Code / Appnel Solutions 

MT was never open source so far

Here is another one of my blog comments made elsewhere that went too long that I want to post it here.

Ben Tshin posts about migrating his sister’s MT and blogger/blogspot blogs to WordPress and writes:

So they took the originally open source MT2.x and made it “closed source” for MT3.x.

What now follows is the comment I left with a few minor grammatical edits and hyperlinks added.

MT never had an open source license ever.

MT was built using various open source technology particularly Perl and numerous addons libraries from CPAN, but it was never released under a GPL or like license. (This is changing shortly though.) The code has always remained open as in viewable. Nothing is done to hide or obfuscate it — anyone can view and modify if you need to. You just couldn’t freely distribute MT amongst other proprietary license terms.

The difference and what the ruckus was all about then is that payment for its use went from being mostly optional (donations) with MT2 to required with the release of MT3. Also, and perhaps more significantly, that change in the license/practice was never mentioned or discussed until MT3 was released.

MT started out with Ben and Mena always asking that anyone who used the software contribute what they thought the software was worth with suggestions of $20 and $40. Most people abused that and didn’t pay a dime, but some did that they could scrape by doing this and some consulting full-time. By the time MT3 was released, Ben and Mena had formed Six Apart, took on investors, hired staff and had launched TypePad — their software had stopped being a hobby or a side business into a full fledge enterprise. I personally saw no problem in this since they never ever had released the software under a GPL license and had always asked to paid for its use. Besides forming Six Apart and all that came with it meant that a lot more resources that would benefit MT and blogging tools in general.

Six Apart don’t really enforce that you pay or license — in fact personal use was made free not long after the MT3 release debacle. You have always been able to download MT and run it completely unencumbered. Without a license the software was not crippled nor did it nag you or “phone home” to report you.

Where Six Apart did blow it was not communicating this shift and their intentions BEFORE the required payment license was unveiled. After all, blogging is about transparency and they are a leading developer of blogging tools so they should have known better, right? In retrospect, the shift was far to abrupt and dramatic that it shocked many. I’m pretty darn sure they know they screwed up there though I believe it was more of an unintentional oversight made by a really young and inexperienced company then something “evil” as the WordPress community is so fond to call it. [CORRECTION: The photo I had linked to here was not associated WordPress community. More below in this comment.] Despite all the apologies, continued goodwill and contributions it seems that one mistake is one many won’t forgive no matter what they do.

The point here is that to say MT was open source software that was taken “closed source” is completely inaccurate and a falsehood that has been perpetuated over time for reasons that I’ll probably never understand.

Thanks for the correction of perception. I know I didn't do the fullest research on MT's licensing history

Despite all the apologies, continued goodwill and contributions it seems that one mistake is one many won’t forgive no matter what they do.

But you hit it on the nail here. When I started blogging MT was the the way to go. It was the pioneer. But my allegiance is elsewhere now. It doesn't help that I've got a lot more experience in WP2.3 compared to MT4.x (which I didn't know existed until two days ago).

Tim, as far as I know that picture was not done by any core WordPress team member past or present, and I'd rather not have it attributed to our community. We actually thank and link to Movable Type on our about page, and have for years.

@Ben

I think perhaps you misunderstood what I meant about forgiveness. I am not suggesting that to forgive Six Apart means to move back to MT. Far from it. What I was referring to was the ongoing mostly baseless cheap shots and conspiracy theories (like these) about every move the company makes.

I know I read another post somewhere stating that Six Apart's commitment to GPL MT was because they where abandoning further development. That is ridiculous because there has been more activity and development in the past 6-9 months then any other time in the development of MT.

I, and I think most of the active MT community, feel that WordPress has its advantages and deciding which is "best" depends on your individual situation --skill set, resources, needs, and so on. I think you would be hard pressed to find a post or comment by a MT user (certainly that actively contributes to the community) slagging WordPress like you will commonly find in reverse.

For many people WP is the right tool and they should stick with it. There is a whole set of other people where its not as good a fit as another tool and I am not just referring to MT or other Six Apart tools. I get frustrated and put off when blog tools are pitted against each other like its a winner take all scenario.

To be clear Ben, I am not accusing you of any of this. You're helping your sister, you know WordPress well (and presumably some PHP), so it is entirely understandable that you would make that switch for her.

@Matt

I did some further checking and that photo came from a presentation Simon Willison made on OpenID and that he is not a WordPress user let alone community member. I had the photo mislabeled and have made the correction in the post above.

That said, and to my defense, you and I both know the WordPress community has taken a lot of cheap shots at Six Apart's expense for years now. I still stand behind the assertion that is linking to that photo. I don't think it's at all out of character or unusual to believe that a photo like that would be attributed to the WordPress community over any other group.

I sense you are pleading innocence here, but quite frankly I don't buy it. I've always been rather disappointed that you and other leaders of the WordPress community have never stepped up to address it for what it is -- a waste of time that reflects poorly on the community as a whole -- and ask for it to stop. You and I know blogging quite well and that inaction in this regard is a pretty good indication of complicity. This hasn't gone unnoticed by many people.

I think a good chunk of the pseudo open-source problem is that the rise of several true OSS projects in recent years has resulted in a lot of people who know just enough about the concept to apply it incorrectly, particularly in thinking that "open source" = "I can get at the source code."

Another fun problem along this line came up when Firefox 0.9 was released, and a bunch of people went absolutely ballistic when the next release was 0.10(.0.0) rather than 1.0, because they made the incorrect assumption that the versioning scheme was based on a decimal system like most commercial software tends to use. That and aggressive complaining from pre-release users directly resulted in the switch to using codenames and terms like "developer preview" for non-final builds rather than the now almost-meaningless "beta" (Thanks, Google!) which arguably also resulted in "This is a real-ass beta."

> in a lot of people who know just enough about the concept to apply it incorrectly, particularly in thinking that "open source" = "I can get at the source code."

I have to agree with you. More recently I've been surprised at how many people don't understand the implications of releasing code under the GPL means you can't take it close source source or that assigning copyright to the project organizer is a common practice.

Just take a look under the hood and try to write extensions for WordPress if you think it is better than Movable Type. Hope you enjoy having to run everything on MySQL and Apache. Sure would be a bitch if you had to say... run it on a system with only PostgreSQL or a different web server.

That WordPress is so tied down to these two servers alone is enough to make me throw up a little bit in my mouth whenever I hear how "technically superior" WordPress is to MT. (No offense, Ben, that's primarily a rant about comments I've seen elsewhere)