Licensing matters
Like most people, I pay very little attention to software licenses. There’s usually a plain English description of roughly what the license is supposed to say somewhere along the line, and beyond that what a license actually says is whatever a lawyer can convince a judge it says, and in any disagreement I expect my lawyer to be cheaper and less effective than the other guy’s. If I’m looking for code to redistribute, of course I carefully check the license, but when I’m looking for something to use, I read a paragraph or two, just enough to make my eyes glaze over, and then click “Otay, I’ll do what you say!”
That’s not always a great idea. Sometimes, the license says “we reserve the right to fill your computer with spyware and adware, and disable your antivirus program and your firewall too, my pretty.” Other times, the license says “we reserve the right to completely change the terms at any time, and you are required to keep checking the modification date on our website to determine whether or not we have.”
Thanks to Pete’s constant prodding and the whole explosion of interest in Movable Type’s license, now that for lots of people it says “get out your wallet, please,” I finally took a closer look. From the top:
“Non-Commercial Purposes” means use of the Software by an individual for publishing on a personal blog site on a single sever [sic]
We’ve already established that we are talking about me, a chunk of meat and bone, and not any other sort of me. But, publishing on a single server? Does this mean that all the people who are thinking they’ll be okay with the free license because they have two blogs on one domain, and two blog on a different domain on a different server, are wrong, and in fact they are not allowed to publish on more than one domain? Can I have two free blogs on two different servers (or, six free blogs, three each on two servers)? For that matter, can I buy a five weblog personal license and split it between two servers? Can I even buy more than one personal license, to publish on two servers? And what about non-publishing, non-server use? I’m only allowed to make one backup copy, so am I no longer allowed to install a copy locally on my laptop? In some ways it’s a server, since it’s running Apache, but it only answers on 127.0.0.1, which makes it not very server-like. Are you allowed to do anything you please when using MT as a private diary program, or are you not allowed to do so at all? Also, I use the Software to create syndication feeds that are used to publish me on at least two other servers, along with an unknown number of semi-public personal aggregators than run on servers and are web-accessible to anyone.
“Weblog” means a single Web site viewable at a single URL (Uniform Resource Locator), consisting of one or more weblogs as generated by the Software via the “Create New Weblog” function of the Software.
This definition is certainly more palatable than the previous “a weblog is what you get when you click ‘Create new Weblog’ in the interface,” but it’s vastly less clear, comprehensible, and defensible. The out-of-band (and thus, by the terms of the Agreement, not a part of the Agreement) explanation has been that things like linklogs and photologs don’t count as separate weblogs, but that just stitching together a single aggregated view of multiple separate weblogs isn’t enough to make them only count as one. That’s completely unworkable and unenforceable: depending on how you look at it, my linklog is a wholly separate weblog, with all the standard templates of any weblog (because I didn’t bother to turn them off, mostly), or an integral part of my one weblog. I have an abandoned photolog, developed as a totally separate thing: should giving it a template that produces thumbnails I include here, without changing anything else, make it not a separate weblog?
Use of the Software for automatic computer-generated publishing is not permitted under this Agreement.
I honestly don’t have the slightest idea what that means, or why it’s a bad thing. Does it mean you can’t write a random entry generator program and feed its output through MT? Why on earth not? Does it mean that Scoble can’t use MT to publish his aggregated posts feed? If there’s some actual bad thing here that we really need to not do, we’ll need it spelled out a bit more than that.
Six Apart owns all rights, title and interest in and to the Software (including all intellectual property rights, and reserves all rights to the Software not expressly granted in this Agreement.
I’m down with all of that, it’s maybe the clearest and most sensible and obvious sentence in the whole Agreement, but aren’t you supposed to be programmers, running a software company? Unbalanced parentheses! Compiler errors!
You must maintain, on every site generated by the Software, an operable link to http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/
Oops, the default templates put every single user in violation of the license, then, since they link to http://www.movabletype.org.
You may not:
- Create derivative works based on the Software;
- Reproduce the Software except as described in this Agreement;
- Sell, assign, license, disclose, or otherwise transfer or make available the Software or any copies of the Software in any form to any third parties;
- Translate or attempt to reverse engineer the Software, subject to applicable law which permits such activity notwithstanding this contractual prohibition;
Interesting thing about creating derivative works based on the Software: the code is beautifully object-oriented, perfectly designed for the creation of derivative works, and the perldoc throughout the whole thing carefully explains how to create derivative works. I’m not quite sure what reverse-engineering is in the context of Perl, or any other unencrypted scripting language, but I suspect that it means most of how I’ve spent my free time for the last couple of years, poking at the code and figuring out how it works. Oops. I thought I was debugging, and hacking in useful new ideas.
I do know that previous versions of the license said that
Although you may modify or alter the Software for your own use (including copies that extend, or enhance the Software), you may not distribute, transfer, or resell the modified or derivative copies of the Software; you may not use such copies for other than personal, non-commercial purposes; and you may not use such copies in a way that violates the terms of this Agreement.
a section which is now completely missing from both the personal and the commercial licenses, which would seem to leave the developers, for whom 3.0 is tailored, rather hamstrung.
No Warranty. THE SOFTWARE IS OFFERED ON AN “AS-IS” BASIS AND NO WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, IS GIVEN. SIX APART AND ITS SUPPLIER
Its supplier? Don’t tell me that Santa and the Tooth Fairy wrote MT, too! Or, er, is that another bit of blind copy-and-paste from whatever license agreement you reverse-engineered ?
Personal license:
You may use the Software under this Agreement until either party terminates this Agreement as set forth in this paragraph. Either party may terminate the Agreement at any time, upon written notice to the other party. Upon termination, all licenses granted to you will terminate, and you will immediately uninstall and cease all use of the Software.
Commercial license:
The term of this Agreement shall be for the period corresponding to the fee you pay and set forth in your copy of the Software, unless terminated earlier as provided herein.
Unfortunately, “give us your billing information” comes earlier in the purchase process than “here’s the details about what you are buying,” so I don’t actually know what the term of the commercial license is. However, I don’t see any sign (on this side of the credit card wall, at least) that there’s more than one Personal license: there’s just the one, where the number of users and weblogs and the possibility of help will vary based on whether or not you paid, but nothing else does, including the fact that they can tell you to uninstall it at any time for no reason. So far as I know, 6A is still currently not-Evil. However, you could buy a $149 personal license today, add a few hundred dollars worth of extra authors next week, and when they sell out the week after that, be ordered to delete your copy of MT.
One of the stated benefits (stated in advertising, not in the license) of the paid versions is “A guaranteed path to future versions.” Under the terms of the license, that guarantee could just as easily mean “we guarantee that you will upgrade, because your license for your existing version will be terminated.” One of the purposes of an equitable contract is to protect both parties. That term, allowing Six Apart to unilaterally terminate your use of your paid-for personal license at any time, for no reason, isn’t the least bit equitable.
Six Apart may modify the Software and this Agreement with notice to you either in email or by publishing content on the Six Apart Website, including but not limited to charging fees for the Software, changing the functionality or appearance of the Software, and such modification will become binding on you unless you terminate this Agreement.
Just in case it wasn’t clear to you before: they can change absolutely anything about the contract, unilaterally, and they don’t even have to tell you: you are responsible for tracking every single change on every single page published on their website to determine, day to day, whether or not you want to delete your copy of Movable Type or continue to use it under that day’s terms (including but not limited to paying them (more) money).
I’ve seen a number of people saying over the last few days that they would just continue using their existing copy of MT 2.x, under the terms of license when they downloaded it. Well, I’m not sure what terms you got your copy under, but I just looked at the copy in my MT directory, and it screams:
CHANGES TO TERMS. LICENSOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THIS AGREEMENT AT ANY TIME BY POSTING CHANGES ONLINE. IF THIS AGREEMENT IS REVISED, THE CHANGES WILL BE POSTED THROUGH THE “LICENSE AGREEMENT” LINK ON THE DOWNLOAD PAGE ON LICENSOR’S WEB SITE. A MORE RECENT DATE AT THE TOP OF THE POSTED AGREEMENT THAN THE DATE AT THE TOP OF THIS AGREEMENT WILL LET YOU KNOW THAT A CHANGED AGREEMENT HAS BEEN POSTED. YOUR NON-TERMINATION OR CONTINUED USE OF THE SOFTWARE AFTER CHANGES ARE POSTED CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS AGREEMENT AS MODIFIED BY THE POSTED CHANGES.
Sweet! By continuing to use MT after the current license was posted, whether or not I even read it, I have already accepted it. Sure, that’s utterly unenforceable, you cannot have a contract where one party hasn’t even seen the contract, but none the less, those are the terms of the license I agreed to.
I’ve got a really sour taste in my mouth right now. I think I’ll brush my teeth, and try to sleep, and think about this in the morning. Or, more likely, all night.
Thanks for the feedback, Phil. It’s stuff we’re definitely going to be revising. (For the better, to answer your next question.)
How do other licenses compare?
Nice post, Phil.
I think that you have just defined ”hoist with your own petard”
Or as Sgt. Friday used to say, ”The facts, just the facts ma’am.”
MovableType Madness
Phil Ringnalda dissects MovableType’s license agreement (I wonder - did he do this with the license agreement of all the other software he’s using?). Mark Pilgrim’s post on his switching from MT to Wordpress gets translated into diffe…
MT3D’s new licenses: Response to Anil Dash
Anil Dash of Six Apart left some comments on my first post about MT3D’s new licenses:…
Phil - Here’s links to the Personal and Commercial license agreements. The links used to be accessible from a ”Legal” link on the movabletype.org home page. I wish they would put it back.
I too disagree with the notion that Six Apart can terminate my MT license at any time even if I am not violating the license agreement in any way. My thoughts when I read this were ”Six Apart can take my MT3 away when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers!”.
Licensing matters
Phil checks out MT license. Aren’t most software licenses similarly gross and nasty? I suspect most of this was from a template of some sort. I read a Microsoft EULA once and had nightmares for weeks. The GPL isn’t bad.
Phil, either MT is run by your best good friends Ben and Mena and Anil, and the squirrels can do no harm…
Or it’s a 26+ member international company funded by a VC that just came out with a shocking pricing plan and a very unclear license.
It’s isn’t both ways. You can’t have a Mom and Pop store and a shiny office in San Francisco at the same time.
You can’t have good buddie loyalty one moment, and then point out potential corporate gotchas the next.
Sorry, but I’m tired of seeing all this demotional string pulling going around about this product.
Well, I disagree. One part of allowing your friends to make mistakes, even whoppers, is that you have to tell them. If ”my friends can make mistakes” == ”my friends can do no wrong” then you don’t have a friendship, you have codependence.
And the way that they can remain our friends, while still making money and building up a company, either one built to last or one that will make its primary profit by being sold to someone big and stupid, is by setting things up so that we can at least keep our pants on, no matter what.
Are you standing by the tool because it’s the better one for you? The most affordable? The best use of technology?
The best license?
Or because it’s created by friends, and you’re loyal to those friends?
If you’re going to be keeping the tool because of an emotional investment, kind of cuts the ground out from any criticism. After all, you won’t stop using the tool, because it was developed by friends.
No, I’m not immediately dropping the tool as a result of a poorly-worded license with worrisome terms, because I want to give them a chance to fix it. The friendship part comes in in forming my belief that they might fix it, and that they should be given a second chance, and not punished for their first mistake. I’ll drop it if I have to, but at least for now I don’t want to have to (not least because of my intellectual investment: if you say ”when it saves an entry” I know exactly where
sub save_entryis, and I know what it inherits, and I know what it calls to actually do the saving, and where several of the bodies are buried).Shelley: ”You can’t have good buddie loyalty one moment, and then point out potential corporate gotchas the next.”
Why not?
Whatever.
Sorry Roger, bad mood, bad answer.
Because by providing the warm, nurturing answer that Phil did on the license discussion, he now has the explicit ear from the Six Apart crew about what is or is not wrong with the license, product, whatever.
It seems Phil has ’bought’ the rights to be heard, while the rest of us are ignored as the ’emotional chimps in the tree’.
This is just total bullshit. This is part and parcel of everything that Six Apart has done wrong the last year — you’re heard only if you do or say the right thing. You get the decency of a response only if you meet Mena’s proper response etiquette, or Anil doesn’t have a grudge against you.
That’s life for ye. People, even collectively, still act like people.
So that’s okay then?
Ah well, Six Apart has ignored everyone but those who say positive things and those who are in the Technorati 100, but that’s okay–because that’s just the way life is.
But that is the weblogging way, isn’t it? Accountability is about as real around here as the friendships.
Well, yeah, it shouldn’t be such a surprise… especially given the angle you’re appear to be arguing.
I don’t expect Microsoft to come listen to my personal comments, even though I can understand they’ll listen to certain others’. Why would I expect Six Apart to be any different?
They’re people. They’re going to listen to who they want and, of course, respond to who they choose.
What is it that makes this perceived difference, anyhow? They’re all webloggers? They make weblogging software? They’re run by a couple? So what?
The weblogging way appears to be similar to the general Internet way: everyone thinks people owe them something. They generally don’t.
Let the market decide if Six Apart are screwing their users over. Up until they decided to strengthen this license of theirs, it’s mostly been their users screwing them. Economics usually does a good job of spotting bad decisions.
I’m not communicating what I’m trying to say very well. Perhaps because I’m seeing the same thing I’ve seen so much in the last year, that my frustration overwhelms my ability to communicate. Which is probably a good indication that I’m tired of weblogging, as much as anything.
First, I can’t quite see how the users have screwed Six Apart the last few years. I don’t know how much the company made from donations and being hired to help install MT; and I don’t know how much value you can place on the the free publicity that MT fans have generated. But I do debate your thinking that the users have ’screwed’ Six Apart.
I also don’t think that Six Apart is trying to ’screw’ their users. I think they screwed up, badly. And I think they still are, for the same reasons. For all that Ben and Mena and Anil are involved in the weblogging environment, they’ve not used this environment effectively. Communication has sucked big time. But is this Six Apart screwing their users? No, this is just Six Apart redefining the type of user they want now.
So those of us who don’t fit in this definition move on. Some of us saw the writing early, and moved on early. Others didn’t and reacted, yet even with anger, because frankly, they weren’t expecting to have to face a decision about whether they were going to continue using MT 3.0 when it came out. And yes, this makes software users very peevish.
I was a bit disappointed that Phil packaged his reason for staying with MT because of friendship. Kind of classes people as ’those who are friends with people from Six Apart’, and those who are not. I think his further explanation about how much time he has in the tool, and how well he knows it, too much to just throw it over because of a mistake in the license is a heck of a lot better answer–but everyone has their opinion.
But when Ben emails Mark Pilgrim and Anil responds selectively to some people and not others, this just continues that same damn class structure, that same insider/outsider thing that I’ve been watching Six Apart, and friends, foster over the last year.
It may be human, but it feels dishonest. And it represents I think the worst of weblogging.
The Six Apart people would have been better not to address anyone specifically, and especially not to make implications that anyone who is negative is ’emotional’ and therefore irrational, and therefore not of worth listening to. It is so manipulative. I don’t know if they know they’re doing it, but that’s what I see.
Tying friendship into tools and emotion into technology–and we wonder why we’re so polarized about politics in this country. If we can’t even make a choice on weblogging tool without having to invest ourselves emotionally in the process, how we going to deal with the bigger decisions facing us in in the years to come?
Shelly,
C.S Lewis gave an address called The Inner Ring that you might find good reading, even if you don’t agree with his conclusion.
Dance like no one’s watching.
He was so astonishingly right, so often, I quite often forget how recently he lived, and picture him as more a Greek philosopher, or a Renaissance genius.
I more often forget that he was from down the road…
Shelley,
As usual, you are right about this situation. To Anil’s defense, my response to this issue has not been deleted from his site … yet. But the tone with which 6A (I am not going to refer to Mena anymore because now I do not know whether she is writing the posts or having legal write them for her) said to not use ”hurtful” words or whatever sentimental stuff they were throwing back at us was just another example of how NOT to talk to the users.
The point I made at Anil’s is that EMOTIONAL DOES NOT EQUATE WITH IRRATIONAL. I am spitting mad that I have to now scour blogging tools to find one that fits my needs and my skills and basically start all over again. I’m not jumping still … It’ll probably be a year long process. Still, this is the reason why I screamed when I saw that effing license. It’s just unbelievable that people who are supposed to be at the forefront of communication technology and social networking could not communicate and use the community that basically put them where they are now, to work on this issue. It was telling though, when I met Ben & Mena Trott here in NYC.
Ben repeated often how the popularity and the sense of community around the product has taken him by surprise. He was in disbelief about the effects of his Perl programming. He also was quite strong about limiting the use of ”persona” on blogs (that’s why it is so damn annoying to add authors on TypePad blogs) and he was a man on a mission with the comment-spam issue.
This should have sent red flags to me. Because the bottom line is that, even if it is not initially clear, you can still make the effort to try to understand the hows and whys users go support you and your product. I was so charmed by them that I, on the other hand, thought his statements were cute.
I’ve been a creative consultant for Mark Napier, on and off, for the last 8 years. One of his first Net Art pieces was The Digital Landfill. That piece was conceived as a neobaroque digital sculpture made of the spam that was starting to clog the net back in 1996. It was a hit when it came out, so much so that Yahoo! actually listed it not just as Net Art but as funky PR/MARKETING SITE where you could promote successfully given the amounts of viewers it was getting on a daily basis.
Can you imagine? There is no way of knowing how people are going to end up using your software. Granted, everything on pland is Net Art, but still software is software and trying to put crazy restrictions like the ones that appeared on that license was the perfect way to undo more than 2 years of creative (and hence, free R&D) misuse of MT. Why would they want to pay for that kind of labor now? It just does not make sense.
Anyhow, being pissed off at people is not to an irrational act. Neither it is a reason to divide users between friends and not-friends. The bottom line is that people like me are pissed off because we have this unforseen amount of work thrown at us with this effing licensing agreement. Just take the effing restrictions and unilaterality away and I’ll pay the damn $70. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Won’t do it? Then I’ll have to look at WordPress and pronto … because after this, I’ll never use a proprietary tool again.
Nice analysis, Phil.
Another potentially problematic line in the current license is the one that prohibits anyone below the age of 13 from using it, which means I’d _have_ to switch to another package–between my son’s blog and my plans to implement blogs at his elementary school, that’s a total deal-breaker.
I’ve been told this is being looked at, which is encouraging. But I don’t understand how it ended up in there to begin with.
In the meantime, I’m not touching anything on the current MT site…I’ll keep running under the terms of my current 2.65 implementation, and will wait to see how all this shakes out.
I’ve got too many ”sunk costs” in MT to make a sudden change, and like you, I consider many at SixApart to be my friends (and the fact that they now have employees doesn’t change that), so for me it’s worth waiting to see what happens. But the majority of their users don’t count members of the management team among their ”close personal friends,” and they have far less reason to wait and see what happens. :/
Combination of two things, I’d guess: 13 means COPPA, which means that either they knew people under 13 were using TypePad, and it came over from there in a copy-and-paste, or the collection of personal information by requiring a TypeKey signup to download looked like a COPPA problem. However, they’ve got it in the wrong place: either way, they aren’t collecting personal information as a result of someone’s use of the product, they are collecting it as part of the transaction. But then, this license is a contract, and a 10 year old certainly can’t enter into a contract. I don’t know if there’s something that allows 14 year olds to enter into software licensing contracts themselves, or not - as I say, I’m pretty new to the idea of actually reading licenses, except for Free licenses.
Heh, that URL generates a 404 - not even a custom one, at that, a standard Apache error screen.
You’ll never guess where it now redirects to.
Yup, that’s right, http://www.movabletype.org
i dont understand why we should even have to maintain a link to mt.org. didn’t i just pay for this software? wasn’t the link-back rule there because the software was free in the first place?
i think if a 100 dollars is only going to get me five authors, it better get me a transparent backend as well.
Breakdown of the MT3 license
Phil Ringnalda has posted an excellent breakdown of the MT3 license. He’s got some very valid issues - such as 6A’s apparent right to terminate your license at any time without reason, and the ”um…wtf are they talking about” clause…
I read a few paragraphs of this post, just enough to make my eyes glaze over, and then thought ”Otay, whatever you say!”
I’m beyond help.
I think I’ll stick with MT2 for now though until the powers that be (that includes you now, Phil!) resolve any potential issues with the MT3 license. Not that I think I have anything to worry about, having just one blog and all…
then again, maybe Google-Ads are considered ”commercial use”, in which case I’ll have to seriously consider a switch to WordPress or something…
Luke: I think they’ve explicitly addressed Google ads somewhere, and stated that they don’t automatically render a site commercial. Emphasis on ”I think”. I have a hard time keeping track. :D
I’m with Roger - ”I think I saw, I think I saw…”
However, your license is The Agreement and nothing but the agreement: until it says something other than affiliate fees, you are probably in violation. Being in violation in a way that you know they have no intention of objecting to is an interesting place to be, though all they can do is terminate, and for anything but the commercial license they don’t actually need a reason.
I have an email from Ben Trott himself dated 5/14/2004 which states that Google ads do not render a site commercial. Here is the exact text, including his digital signature:
Hi Mark,
Regarding your question of whether Adsense counts as commercial use of MT: no, it doesn’t, for a personal site.
We’re going to go into great detail about a lot of the questions that people have been asking, and this is one of those questions. If you have any other questions about the license, terms, etc, email me and let me know, because we’re compiling a list of the most common ones, and it would be great to get your opinion. Confidentially, we already know of some changes we’ll be making to the licensing structure, and we’ll be posting about those later today.
Thanks!
Ben
Bah, that interacted badly with your PGP-signed-comment thingie (which apparently doesn’t activate on preview). I received that message from Ben Trott on 5/14/2004; those are his exact words. Google ads do not render an otherwise personal site commercial.
This little paragraph is unsigned…
Huh. I would have expected that to work, though I haven’t really looked at how the code feels about having part of a comment signed. I’ll have to give it a try. The preview thing is all my fault - I just never get around to telling preview to use the PGP-aware versions of the template tags.
And here’s another unsigned paragraph.
Heh. PGP users can pass secret messages - anything outside the signature shows up on the verification page, but nowhere else. Dunno why Ben’s signature doesn’t verify, though. Either it got some line-length alterations along the way, or you are teh eval liarz!!1!
What’s all this Movabletype license hub-bub about? I just checked Microsoft’s Windows license and Bill Gates now owns my soul.
I was going to reply to Anil’s asking roughly the same thing, but I’ll do it here instead: the Windows license has two things going for it: tens of thousands of lawyers have looked at it, and found it at least tolerable, and I don’t give a shit. If Microsoft told me I must stop using Windows tomorrow, I’d say ”oh happy day, here’s my push to Linux on the desktop.” When it comes to MT, I care.
amen.
Phil: Last year around this time, I was thinking about distributing the source for my app. I searched high and low for a license that would suit me, tried to adapt an existing version or three, and finally just wrote one from scratch. Even ran it by my lawyer, who pointed out one or two problems that I completely failed to address.
IMO, Anil and company should just chuck the license as it exists, write one in plain English (and French, and Japanese, I suppose) that says what they *mean*, and then hand it to a lawyer to clean up. They’ll still have a few clauses that will irritate people, but anything Potentially Evil will then be an artifact of our Evil Legal System and not Six Apart.
As for me, well, after watching all the sturm und drang around MT’s license… let’s just say I’ll be happy to stay in the service business, thanks. :D
more mt hullabaloo
there are really onle a handful of things that annoy me about mt3.0 and their new fangled licensing/pricing schemes. the price unfortunately for me the free version of MT3 just wont cut it. i have two authors for pi alone,…
Hm. So does the no derivative works clause mean I wouldn’t be allowed to hack my stupid little Latin dates into MT3?
Too bad. I’m kinda fond of those. They’re about the only feature of my blog that hasn’t changed in two years.
I’m not looking forward to figuring out how to hack those into WordPress (haven’t the i18n boys figured this out yet? I’m lazy), but at least I know I can do so legally.
Well, I think the no-derivs plus no-reverse-engineering, without the previous disclaimer about using hacks for yourself and kinda sometimes being able to distribute partial hacks, despite the fact that 3.0 is supposed to be for developers, means that that whole section of the license is going to undergo some drastic changes. I think.
The no automated posting clause would for instance make the winamp playlist at Virtual Venus forbidden. That is probably not what six apart intended.
/Jonas
Does licensing matter?
Phil Ringnalda examines the newest iteration of the MT3 license. In the process he blows holes in the plans of some to avoid upgrading. A definite must read for those who are caught up in the MT3 license debacle situation….
Is this really something to worry about? I mean, is this license really something out of the ordinary? Is it?
Is it something to worry about for someone with one weblog, who doesn’t much care what tool they use to publish it, and doesn’t really care whether they follow the terms of the license? No.
I’m not sure whose observation it was now, but one of the most interesting things I saw, I think while running through Trackbacks at 6A, was someone saying that it’s significant that people are up in arms about a license that has essentially no enforcement. mblog.com has been running a hosting service that’s in clear violation of every term that every MT license has ever had (and produces exactly the sort of support questions that restricting the license would like to avoid) for several months now, and nothing has happened to them.
At least for some of the people objecting to the license, it’s because we want to comply, and we don’t want to be forced to give up MT.
MT Blah Blah Blah
I’m still reading a bit of the MT license/pricing fallout here and there. It continues
Markets are Conversations
Doc claims that as his own. I heard it from a marketing prof. The professor probably was hip to Doc before I was… at least that part of his work. The MT licensure hub bub has reminded of the essential
Phil puts the MT license in Plain English
phil ringnalda dot com: Licensing matters…
My Sentiments Exactly
A commenter asks : ”What’s all this Movabletype license hub-bub about? I just checked Microsoft’s Windows license and Bill Gates now owns my soul.” and Phil Ringnalda replies: I was going to reply to Anil’s asking roughly the same thing,…
Review of Movabletype 3.0
A couple weekends ago, whilst visiting Chuckie, we upgraded alpha-geek.com and the sister sites (1, 2, 3, 4) to MovableType 3.0D. Initially, there was some hullabaloo over the licensing scheme; and the first versions of the licenses were restrictive to…
I’ve just been informed by SixApart that if I build a website for a third party then my client needs to purchase the appropriate license… and a SEPARATE install of MT has to be implemented. In other words, I can’t use my own install of MovableType. I can understand that they want to protect Typepad, but forcing another install of MovableType is just silly, isn’t it?
Well, sort of depends. Personally, I’d rather have MT used by designers who also do hosting, who give their clients limited rights to mess things up, and take care of answering their clients’ every problem and question, rather than have a bunch of people who had a designer sign them up for cheap hosting, install MT, and then leave them to break things and then ask me questions in the forum without any idea what they did, or how to do the first thing with MT. But that’s me: I don’t have a business to run or any payroll to meet. If I did, I’d probably rather get $200 each from 15 companies (or 10, or even 7) instead of $600 total from 15.
But there’s no question in the license: you may not ”Use the Software to provide hosting services to others.” Given how fuzzy the line is between your reasonable sort of hosting and the complete fricken’ nightmare that’s mblog.com, with their ”unlimited free signups, virtually no support, no way to actually control the software, but a prominent link to the support forum” approach, I can see why 6A would want to absolutely prohibit any hosting (other than hosting they approve of, since the pricing page does imply that there are or will be hosts that offer MT preinstalled).
Phil, you’re absolutely right. I can understand why they wouldn’t want that ”complete fricken’ nightmare”. The problem, of course, is that the license makes life difficult for me when I’m actually going out and selling their product for them. :-(
mBlog Users - Beware!
I’ve heard of mBlog mentioned every now and then in the MT Forums without knowing exactly what it was. Until now, I thought it it had something to do with ”mobile blogging”, which it does: mBlog combines the latest in…
learning from experience
One of the things I’ve learned of late is that, despite being a wonderful, generous community of truly warm-hearted people,…
I enjoyed reading this, thank you! It made a lot of sense.
:-)
mBlog Users - Beware!
I’ve heard of mBlog mentioned every now and then in the MT Forums without knowing exactly what it was. Until now, I thought it it had something to do with ”mobile blogging”, which it does: mBlog combines the latest in…
learning from experience
One of the things I’ve learned of late is that, despite being a wonderful, generous community of truly warm-hearted people, sometimes the blog world likes nothing more than a good old-fashioned pile-on. I thought about this looking at the (totally just…
The pitch
Anil Dash writes that noone has ever been fired for blogging. Not all of us are lucky enough to have our licenses fisked by our audience….