http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/000811.html Paying for Moveable Type: “… I feel that $65 is insignificant compared to the value I’ve received over the last nine months.”
I find it quite fascinating that people are very much willing to pay for MT, but not for any of the software that MT depends on. To run, MT needs Perl and lots of Perl libraries. It may also need MySQL, and it probably uses Linux or FreeBSD. Each of these pieces of software is the product of several orders of magnitude more work than that which went into MT. (Even the Perl libraries that come with MT are bigger than the whole of MT: the MT “with libraries” distribution is 3.8Mb, of which 1.8Mb is in the extlib directory (non-MT code); 0.7Mb is in the lib directory (MT code); templates and other bits and pieces make up the remainder.) What’s more, these programs (but not MT itself) are Open Source.
So why do people pay for MT, but not for the other bits of software responsible for getting their writing out onto the web? Is it because MT is the visible front-end to all the bits, whilst the back-end stuff is not? Do the people behind MT seem to deserve it more, or need it more? (It is their full-time job.) Is it because MT is written by two identifiable people, rather than hundreds? Is it simply because they directly ask for money? It’s a mystery to me, but the answer is surely worth knowing for all sorts of reasons. (For example, if it turns out that people are willing to pay money for good front-ends, it might be possible to do something about free software usability (more).) 17:27