It's time once again for my biannual reading of Dave Winer's web site, wherein I make note of something outrageous he says, to remind myself why I don't read his web site.
Normally I am brought to his site because someone else notes to me what he has said; this time, I went there of my own accord upon reading about Movable Type switching to a payware model.
You see, in 1998, Dave pulled the same basic bait-and-switch. UserLand Frontier was a freely available development environment (for lack of better term), and one day, Dave said, OK, if you want the new version, you're gonna have to pay for it.
Dave had every right to do it, and has every right -- nay, obligation -- to try to make money for his company. But users were understandably upset: people who came to rely on this software, who chose it in part because one of its features was being freely available, were now stuck with having to dish out money (starting at $900 for commercial sites), stick with the old version (with its warts) indefinitely, or change environments.
Heck, my own company, VA Software, did almost the same thing. SourceForge was GPL'd, and then it became commercial. The big difference with SourceForge is that you're free to take the last GPL'd codebase and do anything you want with it, whereas users couldn't develop their own forked version of Frontier. Some people might contend the best thing to ever happen to SourceForge was that it went commercial, as it became the basis of other projects, some of which are doing quite well. Nevertheless, many users were angry about the change.
I don't slam Dave for the decision to charge money, but for how he dealt with it: he attacked the users for their perfectly reasonable complaints. After all, he didn't promise it would remain free forever, and he has to put food in his mouth, and how dare you ask him to work for free! The problem is that no one asked Dave to work for free: he offered it. And then one day he changed his mind, and got angry with the people who expected things wouldn't change. Maybe changing the model was the right thing, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with complaining about it.
The only users I got angry with in the SourceForge fallout were those misrepresenting the facts about what the changes were (for example, some were complaining that the GPL'd version of the source was no longer available).
But expectations and feelings are only the superficial part of this story. The real story is simply in Dave trying to sell his software to people, and to do anything he can to convince them that they should buy, including impugning alternate software and distribution models.
Few things are as transparent as Dave Winer talking about free software. When he talks about things free software should do, it is because he wants people to write free code for him to use. When he talks about how software costs money, it is because he wants to convince people to give money to him.
Here's what he had to say about Movable Type:
2. Six Apart announced new pricing for Movable Type and hell breaks loose. The users are acting as children, saying somehow they didn't know that eventually Six Apart would charge for their software. I knew they were going to charge, why didn't you? I can say this because I'm not a customer (I do use their software, but I didn't pay for it) and I'm not them. But I've been where they are and it sucks. No one's perfect. If you use their software, you owe them some money. If you don't like the price, don't use it. Amazingly they're not asking for money if you use the new software in a limited form, or continue to use the old software. Users who can't get behind that are people we don't need to work with. Everything costs money. When you drive to the gas station, try whining at the attendant, and see how much gas you get. Do it enough and they'll call the cops.
3. This isn't really big news but what the heck. I got a very nice greeting yesterday from Lessig, who, while speaking was surprised to see me in the last row typing away into my blog. He said Dave! Are you blogging this? I said of course I am. And then he proceded to fall down. I said Larry don't hurt yourself. It was memorable. Lessig is a good guy. I gotta talk with him about what's going on with Movable Type. How can we help reset users' expectations so they understand that if they want good software, it might cost money? I wonder if Larry agrees.
Re:wow
pudge on 2004-05-14T19:16:09
Yes, which is why every once in awhile I bother responding to things he says.:-) Re:wow
chaoticset on 2004-05-14T19:23:18
One of the things I'm starting to understand is that, no matter how ludicrous or pointless or obviously humorous something is, there is always someone who will take it seriously.
Of course it was free previously, but that doesn't mean it should or could be free for ever. Salon.com moved from being totally free to premium subscription leaving the cheapskates like to me to feed on the crumbs or (the horror!) watch an advert to get a free daypass. works for me. Much better than DDJ and Byte, which despite me having spent hundreds of quid over the years on each won't even give me online access to the articles I own on hardcopy - of course the subscription and cd's cost so much because I am overseas that its cheaper to buy at the newsagents, but then I have lots of gripes about that publisher (chaos manor is a bad sign - what the hell do developers care about some idiots experiences mucking about with the latest and greatest motherboards and doing the windows driver and service pack dance?).
Anyway as you said pudge - if it was free as in source rather than free as in beer/lunch then everything would be dandy.
Mysql have done a good job of making a business out of open source, as have others - perhaps because MT is so limited in its applications to the ASP market - there is no other way for it to make money.
Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
pudge on 2004-05-14T19:15:45
I fail to see what the fuss it about. Blog's are *not* that important. There are many out there, and MT chose to charge for support and licensing for non-trivial installations. Seems pretty fair to me.
It doesn't bother ME, but I am not using the software. I suppose if I were, I'd be annoyed and angry, though not angry at the developer -- as noted, and as you said, they have every right and presumably good reason to do what they did -- just at the circumstance I found myself in, having to pay money for something I had been getting for free. Maybe I'd be angry at myself for not choosing a free software alternative to start with.:-)
Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
hfb on 2004-05-14T22:09:36
Well...they communicated the terms even worse than Dave did and at a rather eyepopping price for software that is, really, not worth $100. I gave $50 way back when but the whole having to register with typekey to get the download and whatnot has me seriously considering an alternative, especially since MT doesn't have any practical archival tools for those who have been blogging for more than a year or two. I guess someone has to pay for the new offices in Germany, Spain, the UK and elsewhere but I suspect that a lot of their customer base just got pissed off enough to tell them to fuck off. People are pissed for a reasonably good reason....Dave not withstanding.Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
gav on 2004-05-16T01:24:58
I'm not sure why you don't think it's worth $100, considering the amount of work it would take to duplicate it. To me $100 is a bargain, plus it's nice to support a Perl based product when everything else is PHP.Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
hfb on 2004-05-16T05:15:57
I donated $50 a while back which was far more than what I thought the software was worth but I had that warm and fuzzy 'feed the poor hackers' feeling and took advantage of it before it passed. Why don't I think it's worth $100 or even $600/$700? Because it's just not. It's a bunch of CGIs, modules and templates that you either have to hack the hell out of or use extensions to make it something more than a very basic product. BBEdit is cheaper, I use it more often than MT and it's a far more complex product not to mention a cool little company. Wasn't typepad making them enough money or what about all the MT licensing deals for corporates? To juice $100 from the little guys smells like they're trying to get as much cash from people as they'll give in a short amount of time.I wouldn't pay $10 for Slash [sorry Pudge
:)] and MT at least got $50 out of me at some point....but I'll be switching since I've had a long list of annoyances and if there's nothing new in 3.0 then I won't bother. Also...not everything is PHP Gav, have you tried Bloxsom? Maybe it was a mistake to not start charging $100 a license for Perl after the 5.8 release. I mean...isn't that a bargain? Mamma needs a new pair of shoes.
Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
pudge on 2004-05-16T05:28:58
I wouldn't pay $10 for Slash [sorry Pudge:)]
No worries: it's not written for you.:-)
Re:mr Storm meet mr teacup
hfb on 2004-05-16T14:37:02
No, true, it never did install on Solaris without much, much pain and suffering.:)
