features that are crucial to syndication and is not being actively maintained. I toyed with the idea of adding most of the necessary feature myself, but decided that it wasn't worth the hassle. I had a bit of a tussle with Parser::Lite trying to get 1.0 out over a year ago. (It was a majority of the time I spent in development actually.) Forgive me for not wanting to repeat that experience again. I think that expat and XML::Parser is broad enough that this shouldn't be a problem. If this is going to be a problem please contact me to discuss.

• The tags names and structure are significantly different and will require mt-rssfeed templates to be manually edited. Sorry, but with the substantial changes I couldn't come up with a way to keep things backwards compatible.

• It requires MT3. (Too may new goodies in 3.0 to pass-up.)

As before, this plugin will made available under the same terms as MT itself – a donation is requested for personal and non-profit use. Commercial entities are required to obtain a license. It is not open source like many of my prior MT plugins.

OK, back to my cell.

UPDATE: I opened an announcements mailing list here For anyone who wants to know when it launches in addition to receiving occasional messages post-launch regarding this plugin.