Six Apart clarified their license terms for the v3.0 release, which over the last couple of days has provided plenty of drama in the blogsphere. To be quite honest, I really don't give a crap about what their license looks like, how much it costs, or what restrictions are imposed, and I certainly don't buy into this 'we all love each other, we're a big happy family' vibe that is often attributed to early stage tech waves. What I do find interesting is the notion of bottom up software trends, and whether or not software that is essentially community developed or community driven can ever become commercialized in the traditional software business model.
Movable Type proliferated on a donation model where you download it for free and if you want to support it you send in your $20. They did well in terms of getting the software into production use, it's really a nice set of tools for publishing and hosting weblogs. It's also the basis for the subscription Typepad service, which of course I use for this blog. Users flocked to MT for personal and professional blogs, Mena and Ben Trott became pseudo-celebrities on the blog circuit, and so on. And I don't mean to deride the Trott's, I met Mena at Demo this year, she seem like a very nice person to deal with, nontheless, they have wrapped up their own identity in SixApart (and vice-versa) so the company has become highly personalized in their name.
I'm sure that someone whispered into the Trott's ear that they could be making a lot of money by imposing a more traditional software license model on MT and provided grown-up company stuff like services and tiered support. That's good, right? Make money, build a company, create jobs? Good? Right?
The only problem is that the "community" feels that they are part-and-parcel of the success of MT and to require them to license the software that they so lovingly embraced is like getting stabbed in the back with a rusty shank. "We made you who you are and this is how you treat us" is the common theme in the 95% negative comments and trackbacks on the new pricing announcement.
So the question left unanswered is whether or not any software package or tool that is brought into the mainstream by a community of dedicated users can ever evolve to a traditional pay-me kind of software license model without alienating the very userbase that brought you to the party? Who gets credit for the success of MT, the development team at SixApart or the user community that adopted it?
It really a very similar situation in the Open Source community, except they have the GPL which pretty much takes commercial gain off the table, at least as far as software licensing is concerned.
Your comment about the torturing of prisoners below is disgusting. What sets us apart from Al-Qaeda is the higher standard we must follow. By writing that, you put yourself at their level, and you're not better than them. Torture is a terrible thing, no matter who's on the receiving end. You lost a reader.
Posted by: Giordano | May 18, 2004 at 02:10 AM
sorry you disagree with my position on Al Qaeda terrorists and torture, the world is full of disagreement as it's one of the things that makes us human. If we can't rationally disagree about things and limit our actions to simply talking about it, then we really are no different than Al Queda because they would rather kill us than accept a world that doesn't conform to their views. I make no apology or smoothing over of how I feel, I think terrorists are nothing more than animals and murderers who should be hunted down one at a time and killed until every last one of them is eliminated, and if it takes a 100 years and many generations, then that's the deal.
Insofar as what makes us different from them, I think the fact that we would not fly jetliners into skyscrapers, or blow up embassies and apartment buildings is a far more meaningful differentiator. If the extreme interrogation of a crimminal like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed yields a shred of information that saves lives, then it's okay by me because in my view that thug gave up his membership in the human race.
Sorry you won't be reading my blog anymore, but I honestly don't write it for the reason of growing readership, I write this for me. I also think it's a little hypocritical for you to talk about what makes us different from them and then say in the same breath that you are turning me off because you don't agree with me. I listen to NPR every morning even though the Forum program with that smarmy Michael Krazny guy drives me frickin nuts, but I'm interested to know how people who don't agree with me think. Guess that's what makes you and I different. The world will be a small place if you only include the people who agree with you.
Posted by: jn | May 18, 2004 at 06:41 AM