The Fall of Movable Type
Now that Movable Type has gone into 3.0D (at the time of this publishing), they have also updated their terms of service, as anybody who has updated should know. Also, you may have noticed the following statement under the sidebar box titled “Movable Type Free” on http://secure.sixapart.com :
No more than one author and three weblogs
I’m sorry to say it but these eight words will lead to the downfall of Movable Type. Many developers, authors, and just plain old bloggers have long enjoyed this great, once free product. Currently, I only have one blog running, but I have been planning to turn my root directory into a Movable Type powered system.
Many bloggers have switched to Drupal, blogger, WordPress, or even their own home grown content management system. I really admire what Mark Pilgrim did ford WordPress. It won’t matter for the developers in the long run, but the purpose was a very admirable one. Instead of paying the ~$535 it would cost for him to buy all his Movable Type licenses, he donated it, which is bound to piss of at least one person at Six Apart, and it has let a lot of people know about the fine product.
Then comes to the problem, since everybody is writing their own blogging system, why don’t they collaborate and take back the blogging community. We could keep it free, and even release it under an open source license.
Currently, I’m semi-working on a CMS in PHP with the basic features, I still haven’t thought of a design for the admin panel. I will hopefully release the source code under an open source license and everybody will be able to work on it.