This is probably going to sound stingy and petty but I’m glad that after installing TextPattern I didn’t have time to work with it more.
You see I misunderstood the licensing:
It’ll remain free for personal sites. Licenses for commercial use will be available.
It might be that by the time TextPattern becomes stable and commercial use requires payment the site I was planning on powering with the CMS would be making money. Then again it might be limping along and I’d find myself needing to switch to another package.
I hope Dean Allen makes lots of money: he deserves it. But I don’t want to put one of my own projects in an ambiguous position. So I’ll take the TextPattern installation I setup last night down.
Let me make this clear: I don’t begrudge a software author his due.
I am a little peeved with overly enthusiastic boosters and fans who publish misleading information about software licensing.
Related posts:
- Textpattern is Open Source ...
- My flirtation with evil: pop-up ads ...
- Inexpensive quality case mods ...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
7 comments ↓
I’m not sure I understand what the problem is here. The license has been this way from the beginning, as far as I know, and is similar to many other tools. It is certainly different from Movable Type, but just as certainly not particularly outlandish…
Actually, I take that back. Even MT appears to charge for commercial uses beyond 30 days.
I hadn’t actually looked at what Dean said. Instead I read a couple of posts in MT’s support forum that indicated that commercial use was OK period.
I just don’t want to get involved with software with an uncertain future cost with a site that might not bring me a nickel. I want to honor TextPattern’s license. For the same reason I always register shareware even when it isn’t in any way crippled. So I won’t be using it for the intended site.
I have zero problems with Dean Allen’s licensing. None at all. The workman is worthy of his hire.
FYI: Things have changed since this post. The new Textpattern license grants unlimited free use to just about everyone, with one exception for corporations only:
If however you wish to create proprietary applications with Textpattern, free of any quid pro quo obligation to release any alterations or customisations to the source code, then you must acquire a commercial license.
Since opening up the TextDrive hosting service, Dean seems to be looking to that as a source of revenue rather than Textpattern. Smart move on his part, especially since TextDrive’s offering is so tempting.
Whoops, just saw your recent entry on the topic. Sorry to be redundant.
I moved from TypePad to my own domain name (the features I wanted to use were entirely too expensive on TypePad’s hosting), and am currently running WordPress. Was wondering if you’d seen whether one was any better than the other. I don’t plan on going commercial period, but WordPress’s learning curve when it comes to generating/altering templates is a nightmare for someone who doesn’t know PHP/CSS coding whatsoever. From one happily gay atheist to another, any comments or suggestions? Would you happen to know if Textpattern is better than WP?
TextPattern’s templates were much easier for me to understand. There’s also a little bit of built-in sort of point and click template building (dont’ remember the details).
Leave a Comment