Code / Appnel Solutions 

Being Competitive is "Dirty"

Anil Dash made a very interesting post noting the pending release of WordPress 2.5 and suggests users consider Movable Type since upgrading means breaking a lot of things. As TechCrunch notes the WordPress crowd (Automattic really) is “pissed” with Matt Mullenweg calling it “desperate and dirty.” This of course is the pot calling the kettle black if it were true, but it’s not. Dash’s arguments are, to my knowledge, factually correct, quite logical and polite. To me it’s just a company being competitive in professional way. It would seem that Automattic is not up to dealing with with that sort of heat yet.

I’m not at all surprised by their reaction though. The WP community lead by the Automattic staff has dished out a lot of crap over the years at Six Apart’s expense without the professionalism that Dash extended them with this one post. I don’t doubt Automattic’s dedication to open source or what they do, but, given past behavior, I’ve always questioned their ability to conduct themselves in a way that professional and enterprise customers demand. This reaction only supports that observation and only makes me rest easier as enterprise consultant specializing in Movable Type systems.

I use MT, have bought several commercial licenses/support.

I also used WP.

Both of them make large technical demands on ordinary user. I am sticking with MT because I believe that they have cash flow and may stick around. As soon as WP has to charge for its value, I suspect that many of users will flee to "cheaper" solutions. I would rather pay up front for solutions.

Michael,

Automattic is not going to charge for WordPress because they can't. They don't own the copyright to all of the code.

I think the real reason you should stick with Movable Type has to do with the quality of the code, the features provided, and what you can do to extend it to meet your needs. Having done some WordPress development, I can tell you from experience that there is just no comparison between Movable Type and WordPress from a developer's perspective.

If you are concerned about the future with MT, by all means, just switch over to the open source distribution of it from MovableType.org. Since it is under the GPL, they cannot make you pay for any of that code you are using because they agreed to not do that per the GPL. Not only that, but other developers can come along and fork the same code you are using and keep updating it in a manner similar to how WordPress is developed.

Matt has commented at my blog before, and he seems alright. You might get a chuckle at this reaction of his to a mistake I made ;)

@MikeT - I just wanted to point out that copyright ownership does not transmit the right or privilege to prevent others from charging for software. That right is granted by the license.

Under the GPL technically Automattic is explicitly given permission to charge for their software, but they must also make the source code publicly available.

So you are right in a way though: why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free? Or something like that.