Is a Switch Coming?
I installed Movable Type 4 on another site of mine and imported all the WordPress posts from this blog. I’m kind of tired of WordPress and the direction it’s going (It seems WordPress (as in .org) has went from being what’s best for the community to what’s best for the users of WordPress.com, the for profit version, which hey, you’re a business, that’s your job to make money, but don’t hide behind a facade of benevolence when you make decisions thinking about your profit margin instead of the community). I don’t know if MT will be any different, especially since it just became open source, but I think MT could be a suitable replacement. There’s going to be a large learning curve and I’ll lose all Google juice for a while, but I’m not a business that’s trying to make tons of money off my website. I do it for fun. I guess it all depends on whether MT will be fun to learn or frustrating. There is always Habari, but they have a long way to go before I can even consider using them.
So I guess Movable Type 4 is blogging software. Never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean anything, I haven’t been blogging for that long. The main reason that I use WordPress is that it is available for install through my webhost, http://www.dreamhost.com. But I have several sites and can put anything I want on any of them, so I might give this is shot if you think it is worthwhile.
Six Apart have millions of $ pumped in – they are not a charity.
Six Apart are making the move to GPL because they believe it will make MORE money. This is not altruism.
MT has it’s own share of bugs.
MT has it’s forums for people where ?
How many plugins / themes are / will be GPL ?
I don’t care what people use because the words come out the same, but please don’t be thinking that MT will be better.
Also, what features of WP are being driven by .com ? What are being driven by ‘profit’ ? Details, details….
Yes, I do realize all of this about MT, the forums for support and their lack of documentation for 4 is a big turn-off for me.
As for the features… Since wp.com launched that seems to be the main focus and when it succeeds in .com it gets to .org. If their is something that could cost them revenue it won’t get into .com and most likely not .org. At least, that’s what I’m afraid of. Doing what’s best for $ and not the community. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but from the development of .com and .org since .com launched and seeing where things go first and how slow .org has progressed, I don’t think I am and I think it’s safe to say .com is where all the focus is now.
Biggest change on the way? Tags.
Driven by UTW among others.
I disagree about the focus. And even then, focus is one thing, actual details are another.
shep: do you have specific features you’d like to see in Habari that would make it easier for you to decide to use it? It’s people like you who can directly influence the development of Habari into the tool you want it to be. Feel free to speak up on the mailing list to share your ideas!
skippy, the main two things preventing me from using it are lack of themes and plugins (i’m not coder, so I rely on these things) and the fact that I don’t have PHP5 installed on this server. I set up a test install of Habari on DH and actually found it to be quite nice. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
I’ve been blogging since 2002, and I started on MT. They all of a sudden released a new main version (going from like 2.x to 3.0 or whatever) and changed their license from open to closed source, and a restrictive one at that. You could only download a free (beer) version of the software if you were only going to use it with one user. And you could only have one instance of it. That, to me, was ludicrous.
So I switched to a weaker codebase with a superior license when I switched to WP. WP had dynamic page loading, when MT had static page generation. MT was written in perl, but WP was written in PHP. Those are both plusses, but MT was much cleaner and was far less buggy. Fast forward and they both have dynamic page loading and very similar featuresets. They are both pretty bug-free, and now both open-source.
I won’t go back to MT because they screwed me. I won’t go back to MT because I like PHP better. You’re saying that WP.org is focusing on WP.com, and that miffs you. I’m agreeing with # 2 Mark when he says that Six Apart has been a business from the beginning, and has shown me that they have several business strategies from monetizing their product. WP is run by a kid our age who might have shiny dollars in his eyes, but has a solid community around it.
As always, this is my own opinion. =)
I still fail to see just where wpcom development has been to the detriment of wporg. Tagging coming in to wpcom would seem to dictate that if you feel some changes (which aren’t detailed) are coming out of wpcom is being balanced to an extent by what is going in.
I don’t mind what you choose – it’s not my choice and it makes no difference – but please do it without the perceptions and do it on the evidence.
Matt spends as much time in the wporg forums as he did when I was there 24/7 answering people. No-one seems to be able to provide details of what this so called focus is about when results are examained and not just thoughts from the annoyed few.
Don’t look at what you think others are saying, look at what works for you. Which may indeed be MT.
Try a post “Why should I switch to MT from WP?” and see what happens?
Mark, there’s plenty of evidence of WP suffering as a community of users around the .org product. Rifle through the IRC logs of the weekly chats that have been posted on the Codex, and you’ll see the ongoing degradation.
Do they still even do those weekly IRC chats to discuss the near future of WordPress development with its contributors? No. Color me shocked.
That’s just one example. Walk through Trac to see other examples of strange code decisions and instances of contributors being ignored or discarded when their ideas aren’t in the forefront of what Automattic thinks is best for the project.
It’s not so much that WP is being driven by the .com product (and don’t think I don’t have a 5-part post waiting in queue that details every ounce of evidence to that effect) as the .com product is all that the developers care to use as the deciding factor for what goes into WP. While hundreds of people contribute to WP.org, the stuff that makes it in is decided by people whose livelihood depend on whether it works on wp.com. Whether this is actually the deciding factor is immaterial — there is a clear conflict of interest in holding the keys to what goes into the open-source project when you operate the commercial product.
I find it oddly coincidental that the Kvetch feature on wp.org showed up shortly after the announcement of Habari and matt’s online chats with several of the Habari project committers, where we all told him that one of the major things we left for was because Automattic didn’t listen to WP’s major contributors. That it takes that much of an event to draw attention to the issue to incite change is simply an indication of the issue itself. But I’m sure that the appearance of Kvetch and Habari around the same time were unrelated.
Movable Type is a fine platform. The people at Six Apart are fine people, and their commercial intentions are at least clear and in the open. All I see Automattic doing is offering doublespeak about their intent and actions between the commercial and open source projects. But I guess when you start getting paid, you’re inclined to change your tune.
shep, I hope you are able to help us shape Habari into what you need out of a blog package. It’s opinions like the ones you offer here that keep us in check and let us know where to focus our development efforts and how to run the project best for its users.
to follow up with MT, after some playing around, I don’t think it’s right for me. One thing I absolutely can’t stand is the need to rebuild a site if changes are made to the site’s template. I would think that on a shared hosting environment, that would cause a lot of problems as it seems to be a bit resource intensive. I really don’t have to worry about that, since I have an excellent host, but still, it was one thing I hated waiting for. Say what you will about the politics of wordpress, but it has done something right in the Presentation arena. MT seems backwards at times when editing templates. Too many clicks to change specific areas of a site. Then again, I’ve been on WP since 1.2, so it’s what I’m used to.
Owen – There are phrases that come to mind but I think it’s best we just agree to disagree :)
Of the headline features coming in 2.3, which will be released on schedule later this month:
Tagging / Taxonomy – Was in .org months ago, still not on .com. Was .org driven.
Core and Plugin Update Notification – Totally .org, not at all applicable to .com.
AtomPub – works on both, but will not effect .com usage at all. Was .org driven.
Post/draft filters, pending review – Benefits both, was on .com a day or two after .org and got major testing.
Canonical URLs – Benefits both, was code I wrote and tested on .com and was later much improved by Mark.
There are dozens of big and small performance optimizations that have been found and tested on .com and then integrated back to .org, as it’s the largest WP install in the world. (And one of the largest websites in the world, period.) However I can’t think of a single instance where we decided not to do something on .org because it wouldn’t work on .com.
The only core WP feature I can think of that’s on .com and not .org is word count, and that’s because it wasn’t ready before the 2.3 feature freeze so it’ll be put in for the next cycle.
This list might be meaningful if it reflected features that were suggested and produced exclusively for the .org project. Of the four listed, only update notification qualifies — a curiously omitted feature that has been in demand for quite some time. Matt only offers examples only of how .com influences .org, which is the point being made in this post.
His comment doesn’t really dispute any prior claims, it just makes new ones that misdirect a reader away from the complaint.
Still, it’s interesting to think about how/whether optimizations for one of the largest websites in the world would be useful for a self-installed WordPress.
You’re right, I totally forgot how an on-time release full of features users asked for is a bad thing. And how faster blogs are only useful for big sites like WP.com. There is no way to make money and also benefit the community, and I’m obviously conflicted and I should go back to plotting how to destroy .org from the inside so I can profit off its crappiness. Development obviously slowed to a standstill after those Habari guys left.
In a second try Matt still fails to demonstrate that WordPress open source features are divorced from the business needs of WordPress.com, harping on stuff that once again isn’t germane to the discussion. And not very professionally at that. I don’t think he understands the problem, the conflict of interest, which is probably a major factor of the problem itself.
Matt, it is sincerely and without sarcasm that I say that you have a lot to be proud of. Your commitment to WordPress, your stewardship of the community in the early days, and your energy created an environment in which WordPress grew and thrived. Your work on WordPress.com is impressive, and you’re providing there a service for which you’ve found a very receptive audience. Many entrepreneurs should be so lucky.
The WordPress community is a passionate one, and it’s understandable that people want to be involved in the open source product they love so much. You can continue to employ the benevolent dictator model which has served so well to date, or you could release the WordPress code to the community in a much more meaningful way.
If you want to remain benevolent dictator, that’s cool. Make it completely clear that you are the final arbiter of what does and does not go into WordPress. Post an entry in the FAQ for Developers that their submissions are judged solely by you. If you do this, look to other projects successfully using this model: the Linux kernel comes to mind. Linus makes it clear — on technical grounds — why many patches are rejected. This does two things: it solidifies the benevolent dictator’s position as one of responsibility, rather than mere whimsy; and it helps educate the contributors on what your long-term vision is (which still remains largely undocumented).
You espouse to support open source software, but you continue to hold the cards close to your chest. The WordPress resources are all hosted on Automattic servers, to which you hold the keys. It’s extremely unlikely that community participants will be given access to the infrastructure, in order to distribute the administrative tasks of supporting the community. New mailing lists must be approved by you. Delegation of forum moderators requires (I assume) Automattic’s blessing (and probably involvement).
Sure, it’s a real burden to migrate years worth of tickets and revision history, but I’m sure the Google Code or SourceForge teams would be happy to work with you. Would a truly open WordPress in any way jeopardize the WordPress.com service? I can’t imagine it would. In the worst case, you could always fork from whatever the .org folks produce in order to maintain the .com service.
And your Automattic involvement does cloud folks’ opinion of your motives. Yes, Akismet is (by all reports, I don’t use it myself) a great solution to the problem of comment spam. As it is a money-making asset for Automattic, though, I wonder how quick it’s adoption would have been had it not been bundled with the WordPress.org product. We’ll never know.
You opine, sarcastically, that WordPress development did not come to a stop when “those Habari guys” left. No, of course development didn’t stop. It was shortly after we left, however, that you put up the ideas and kvetch interfaces. Would you have put those up had we never left? Again, we’ll never know.
One of the greatest things about open source development is the transparency in the process. The community gets to see — and discuss — development. These latest brouhahas seem, to me, to lack a lot of the transparency that makes open source so successful. Each, on their own, is a little thing. The developer links in the blogroll is no big deal; but your response of “not particularly interested” does nothing to explain your rationale, and certainly does nothing to document that rationale so that you don’t need to repeat yourself again and again. The presence of the BrowseHappy link is, by itself, no big deal. You state, unequivocably, that Trac isn’t a place for voting. This makes folks realize that it’s your way, or the highway. The presence — and silent removal — of an affiliate link in the Browse Happy download smacks of profiteering. One starts to question the benevolence of the dictator.
You are, of course, free to continue to run your ship any way you choose. If you truly care about the WordPress community, you might want to think about ways to improve transparency; or at least make it documented that this is 100% your show, and everyone else participates at your leisure.
I’ve moved my own personal sites over to MT4 and am in the process of moving my clients’ sites over as well.