Much ado about nothing. More disinformation.

But it’s great that MT is finally open source. Curiously, had SixApart gone this way with version 3, Wordpress might have remained a niche platform. Hindsight is foresight.

Byrne, I’m really disappointed how you presented “Appropriate?”

My email to ProNet was in no way derogatory, inflammatory or in anyway negative. I simply asked the community a question in a hopes for it, the community, to define more clearly what its expectations around privacy were, since there was clearly an ambiguity.

Byrne, I’m really disappointed how you presented “Appropriate?“, and that no members of the list challenged the personal attacks against my character, the character of the Automattic team or the WordPress community. I won’t participate in a hostile environment.

I had previously had a lot of respect for Timothy Appnel, but was really hurt when he wrote something so absurd as, “Interesting yes, but still not surprised. Clearly the tone was set, condoned and fueled by the staff from the beginning. I guess we’re only starting to see them be up front about it because all those millions they just took on the back of open source has made them cocky.”

My writing on this issue has little to do with WordPress, and everything to do with my 10+ years participating in open source.

Calling the list private still seems incorrect to me, and I’m certain that many other netizens would disagree with you, and I don’t recall any documentation that supports it. As I wrote, “If it is private, you will want to update http://www.sixapart.com/mailman/listinfo/pronet”

Skot Nelson’s wrote

Nothing there needs to be changed: it’s absolutely a private list:
membership is required, as it is to read the archives. Comments on the
list available only to those who are members.

That membership is not-onerous to attain doesn’t change the fact that
it’s private. It’s easy to get into most restaurants, that doesn’t
make them public property.

Still, I’d say you’ve done nothing *wrong.* Having a conversation on
the list is akin to having one in that restaurant: it can be overheard
and may be re-quoted without specific permission.

And then goes on to personally attack me.

The restaurant analogy doesnt’ work for me, because all mailing lists are hosted on private property. What makes it a public list is that anyone can join and participate.

I am surprised that Tim thinks “members post with understanding that they are not public”.

Archives that require someone to log in to view them, isn’t a property that can be used to establish a list as private because private archives has long been used by lists to reduce spam to the participants.

If the list is meant to be private, it should explicitly be documented. End of story.

It is really sad that no one on the list challenges Michael De Soto’s misunderstanding of what open source is when he wrote “Open source simply means the source is code distributed in a readable and modifiable way. I.E. not compiled. I.E. Movable Type from day one.”

Open source has a clear definition. The code being readable and modifiable is essential but not sufficient for something to be open source as I wrote recently in “Open Source Free Web Site Templates without the Open Source” established over many years and the definition will not be easily subverted, if myself and the rest of the open source communities can do anything about it.

Ian Fenn provides great general insights:

I’m too busy wondering how different the conversation might have turned out
had Anil’s reply to the post not been quite so… erm… robust.

It seems to me that Six Apart need to choose more carefully the
conversations they participate in.

After all, there’s a regular pattern to these things:

1. An anti-sixapart/MT post is made.
2. Six Apart respond.
3. The Six Apart clique/in-crowd join in.
4. The original poster defends their stance or criticizes Six Apart for
something else.
5. Now go back to 2 until the participants become bored of arguing.

It’s ends up being, well, a distasteful fight about nothing.

And I’d rather the Six Apart people involved spent more time conversing with
the *right* people, say, long-term customers, and concentrated on fixing
well-known problems with MT that have existed for some time.

Then, one day, defending MT or Six Apart’s administration of it, will no
longer be necessary.

And so ends my test of the maximum size you can make a WordPress comment.

Ok, we were discussing this in #movabletype and I suggested a model:

**Give Movable Type away for free. Support and enhancements cost something.**

Get rid of the dual licensing of MT4.1 and an MTOS. Since Chris just confirmed that the code is the same no matter what the license is, all that people are really paying for is support. So why don’t we just call it that instead of confusing people?

Trust me, for the security and future of this platform, I want Six Apart profitable. However, they can make money off additions to the core platform: Professional Pack, Community Solutions, etc. They can also make money buy offering support on any enhancement. Initially, I thought support on the base platform should be available, but talking with some people they seem to think it would be cost prohibitive. Plus, if you’re offering support on the Professional Pack and the Community Solutions, you’re essentially agreeing to support the core platform along with it anyhow, right?

Byrne mentioned to me that supporting MTOS would be a nightmare given it’s fluidity. But follow my logic: if the “real product” and the “open source” version were one-and-the-same (which they are now from a code standpoint) and you didn’t support either one unless there was a “professional pack” on top, two things would happen. First, requiring the professional pack would ensure they had a stable version of MT running and would eliminate the concerns about supporting a hacked-up version of the core. Second, requiring an application enhancement would also ensure that the users you’re dealing with have paid you all something.

I’m out of time, but let me share a chart that may help explain what I’m talking about a little better:

http://img.skitch.com/20080201-m6r9q6a65eucwssyjha7dsh8c4.png

Thoughts?

Oh, and the discussion it generated was great!