Movable Type & Campaign Blogs
Category: Internet... Navel Gazing... Politics...
Posted Wednesday, January 28, 2004 at 07:44 PM [GMT-6]

Back when I was asked to take over Mike Conaway's Congressional campaign website, he was considering adding a blog to it. As part of the research in letting him know what was involved, I contacted Six Apart and asked them if a political campaign was required to purchase a commercial license in order to install a Movable Type blog on its site. Their online documentation wasn't really clear in that area.

I emailed Six Apart back in November, but didn't hear anything until earlier this month...and that response was simply to tell me that they were really backed up in their customer support due to some changes in their support system. In the meantime, Mike and his staff had decided that a blog probably wasn't going to be a big asset in this particular campaign, a decision with which I areed. My advice from the beginning had been that if you're going to blog during a campaign, you'd better commit to doing it diligently, or it could turn into a liability.

Well, I heard from Six Apart again this evening, and even though it's a moot point for the Conaway campaign, it's interesting to note that a commercial license is indeed required for an installation of an MT blog on a political campaign website.

The email went on to say that the whole spectrum of MT licenses is being re-visited, due to the proliferation in the kinds of ways that people are beginning to use blogs.

And, for any website designers who might be contemplating installing an MT blog for a client -- regardless of that client's status -- if you're doing it for money, you (or your client) will have to pay a commercial license fee. (I don't think that's anything new; this is just a reminder.) That being the case, if you're doing work for a non-profit entity which wouldn't have to pay for a commercial license, it's probably wise to hire Six Apart to do the installation, and save a hundred bucks or so.

On a more general note, the fact that Six Apart is taking a closer look at its licensing structure is yet another indication that blogging is becoming a communications tool whose use is limited only by one's imagination.

[On an unrelated note, I wonder what it would be like to work for Six Apart in client support, realizing that your every email is bloggable? Six Apart isn't unique in that status, but they are surely more cognizant of the implications than most everyone else.]

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Comments

Six Apart's ambiguous licensing policy has been an issue for a long time, which is one of several reasons I ditched Movable Type for Nucleus (there was some discussion on various blogs on this a while back). And there's absolutely no way they can enforce their stipulation that only they can do paid installs of the software. I don't know if they're still trying to enforce that stipulation, but it's ridiculous if they are.

Nucleus has no such restrictions on its use, is completely free, and has a highly motivated development community (even if that community is smaller than MT's).

For anyone considering a project that would require MT's "commercial" license or doesn't want the hassle of a licensing policy that still sounds screwy, I'd highly recommend Nucleus (http://www.nucleuscms.org). Besides, perl generated static blog pages are so... yesterday. The future is dynamic! :)

Posted by: kevin whited at January 29, 2004 08:25 AM

MT made a big impression on me, when I was watching hubby blog. I started re-working my old angelfire site (wanted to do it in CSS and hopefully have it look how I wanted it to. . . ) But the work involved in that convinced me it was better to start again from scratch. Right now, my site is simply a blog, but I can visualize how to use MT to have the whole site up, how I want it.

It's just a matter of making it work. I'm SOOO not a techy. Things are much easier to conceptualize than bring into reality.

Posted by: TulipGirl at January 29, 2004 08:13 PM

Things are much easier to conceptualize than bring into reality.

This applies to much more than just blogs! ;-)

Posted by: Eric at January 29, 2004 08:21 PM

Hey Eric, I've not heard or seen you in a long while... I used to be a macpub user, back when i was still into the whole Mac Scene... just found your site today. =)

ever consider using something other than MT? I mean there are tons and tons of other 'free' blogging scripts, and always the possibility for you to 'roll your own'...

As far as the installation of MT, i guess i don't see how a 'webdesigner' would have any problems installing it, i mean it's nothing out of the ordinary... it has scripts to do virtually everything, doesn't it?

sorry, i guess you could say i'm not a real big fan of MT, i mean its a great blogging app, but it just kills me how people now have figured out how to 'spam' the comments sections within... I guess that's because it has such a large following.

I've actually never had a client [commercial] that wanted a blogging app... I've done a few update sections.. which required much less than what MT offers, so i have actually never even thought about the licensing portion of using someone else's script for that... hehe - guess that's all the more reason to 'roll your own'...

nice to 'see' you again Eric,
cheers.

Posted by: Tim at March 17, 2004 12:45 PM

Hi, Tim...thanks for dropping by. Yes, I have looked at some other blogging tools (there weren't that many available when I started blogging), but MT gives me the right combination of features, platform compatibility and ease-of-use. It's not perfect, but I'm content.

As far as rolling your own, I'm not a database programmer, nor do I want to be. I know enough PHP to do what I need to do with forms and such, but programming a whole blog app is not anything I want to mess with.

See you around...

Posted by: Eric at March 17, 2004 01:16 PM
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