Trapped at Berkeley

I never thought I’d have to say this, but…

I hate Movable Type. With the release of MT 3.0, Six Apart has unexpectedly announced new licensing. A free license is still available, but it limits individuals to one author and three blogs. A “Personal Edition” license is offered at the introductory price of $69.95, and it supports 3 authors and 5 blogs.

I understand that Six Apart needs to be profitable, but these changes in licensing were totally unexpected. It would not be so angry if they had announced these changes well in advance. I have been waiting for MT 3.0 for a long time, and I’m disappointed that it had to be released under such circumstances.

Mena has defended the changes by stating that they will prevent MT from being exploited and will encourage people to develop tools for it. If that truly was the case, Six Apart would have been better off releasing parts of MT 3.0 under the LGPL and the core under the GPL.

Nevertheless, I should have seen this coming. I’m a huge OSS advocate, and one of the greatest features of OSS is that it prevents vendor lock-in. If a vendor suddenly decides to change their licensing, the software can be forked, and a new project can be started under the old licensing terms. The recent X Windows licensing dispute is a great example of this flexibility. However, MT was never OSS, so this is not going to happen.

I know that I could have switched from MT to another program at any time, but I had never expected such a dramatic change in licensing. I feel as if this sudden change was planned; Six Apart would allow people to become accustomed and even dependent upon MT, and then they would start charging for it. This sounds wildly reminiscent of the business tactics of a certain Redmond-based corporation. Anybody remember when they were giving out copies of Outlook?

Well, this means the end of my relationship with MT and Six Apart. After finals, I will begin transitioning to an OSS alternative.

Goodbye, MT.