Am I the only one calling bullshit on the announcement that MoveableType is going open source? MT is an extremely powerful, solid blogging platform - one that I admire in many ways and miss incredibly since I switched to WordPress a few years ago.

So why did I switch if I love it so much? Because they started charging an exorbitant price for their software. Now, I understand that $199 isn’t much to pay when you’re starting an online business or the like, but I was running a personal blog and I was using many of the features MT locked up when they went commercial, so their free version was useless to me. While I do understand their desire to turn a buck - hey, they wrote the code, they should monetize it - I felt that going from completely free (as in beer) software to a pay model was deeply offensive to the folks who stuck by them through the early years, helped beta test new versions and provide support and feedback to help them grow. I still consider it a rather callous, greedy move.

The move alienated a large number of their user base, forcing us to find another alternative. As much as I like my blog, I make precisely $0 on it, so paying for a license on top of my hosting and domain fees to get the functionality I had previously enjoyed for free was out of the question. I ran on the old version of MT until a little up and comer open source platform called “WordPress” finally got to a point where it was usable. I made the switch, as did thousands of others, and never looked back.

WordPress has become so popular, in fact, that it rapidly eroded a considerable amount of the marketshare MoveableType had gained by being a first mover. And because MT started out as free, that’s what most of their users expected to pay for a platform. So WordPress’ open source model - free as in beer AND in speech - appealed to most of us. It’s gotten to the point where I almost forgot that MT even existed.

As a result, Anil Dash’s reasons as to why they’re finally going open source rings unbelievably hollow to me. To quote:

“But the open source movement has always been about something more important: Freedom. With a name like “Movable Type”, we’ve always been keenly aware of the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and the creation of independent media that an individual can control.”

Horseshit. You’re going open source because it’s really the only way you guys can survive. Why would any business willingly pay money for a blogging platform when there are so many other platforms that are, quite honestly, just as good but cost nothing? There’s really only one answer: support. In the world of open source software, the only way to compete for pay is to provide superior support for your product. I have no doubt that MT’s support staff is top notch and well worth the money, and there are plenty of folks who would happily pay for the privilege of accessing that staff to support their software. It’s a shame they chose, instead, to cripple their software and screw their devoted users.

It sickens me that the folks at Boing Boing, who claim to be such high-minded paragons of open source virtue, are praising this move as if MT is the scion of a new golden age in open blogging. What I’d like to see is the Trotts come out and tell the truth - they made a mistake when they cow-towed to investors and began charging for their software and have switched to the open source model in order to be able to keep innovating. I don’t want them to say this necessarily to call themselves out, instead I want them to take the bold tactic of explaining how moving from a closed-source, paid software model to an open source with professionally supported commercial version model is the right thing to do in the current software business climate. In other words, I don’t want them to just go open source, I want them to step up and actively support it as an idea from bottom to top and demonstrate how it will save their company. Instead, they send out Anil - a rather nice, well respected guy - to give us a bunch of crap about their commitment to freedom. Sorry, I’m not buying it.

So, yes, I’m a bitter tightwad who resents the fact that I had to leave the MT platform and struggle through the birth of a new platform because the folks at MT made a lousy  business decision a few years ago. WordPress is now strong and stable and I regularly install it for many of my clients. I’d love to go back to MT right now, but carving out the time to reacquaint myself with it and learn all of the new features added since the 3.0 release is just not going to be possible. I do hope the move means that MT gets stronger and becomes a dominant platform again - I really do like it - but I also hope the folks running it eventually figure out how to best meet the needs of their community without continually treating them like trash. Otherwise, this open source thing just ain’t gonna fly.