Closure on the MT3 Licensing Fury.

<p>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.)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sixapart.com/log/2004/05/movable_type_30.shtml">SixApart has adjusted their personal licensing terms and made some clarification to their licenses.</a> To summarize:</p>
<ul>
<li>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.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>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.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><q>Active</q> 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&#39;t update it for 90 days or more it no longer counts.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The single CPU limitations is removed and <q>was not intended to be in the license.</q> (More on that in a bit.)</li>
</ul>
<p>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&#39;t think that is reasonable though. You can&#39;t run a business on that &#8211; 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 <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4870">posted in the first place</a>. It illustrates a serious lack of appreciation for how much time, talent and skill goes into a piece of software. Or in MT&#39;s situation how much it does transparently to make a users expierence so great.</p>
<p><a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freedom-0">And yes it is about eating Mark</a>. Not everyone gets a regular pay check to bankroll their million dollar code projects. I don&#39;t begrudge anyone who wants to use free software or develop it. (Why would I? I do both.) But I don&#39;t think its fair to pounce on them for not doing so. Conversation is fine and freedom is great, but it doesn&#39;t mean we all have free license to say rude and hurtful things with impunity &#8211; especially to people you claim to like.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I don&#39;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.</p>
<p>Most contracts begin from a standard document or a collection of standard clauses. They are rarely written from scratch. (I&#39;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.</p>
<p>How does it get missed? A lawyer probably doesn&#39;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&#39;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.</p>
<p>So there is no conspiracy as <a href="http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/2004/05/14/never-kick-a-sleeping-giant/">some</a> always seem to suggest.</p>
<p>In closing this post out, I&#39;ll point to a couple of post that I thought were quite good and resonated with how I feel.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/2004/05/the_collective_deep_breath">The Collective Deep Breath</a> Jay explains what is a developer&#39;s release and why its necessary along with other developer issues most users don&#39;t appreciate.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://bradchoate.com/weblog/2004/05/15/mt3">Movable Type 3.0</a> Brad shares his thoughts as a developer. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002003.html">The Sky is Not Falling</a> Perspective from Jeremy Zawodny, an open source (MySQL) guru,as to why he still supports MT.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/2004/03/movable_type_30_and_mtblacklist#comment-5582">A Comment from Movable Type 3.0 and MT-Blacklist</a> Gee, I could almost insert my name and <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000348.html">my syndication plugin</a> and reuse his post. Though I can count my donors on one hand though.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2004/05/mt_homesite_and.html">MovableType, HomeSite and satanic cults</a> 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 <q>Even if you live in some bizarro universe that equates earning a living with belonging to a satanic cult, if you&#39;re really not willing to pay for MovableType, at least have the courtesy to thank them for the free ride up to this point.</q> Nice.</li>
</ul>