According to the new licensing structure that Six Apart announced today, I’ll need to pay them $600 to operate under a license for the new release that grants me the freedom to create unlimited numbers of weblogs with unlimited numbers of authors if any of the blogs is a commercial blog – which, arguably, mine is. As is a resume or portfolio.
Scuttlebutt is that one could still employ the application as needed without an honest license, but I strongly prefer to treat Six Apart aboveboard.
Bummer. I guess the thing to do is wait a month to see if they revise anything – but if they’ve done their homework, they certainly should not.
In what way is this a commercial site? I’m not getting it. Is all that Ken stuff paid product placement?
Are you going to use Movable Type for commercial purposes? Select “Yes” if you are using Movable Type in a business, organization, or institution, or in any income producing activity.
Resumes are used to find work; finding work does not itself produce income; performing said work produces income. I’d say you’re in the clear. If you aren’t, then everyone who has an Amazon Affiliate account, link to a wishlist, Cafepress store, or similarly popular weblog feature will suffer the same fate. Are they really willing to alienate that much of their userbase on a technicality?
There are alternate solutions, however. You could continue using the existing codebase, as no one can retroactively change license agreements (as their documentation of Creative Commons licenses confirms.) And if they haven’t already, I can almost assure you that someone will release a patch to the MoveableType 2.6.x codebase (that eliminates whatever database limitations exist) in response to this announcement.
1. Resume use is certainly commercial because it does indeed produce income; for without a resume, there is no income.
2. The sites (portfolio etc.) are commercial because they serve a processional development purpose. Dan, you are quite correct and it’s one of the reasons there’s so much carping about the license. Six Apart clearly defines ‘commercial’ as ‘revenue producing.’
3. I selected MT because I specifically don’t want limits on authors or blogs that I intend to deploy. One author, three blogs is already long blown. So is two and five. In fact, there are currently about ten blogs and ten to fifteen authors, most quite inactive, hosted here.
Sticking with 2.661 until my fingernails flake away appears to be the way to go.
Also, it seems clear that neither 2.x or 3.x implements any functional limitations. Supposedly there’s some sort of ‘phone home’ reg process but I haven’t examined that in detail. I just don’t wish to be in license violation, and the pricing structure can’t be justified, so no 3.x for me, I think.
I guess, if I were you, I’d want to verify points 1 and 2 before I made those assumptions. These interpretations seem overly strict to me and nearly impossible to enforce. As for pt. 3, I had no idea you had 10 blogs. Good lord, where do you find the time?