Movable Type 是如何被 WordPress 超越的？
让我们回到 2001 年，短暂无业闲暇中的 Perl 工程师 Ben Trott 为了满足妻子 Mena Trott 在网上书写的热情而创作了 Movable Type，9 月份作为个人项目发布了 Movable Type(这个单词也是”活字印刷”的意思)初始版本，10月份发布了 1.0 版本(Refer)。 很快，免费（严格来说是 Donation-Ware 的版权形式）而精致优雅的 Movable Type 赢得了不少用户，引起了业界广泛注意。Ben 夫妇的夫妻店名为 Six Apart , 这个名字的由来据说是因为两个人的生日相差六天，和什么”六度分割”理论没什么直接联系。2004 年拿到第二轮融资。2003 年，Ben 夫妇二人拿到了来自伊藤穰一(Joi Ito) 的第一笔风险投资，2004 年拿到第二轮融资。资本一旦进入，情况似乎就发生了变化。 在 2004 年发布的 3.0 版本引发了轩然大波，Six Apart 短视的将 Movable Type 的版权进行了调整，打算开始收费，这一杀鸡取卵的举措引来了大量用户的不满与诟病，从而使得不少用户转投当时并不成熟的 WordPress 的怀抱。到现在为止，我们似乎得到了 Movable Type 落败的第一个原因：错误的时机采用了错误的收费策略。
WordPress 的最初发展过程似乎没有什么秘密可言，在维基百科上可以找到关于 WordPress 发展的方方面面的信息。当时只有 19 岁的的 Matt Mullenweg 在 b2/cafelog 的基础上开发了 WordPress，遵循 Web 标准，于 2003 年 5 月以 GPL 版权形式发布。随后的两年中，Matt 被 CNET 雇佣，退学，在几位 WordPress 开发者的努力下推出了 1.5 这个重要的版本，2005 年 Matt 从 CNET 离职而全力投入 WordPress 项目，正式成立了 Automattic， 随后发布了 Akismet 项目(用以对抗垃圾信息)， WordPress.com 相继正式对公共开放，看起来似乎是无心插柳柳成荫，其实是很大程度上依靠着开源社区的力量驱动。而 Movable Type 的版权形式让用户心怀芥蒂，直到 2007 年，Six Apart 才重新修改版权形式为 GPL (GPLv2) 。这个时候已经无法改变什么了。这几年中，Movable Type 几乎没有什么革新的功能出来，版本 3 和 Spam 较劲了许久，然后 4.0 解决了 Spam 问题后则是跟性能问题斗争，现在的版本 5 倒是有些中规中矩，只是时不我待。WordPress 的开发者分为 Lead Developer、Contributing Developer、Developer ，这种形式更能激发贡献者的热情，形成了一个相对更为健康的结构，而对于 Movable Type ，即使在开源后也几乎找不到这样的结构，只是知道目前日本的 Perl 技术社区承担了很大一部分开发改进工作。如果要总结一下 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第二个原因：WordPress 吸引了开源社区的力量。
如果说语言决定运势，似乎有些技术巫婆的味道。Ben Trott 用 Perl 语言开发的 Movable Type ，而 WordPress 则是用 PHP 进行开发。很不幸的是，Perl 差不多是过去 10 年最让人扼腕的一门语言，从 Perl 5 之后一直停滞不前，直到去年 Perl 6 才姗姗来迟，Perl 没有凤凰涅槃，终究彻彻底底的成为了一门小众语言。Perl 功能超级强大，但有个相当大的弊端，那就是一个人写出来的程序，换一个人很难读懂。这意味着 Perl 写出来的 Movable Type 很难借助于群体的力量而继续改进，终究将 MT 变成属于小众群体的工具。2003 年的时候，PHP 还不够先进，但是 PHP 一直在迅速进化，而 PHP 用户群也越来越大，PHP 语言越来越流行2。WordPress 尽管开始粗糙，但是经过不断的改进后最终变得功能强大甚至完美。很多国内 Blogger 应该记忆犹新，选择 Movable Type 的话，必须要找能够支持 Perl 环境的虚拟主机，而虚拟主机支持 PHP 则几乎是”标配”。语言的选择决定了一个产品的基因，从某种程度上也决定了产品的命运。这是两种技术文化的碰撞，这是 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第三个原因：选择 Perl 是一种错误。
Six Apart 步步抢得先机，却总是被后发的 WordPress 超过。Six Apart 在 2003 年就正式推出了 TypePad 这个 Blog 托管平台，远比 WordPress.com 起步早。做平台，非常关键的一点是需要一个好的生态来维系。Movable Type 想从软件 License 中赚钱的想法实际上已经注定了构建不出这样相对开放的生态。而 WordPress 则不然，始终坚持开源，团结技术社区。WordPress 逐步发展成为最流行的网志发布工具，而广泛的用户群则给 WordPress 带来了大量有价值的反馈，技术爱好者则进一步贡献了数不清的插件，很多用户因为 WordPress 有着这么多的插件而放弃 Movable Type，也难怪，到现在 MT 还没有一个合适的插件让用户很方便的显示相关文章，而 WordPress 下面类似的插件比比皆是，只是有的写的糟糕，有的写得精致而已。不难看出，WordPress 走了一条农村包围城市的路线，逐渐培养了大量的基础用户。时至今日，WordPress.com 是全球前 20 名的网站，而 TypePad 排名是 200 左右。 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第四个原因：WordPress 构建了一个更好的产品生态，进而培育了一个成功的平台。
抛开这两个产品的其它方面不谈，一个成功的产品和一个走向没落的产品之间的差异是一点一点产生的。我们能看到结局，但回到 2001 年的时候，没有人能预料到这些。当然，今天的 Movable Type 绝非一无是处，尤其是模板结构，现在也要比 WordPress 优秀，但是没办法，WordPress 好的模板主题更多。另外，MT 的 静态(3)页面发布功能依然是一个不可替代的优秀特性，虽说 WordPress 启用了 Cache 之后，MT 这一点已经不具备多大的优势了。当然，难以割舍的还有习惯和一种别样的感情，所以，至今国内仍有不少出色的网志是构建在 Movable Type 之上的。
两个产品似乎从没剑拔弩张相向过，但我想 WordPress 至少是将 Movable Type 作为一个对手并一步一步将其超越的。我知道，作为 Movable Type 或是 WordPress 忠实用户的你，一定还有其它看法。
Movable Type is Dead, Long Live Movable Type.
–EOF–
注1: 为了纪念过去的一些原则上的争论，这里”Blog”一律译作”网志”。
注2: 关于 Perl 和 PHP 的那一段言论会引发争论。请原谅我的偏见和无知吧。
注3: MT 的静态发布，对于单个页面的访问，Web 服务器来说减轻了压力，但是对于需要频繁交互的应用需求，比如类似留言这样的操作，MT 就太慢了。
延伸阅读：这里有一篇老外写的分析文章，大部分观点都是类似的.
-----------------------------------------------------
I work for a large organization which uses Movable Type across a significant number of different properties.
When I got into blogging in the early days I used and was a big fan of Movable Type. Unfortunately I now quite dislike Movable Type and it frustrates me to no end that I have to use it every day.
From my experience and that of the team I work with, the publish time situation and lack of dynamic page generation is a huge deal. A commenter above spoke of 5 minute publish times for a site. That's an irritant but bearable. Unfortunately it does not reflect my experience.
A site that I work on daily takes over an hour to publish. Furthermore, making one new post to the site is counted in minutes not seconds as I would expect.
Make a typo in a post? You can't fix it for a while. What if you update the header template and accidentally don't close a tag and the whole site blows up? Sorry, you have to wait an hour for it to be fixed everywhere. As you can imagine this situation is a horrible suck on productivity and can lead to some really challenging situations with keeping a site functional and up to date in a fast-paced environment.
Now I do understand perhaps this is our fault. Perhaps the way our servers are set up is wrong. Perhaps the way we code our sites is inefficient and is causing these massive publishing times. Perhaps we just need to throw more server power at it. Though I would say if we have to throw more server power at MT, why not just throw the required server power at Wordpress. One of the big critiques of Wordpress' dynamic nature is that it will crash your site under heavy load. Perhaps, however, by properly using caching and throwing more power at it that would be a more reasonable situation than having the day-to-day maintenance and development of a site be bogged down in endless publish times.
The point is, while this may be our fault at the end of the day it is happening and I suggest that the software should not let us get to such a state. If it cannot be prevented in Software, Six Apart (or whoever will own this going forward) should provide support to its big customers to advise on speeding things up, the architecture of sites, etc.
Lets me also touch on developing a site with MT. Even if we presume the best case low-publishing time situation (which I do once in a blue moon witness when developing a new site on a new fresh install on our development server in the middle of the night when nobody else is bogging it down) that delay in seeing your changes reflected live and the requirement of clicking publish and all that is a big deal when compared to Wordpress. With Wordpress I open the file directly and save it. After that when I reload the page I see my change. It's a small difference (under ideal circumstances which I rarely operate under) but that small time adds up and the break in my flow going over to click publish and all that harms my productivity as well.
As previously mentioned MT's template tag system is also poorly documented in comparison to Wordpress. I find it much easier to figure things out in Wordpress from their documentation, and if I can't there is a much greater chance that I can find out from the community. When I search for things about MT I sometimes even end up on websites talking about Wordpress instead!
The fact that Wordpress is so closely tied to PHP is also a really big deal. I'm not really an advanced programer by any stretch, but I know enough to make my way through things and do some pretty good things by mucking around with PHP in my Wordpress templates. (I can even get PHP code executing in the posts if I want to!) Wordpress is so closely tied to PHP that I feel like I have the freedom as a pseudo-developer and with assistance from real developers to do whatever I can think of within the templates themselves. In Movable Type I don't have anywhere close to that freedom and constantly feel like I'm operating within a cage of what features and functionality MT has decided to give us or what the small community has produced plugins for. (Plugins which are often very poorly documented or unsurprisingly out of date.)
There are other frustrations which crop of as well, but those are what my mind currently is identifying as the big ones.
At the end of the day I and everybody else on our team absolutely loathes MT due to the day-to-day frustrations and slowness we experience. If I recorded the comments made around the office and played them back it would be the kind of stuff that would make a brave PR person weep.
Wordpress has its limitations and problems (security, uptime under heavy load, etc.) but when you work all day fighting against MT and waiting for it to publish and then go home and use Wordpress yourself or for freelance work with minimal trouble it's not surprising that MT seems to be the devil and Wordpress the saviour.
Once again, I recognize that the problems may not be fully MT's fault or may be entirely ours, but for whatever reason perhaps this can shed some light on situations which cause people to want to abandon MT.
from http://www.majordojo.com/2011/02/how-did-wordpress-win.php
让我们回到 2001 年，短暂无业闲暇中的 Perl 工程师 Ben Trott 为了满足妻子 Mena Trott 在网上书写的热情而创作了 Movable Type，9 月份作为个人项目发布了 Movable Type(这个单词也是”活字印刷”的意思)初始版本，10月份发布了 1.0 版本(Refer)。 很快，免费（严格来说是 Donation-Ware 的版权形式）而精致优雅的 Movable Type 赢得了不少用户，引起了业界广泛注意。Ben 夫妇的夫妻店名为 Six Apart , 这个名字的由来据说是因为两个人的生日相差六天，和什么”六度分割”理论没什么直接联系。2004 年拿到第二轮融资。2003 年，Ben 夫妇二人拿到了来自伊藤穰一(Joi Ito) 的第一笔风险投资，2004 年拿到第二轮融资。资本一旦进入，情况似乎就发生了变化。 在 2004 年发布的 3.0 版本引发了轩然大波，Six Apart 短视的将 Movable Type 的版权进行了调整，打算开始收费，这一杀鸡取卵的举措引来了大量用户的不满与诟病，从而使得不少用户转投当时并不成熟的 WordPress 的怀抱。到现在为止，我们似乎得到了 Movable Type 落败的第一个原因：错误的时机采用了错误的收费策略。
WordPress 的最初发展过程似乎没有什么秘密可言，在维基百科上可以找到关于 WordPress 发展的方方面面的信息。当时只有 19 岁的的 Matt Mullenweg 在 b2/cafelog 的基础上开发了 WordPress，遵循 Web 标准，于 2003 年 5 月以 GPL 版权形式发布。随后的两年中，Matt 被 CNET 雇佣，退学，在几位 WordPress 开发者的努力下推出了 1.5 这个重要的版本，2005 年 Matt 从 CNET 离职而全力投入 WordPress 项目，正式成立了 Automattic， 随后发布了 Akismet 项目(用以对抗垃圾信息)， WordPress.com 相继正式对公共开放，看起来似乎是无心插柳柳成荫，其实是很大程度上依靠着开源社区的力量驱动。而 Movable Type 的版权形式让用户心怀芥蒂，直到 2007 年，Six Apart 才重新修改版权形式为 GPL (GPLv2) 。这个时候已经无法改变什么了。这几年中，Movable Type 几乎没有什么革新的功能出来，版本 3 和 Spam 较劲了许久，然后 4.0 解决了 Spam 问题后则是跟性能问题斗争，现在的版本 5 倒是有些中规中矩，只是时不我待。WordPress 的开发者分为 Lead Developer、Contributing Developer、Developer ，这种形式更能激发贡献者的热情，形成了一个相对更为健康的结构，而对于 Movable Type ，即使在开源后也几乎找不到这样的结构，只是知道目前日本的 Perl 技术社区承担了很大一部分开发改进工作。如果要总结一下 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第二个原因：WordPress 吸引了开源社区的力量。
如果说语言决定运势，似乎有些技术巫婆的味道。Ben Trott 用 Perl 语言开发的 Movable Type ，而 WordPress 则是用 PHP 进行开发。很不幸的是，Perl 差不多是过去 10 年最让人扼腕的一门语言，从 Perl 5 之后一直停滞不前，直到去年 Perl 6 才姗姗来迟，Perl 没有凤凰涅槃，终究彻彻底底的成为了一门小众语言。Perl 功能超级强大，但有个相当大的弊端，那就是一个人写出来的程序，换一个人很难读懂。这意味着 Perl 写出来的 Movable Type 很难借助于群体的力量而继续改进，终究将 MT 变成属于小众群体的工具。2003 年的时候，PHP 还不够先进，但是 PHP 一直在迅速进化，而 PHP 用户群也越来越大，PHP 语言越来越流行2。WordPress 尽管开始粗糙，但是经过不断的改进后最终变得功能强大甚至完美。很多国内 Blogger 应该记忆犹新，选择 Movable Type 的话，必须要找能够支持 Perl 环境的虚拟主机，而虚拟主机支持 PHP 则几乎是”标配”。语言的选择决定了一个产品的基因，从某种程度上也决定了产品的命运。这是两种技术文化的碰撞，这是 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第三个原因：选择 Perl 是一种错误。
Six Apart 步步抢得先机，却总是被后发的 WordPress 超过。Six Apart 在 2003 年就正式推出了 TypePad 这个 Blog 托管平台，远比 WordPress.com 起步早。做平台，非常关键的一点是需要一个好的生态来维系。Movable Type 想从软件 License 中赚钱的想法实际上已经注定了构建不出这样相对开放的生态。而 WordPress 则不然，始终坚持开源，团结技术社区。WordPress 逐步发展成为最流行的网志发布工具，而广泛的用户群则给 WordPress 带来了大量有价值的反馈，技术爱好者则进一步贡献了数不清的插件，很多用户因为 WordPress 有着这么多的插件而放弃 Movable Type，也难怪，到现在 MT 还没有一个合适的插件让用户很方便的显示相关文章，而 WordPress 下面类似的插件比比皆是，只是有的写的糟糕，有的写得精致而已。不难看出，WordPress 走了一条农村包围城市的路线，逐渐培养了大量的基础用户。时至今日，WordPress.com 是全球前 20 名的网站，而 TypePad 排名是 200 左右。 Movable Type 被 WordPress 超越的第四个原因：WordPress 构建了一个更好的产品生态，进而培育了一个成功的平台。
关于”生态”，我想说一下国内的一些开源产品，比如 Discuz!，较少得到来自技术社区的贡献，说是开源，仅仅是把代码公开，缺乏与技术社区良好的互动，形成不了良好的技术生态。不知是不是 Ben Trott 最初单枪匹马写出来的 MT 的缘故，Six Apart 团队另一个特别的地方是没有出现有影响力的技术明星。在 2005 年，Six Apart 收购了 LiveJournal 背后的公司 Danga 。Danga 这个技术团队在 Web 2.0 历史上是值得纪念的，给业界贡献了 Memcached 、MogileFS 这样经典的开源产品，让无数创业团队受益，相信今天很多公司都在使用 Danga 团队开源的产品或是从 Memcached 中借鉴了 Key-Value 产品的设计理念。甚至那篇 LiveJournal’s Backend 也给了国内很多技术人员以启迪，我甚至认为这是 Web 2.0 技术大潮中最重要的 PPT 之一。遗憾的是，Brad Fitzpatrick 这位大牛没多久就离开了 Six Apart ，加入了 Google。这一次收购似乎没有给 Six Apart 带来什么。除此之外，业界很少有优秀的 Perl 为主导的技术团队了。后来， Six Apart 又有几次收购，似乎也都是为了技术团队而进行的。反观 Automattic ，迄今为止只进行过两三次收购而已，而且都是为了完善 WordPress 产品功能。第五个原因，Six Apart 的收购没有做到价值最大化。在雅虎的收购上我们也看到了类似的失败的做法。
抛开这两个产品的其它方面不谈，一个成功的产品和一个走向没落的产品之间的差异是一点一点产生的。我们能看到结局，但回到 2001 年的时候，没有人能预料到这些。当然，今天的 Movable Type 绝非一无是处，尤其是模板结构，现在也要比 WordPress 优秀，但是没办法，WordPress 好的模板主题更多。另外，MT 的 静态(3)页面发布功能依然是一个不可替代的优秀特性，虽说 WordPress 启用了 Cache 之后，MT 这一点已经不具备多大的优势了。当然，难以割舍的还有习惯和一种别样的感情，所以，至今国内仍有不少出色的网志是构建在 Movable Type 之上的。
两个产品似乎从没剑拔弩张相向过，但我想 WordPress 至少是将 Movable Type 作为一个对手并一步一步将其超越的。我知道，作为 Movable Type 或是 WordPress 忠实用户的你，一定还有其它看法。
Movable Type is Dead, Long Live Movable Type.
–EOF–
注1: 为了纪念过去的一些原则上的争论，这里”Blog”一律译作”网志”。
注2: 关于 Perl 和 PHP 的那一段言论会引发争论。请原谅我的偏见和无知吧。
注3: MT 的静态发布，对于单个页面的访问，Web 服务器来说减轻了压力，但是对于需要频繁交互的应用需求，比如类似留言这样的操作，MT 就太慢了。
延伸阅读：这里有一篇老外写的分析文章，大部分观点都是类似的.
-----------------------------------------------------
How did WordPress win?
When we are passionate about
something, it is sometimes hard for us to wrap our heads around why
someone else might not be passionate about the same thing. You see this
in the WordPress community often - fans and users of WordPress are often
flabbergasted that someone might choose something else. Why would
anyone choose Movable Type for instance?
Believe it or not, members of the Movable Type community often wonder the same thing. Most recently someone in the ProNet community, frustrated by their experience with WordPress, asked the question: how on Earth did WordPress win the battle over Movable Type?" The question was rhetorical, but sparked a very interesting dialog in our community.
In the past I have refrained from answering such questions, or if I did, I would not respond publicly, for reasons I can only attribute to a mentality that was beaten into me while I worked at Six Apart:
So let's break it down shall we? Let's talk about the commonly cited reasons for WordPress' success, and some less well known reasons as well.
What resonated with customers first and foremost however was not WordPress' license, but the fact that it was unambiguously free. Back then no one knew that much about open source, much less the GPL, but what they did know was all that mattered: open source means free. Period. Forever.
The fact that Movable Type was in all reality free for the vast majority of people using it was irrelevant because it was never clear when Movable Type was free and when it was not. And what users feared most of all, is a repeat of exactly what happened the day Movable Type announced its licensing change: one day waking up to the realization that you owe some company hundreds, if not thousands of dollars1 and not being able to afford or justify the cost monetarily or on principle.
Furthermore, every web host likes to configure CGI differently on their web server, which led to a lot of confusion and frustration for a lot of users, and prevented anyone from authoring a simple and canonical installation guide for all Movable Type users across all web hosts.
One cannot underestimate how important ones installation experience with a piece of software is, because it frames every subsequent experience and impression they have of the product. So while blogging was exploding and people were weighing their options between Movable Type and WordPress, its no wonder why increasingly more and more people chose WordPress, even though it had fewer features, and an inferior design. Fewer people gave up trying to install it.
That being said, the fact that people feel more comfortable hacking PHP did and still to this day, contributes significantly to the number of plugins and themes available on WordPress simply because the world of people who possess the bare minimum of knowledge necessary to write a plugin is so much larger.
Which leads me to another, and arguably more important reason why WordPress has been so successful: corporate adoption. If you are going to build your company on top of or rely heavily upon a CMS, and you are going to hire engineers internally to help you maintain it, which is an easier and cheaper job req to fill? A Perl engineer or a PHP engineer? Dollars to donuts, the answer is almost certainly PHP. Furthermore, if you know how companies often select the software they use, then you know that companies most frequently use the software their team members are most familiar with. And as more and more people started using WordPress at home, more and more people began recommending it to their bosses at work. And eventually, even though Movable Type dominated the Enterprise sector for so long, provided far superior support, and had a lock on the features Enterprises so often require (Oracle, SQL Server, LDAP support for instance) eventually Movable Type lost mindshare behind the firewall.
As more and more people though began making money using and building for the platform, as more and more people began thinking about, living in, and becoming invested in the platform, there became an ever increasing incentive for them to contribute back to the platform. Now, the great irony is that even for all of WordPress' open sourcey, socialist, hippy goodness, it is the competition driven by the capitalist free market that drives much of WordPress' innovation today.
That being said, there were also a number of tactics employed by Automattic and mistakes made by Six Apart, that collectively had an equal role to play in the fate of their respective platforms.
This general lack of civility, much more apparent early on in WordPress' life, contributed to an underlying sense that WordPress was the best and everything else sucked. This state of mind, love it or hate it, served WordPress greatly, because wars, even a meaningless "blogging war," are only successfully fought when everyone knows who their enemy is. And Six Apart was not just a worthy competitor, it was the perfect enemy.
And once a migration was complete they did the single most important thing: they blogged the hell out of it. They made the story about how another customer switched from Movable Type or Type Pad to WordPress. They very smartly never let the sense that the world was switching to WordPress from ever disapating, even as TypePad and Movable Type was growing in users and revenue quarter after quarter.
Granted, no one switched to WordPress against their will. Simply put though, Six Apart was just not working as effectively giving people a reason to stay as Automattic was at taking away every reason a person had for sticking with their current platform.
Then Six Apart purchased Apperceptive. It was a great business move from a revenue stand point, but the consequences to the community were devistating in the long run. Here's why:
Six Apart's purchase of Apperceptive was successful, by all measure and accounts. Business increased, enterprises flocked to the platform and Movable Type was growing at an even faster clip. In order to meet the demand of the new business though, Six Apart began to hire the smartest and most innovative members from its community into its professional services team. Once hired, all of the awesome work they were doing got swallowed by the increasingly closed and proprietary Six Apart professional services ecosystem.
What's worse is the fact that Six Apart sapped its community of its greatest leaders and contributors. And slowly over time, the number of professional and truly capable professional service providers got widdled down to a very small list. Six Apart, without knowing it or purposefully doing it, created a monopoly. Customers coming to the platform, looking for an alternative to Six Apart for their professional services needs, found only a hand full of independent contractors, contributing to the sense that Movable Type's community was too small to support them.
In short, Six Apart lacked focus.
If Six Apart, early on, had made the decision to put all of its resources behind a single product and codebase, TypePad or Movable Type for example, then I think the blogging landscape would be a fundamentally different place today. WordPress would undoubtedly still be popular, but it might still have a very potent adversary and competitor helping to drive innovation and the technology behind blogging.
All this being said, no doubt people will always press the question: is WordPress' success evidence that it really is a better product? The answer to that is a no-brainer to those who have already made up their mind.
For my part, I still maintain that Movable Type is an successful and yes, even a great product. Afterall, it continues to support me, not to mention many of my friends and their families. It also supports a very successful and profitable company and ecosystem in Japan, not to mention hundreds upon hundreds of people world wide. Plus, who can ignore the fact that Movable Type still powers much of the web today, and is in use by some of the largest and most influential media properties on the planet.
For those reasons, and a whole host of others, both personal and technical, I choose Movable Type, and of course Melody. And I would choose it again and again and again given the opportunity. But that is me.
1 To the best of my knowledge, not once did Six Apart ever police or enforce its license. From the day Ben and Mena started collecting donations to fund the development of Movable Type, Six Apart relied exclusively upon the honor system when it came to collecting payments for people's usage of the platform. One story in particular exemplifies Six Apart's attritude towards its very own license, a story that can only be described as legend within the walls of Six Apart: that the Huffington Post, the poster child of Movable Type, never actually paid for their license to use the software. To this day, even as Huffingpost is sold for over $350,000,000, its success can be attributed to the effectively free platform it built a business on.
2 What makes Movable Type hard to install has actually nothing to do with Perl at all. It has to do with CGI. CGI was originally architected to allow any script to be run and invoked via an addressable URL, and when that capability was first introduced system administrators and programmers feared the security ramifications of allowing any arbitrary script to be executed in that fashion. Therefore, they instituted a number limitations enforced by the web server: 1) only certain directories on your web server can possess the ability to run CGI scripts, 2) only executable files can be invoked via CGI, and 3) no static files (html, css, javascript, or any text file) can be served from the same directory as a CGI script. These limitations are often inappropriately attributed to Perl only because Perl became the dominant, if not the only scripting language used to author CGI based web applications early on.
Disclaimer: Byrne Reese is the former Product Manager of Movable Type and TypePad and worked at Six Apart from 2004 to 2008. Byrne Reese is now a Partner at Endevver, LLC, a premiere Movable Type and Melody consulting company, as well as the chairman and a leading contributor to Melody, a fork of the Movable Type platform.
Believe it or not, members of the Movable Type community often wonder the same thing. Most recently someone in the ProNet community, frustrated by their experience with WordPress, asked the question: how on Earth did WordPress win the battle over Movable Type?" The question was rhetorical, but sparked a very interesting dialog in our community.
In the past I have refrained from answering such questions, or if I did, I would not respond publicly, for reasons I can only attribute to a mentality that was beaten into me while I worked at Six Apart:
"Byrne you are a leader in the community, and your words carry significant weight. Therefore be very, very careful what you say. Very careful. Don't do or say anything to jeopardize the company's product line. In fact, if you want to say anything, why don't you run it by me first? And Anil, and through marketing, and while you are at it through a couple other people as well... Cool?"This time however, "to hell with it" I say. Let's talk about this. Let's see what lessons can be learned from WordPress so that others seeking to build a successful product can learn from it.
Why did WordPress win the Blogging Battle?
This is not the first time this question has been posed obviously. And in all the times people have sought an answer to this question, the answers are remarkably consistant. They are:- Movable Type's licensing fiasco in 2004 angered the community and drove users to WordPress.
- Movable Type is not open source. WordPress is.
- Movable Type is written in Perl, while WordPress is written in PHP.
So let's break it down shall we? Let's talk about the commonly cited reasons for WordPress' success, and some less well known reasons as well.
Movable Type's Licensing Fiasco, and WordPress is Open Source
When Movable Type changed its license in 2004, it proved to be a significant turning point for WordPress. Yes, the change angered a lot of people and led to a lot of loyal Movable Type users deciding to switch to WordPress. More importantly however is that it gave WordPress the opportunity to change the nature of the debate, and let it very compellingly espouse the superiority of free over all else, even superior design, superior feature sets, and superior support.What resonated with customers first and foremost however was not WordPress' license, but the fact that it was unambiguously free. Back then no one knew that much about open source, much less the GPL, but what they did know was all that mattered: open source means free. Period. Forever.
The fact that Movable Type was in all reality free for the vast majority of people using it was irrelevant because it was never clear when Movable Type was free and when it was not. And what users feared most of all, is a repeat of exactly what happened the day Movable Type announced its licensing change: one day waking up to the realization that you owe some company hundreds, if not thousands of dollars1 and not being able to afford or justify the cost monetarily or on principle.
WordPress is easy to install
The fact that WordPress has always been easy to install, especially when compared to Movable Type, has always played a significant role in its growth and adoption rate. Technically, the reasons behind WordPress' famed 5-minute install can be attributed largely to PHP's deployment model, which was architected specifically to address the challenges associated with running and hosting web applications based on CGI, or in effect Perl 2 - the Internet's first practical web programming language.Furthermore, every web host likes to configure CGI differently on their web server, which led to a lot of confusion and frustration for a lot of users, and prevented anyone from authoring a simple and canonical installation guide for all Movable Type users across all web hosts.
One cannot underestimate how important ones installation experience with a piece of software is, because it frames every subsequent experience and impression they have of the product. So while blogging was exploding and people were weighing their options between Movable Type and WordPress, its no wonder why increasingly more and more people chose WordPress, even though it had fewer features, and an inferior design. Fewer people gave up trying to install it.
WordPress is written in PHP
Unfortunately it is impossible to avoid the Perl vs PHP debate when it comes to WordPress and Movable Type, and the fact that cogent and compelling arguments can be made and demonstrated that Perl knowledge has never been required, not once, not ever, to build a web site using Movable Type doesn't matter. People simply feel more comfortable working with PHP. And even though the vast majority of people will never have or have ever had the need to hack the source code of their CMS, they are still comforted knowing that they could if they had to. People just never had that kind of comfort level with Perl and by association, Movable Type. Perl is just simply too scary.That being said, the fact that people feel more comfortable hacking PHP did and still to this day, contributes significantly to the number of plugins and themes available on WordPress simply because the world of people who possess the bare minimum of knowledge necessary to write a plugin is so much larger.
Which leads me to another, and arguably more important reason why WordPress has been so successful: corporate adoption. If you are going to build your company on top of or rely heavily upon a CMS, and you are going to hire engineers internally to help you maintain it, which is an easier and cheaper job req to fill? A Perl engineer or a PHP engineer? Dollars to donuts, the answer is almost certainly PHP. Furthermore, if you know how companies often select the software they use, then you know that companies most frequently use the software their team members are most familiar with. And as more and more people started using WordPress at home, more and more people began recommending it to their bosses at work. And eventually, even though Movable Type dominated the Enterprise sector for so long, provided far superior support, and had a lock on the features Enterprises so often require (Oracle, SQL Server, LDAP support for instance) eventually Movable Type lost mindshare behind the firewall.
WordPress has a huge community
All of the factors above contributed in the long run to what ended up being WordPress' single most important asset: its community. But its community was not born simply out of having a lot of users. Its community and ultimately WordPress' success was born out a steady stream of people who began to rely upon WordPress as their primary, if not exclusive source of income. A healthy economy around WordPress consulting and professional services ultimately gave rise to "Premium Themes." And once people began to demonstrate that there was a viable business model in selling themes, the theme market exploded. Now it is almost impossible to rival the selection of themes available on the platform, not to mention how cheap it is for the average person to get started with a cheap, good looking web site.As more and more people though began making money using and building for the platform, as more and more people began thinking about, living in, and becoming invested in the platform, there became an ever increasing incentive for them to contribute back to the platform. Now, the great irony is that even for all of WordPress' open sourcey, socialist, hippy goodness, it is the competition driven by the capitalist free market that drives much of WordPress' innovation today.
Forces beyond anyone's control
What's fascinating of course is that all of the above are things that happened outside the control of any one person or company. For example, WordPress never chose its license, or the language it was written in.That being said, there were also a number of tactics employed by Automattic and mistakes made by Six Apart, that collectively had an equal role to play in the fate of their respective platforms.
The Cult of WordPress
One thing that I personally feel mars an otherwise untarnished product is the fact that WordPress' leadership and community chose to define itself early on not upon its own strengths, but upon the mistakes made by a young and inexperienced pair of entrepenuers. WordPress defined itself not as superior product by its own merit, but as the underdog. It succeeded by villifying Six Apart, by casting doubt on Six Apart's integrity and by constantly stoking the fires left over from Movable Type's licensing fiasco. Never for example have I seen a WordPress user work to establish a more positive and constructive tone when it comes to its competition.This general lack of civility, much more apparent early on in WordPress' life, contributed to an underlying sense that WordPress was the best and everything else sucked. This state of mind, love it or hate it, served WordPress greatly, because wars, even a meaningless "blogging war," are only successfully fought when everyone knows who their enemy is. And Six Apart was not just a worthy competitor, it was the perfect enemy.
Automattic's Switch Campaign
One thing rarely cited by the outside world, probably because it was not visible or apparent to anyone, was the systematic targeting of high profile brands to switch from using any competing platform to using WordPress. In fact, in the four years I was at Six Apart, if I had a dollar every time a significant and loyal TypePad and Movable Type customer confided in me that an employee of Automattic cold called them to encourage and entice them to switch to WordPress I would have quit a rich man. Automattic would extend whatever services it could, at no expense to the customer, getting them to switch. They would give away hosting services. They would freely dedicate engineers to the task of migrating customers' data from one system to another. They would do whatever it took to move people to WordPress.And once a migration was complete they did the single most important thing: they blogged the hell out of it. They made the story about how another customer switched from Movable Type or Type Pad to WordPress. They very smartly never let the sense that the world was switching to WordPress from ever disapating, even as TypePad and Movable Type was growing in users and revenue quarter after quarter.
Granted, no one switched to WordPress against their will. Simply put though, Six Apart was just not working as effectively giving people a reason to stay as Automattic was at taking away every reason a person had for sticking with their current platform.
Six Apart's Purchase of Apperceptive
Even as Movable Type's community started to become small in comparison to WordPress', its community was still just as competitive. Its community was strong for the same reason that WordPress' was - it consisted of a number of very bright, and exceedingly dedicated community members who were as invested in their respective trades as Six Apart and Automattic ever were.Then Six Apart purchased Apperceptive. It was a great business move from a revenue stand point, but the consequences to the community were devistating in the long run. Here's why:
Six Apart's purchase of Apperceptive was successful, by all measure and accounts. Business increased, enterprises flocked to the platform and Movable Type was growing at an even faster clip. In order to meet the demand of the new business though, Six Apart began to hire the smartest and most innovative members from its community into its professional services team. Once hired, all of the awesome work they were doing got swallowed by the increasingly closed and proprietary Six Apart professional services ecosystem.
What's worse is the fact that Six Apart sapped its community of its greatest leaders and contributors. And slowly over time, the number of professional and truly capable professional service providers got widdled down to a very small list. Six Apart, without knowing it or purposefully doing it, created a monopoly. Customers coming to the platform, looking for an alternative to Six Apart for their professional services needs, found only a hand full of independent contractors, contributing to the sense that Movable Type's community was too small to support them.
Six Apart's Failure
Finally, I will add one more contributing factor to WordPress' success: Six Apart's failure. The reasons behind its ultimate failure as a product company are many, are complex and in many cases very nuanced. But the general consensus is apt: Six Apart severely hampered its own ability to compete effectively by spreading its many exceptionally talented resources across too many products.In short, Six Apart lacked focus.
If Six Apart, early on, had made the decision to put all of its resources behind a single product and codebase, TypePad or Movable Type for example, then I think the blogging landscape would be a fundamentally different place today. WordPress would undoubtedly still be popular, but it might still have a very potent adversary and competitor helping to drive innovation and the technology behind blogging.
Who won the war?
It is pointless to refute that WordPress came out on top. But I personally find the conceit of a "war" to be faulty premise. The "war" between WordPress and Movable Type was either manufactured or the natural by product of a rivalry that two communities had come to define themselves by. It is a mentality I find fundamentally poisonous to all who engage in it because it promotes the idea that one platform is inherently better than another. The truth of course is that each platform, be it WordPress, Drupal, Expression Engine, Movable Type, Simple CMS, TypePad, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or what have you does different things uniquely well. That is why I prefer a perspective that embraces and recognizes each platform for its strengths, and never denigrates those who have made a personal decision to choose one platform over another.All this being said, no doubt people will always press the question: is WordPress' success evidence that it really is a better product? The answer to that is a no-brainer to those who have already made up their mind.
For my part, I still maintain that Movable Type is an successful and yes, even a great product. Afterall, it continues to support me, not to mention many of my friends and their families. It also supports a very successful and profitable company and ecosystem in Japan, not to mention hundreds upon hundreds of people world wide. Plus, who can ignore the fact that Movable Type still powers much of the web today, and is in use by some of the largest and most influential media properties on the planet.
For those reasons, and a whole host of others, both personal and technical, I choose Movable Type, and of course Melody. And I would choose it again and again and again given the opportunity. But that is me.
1 To the best of my knowledge, not once did Six Apart ever police or enforce its license. From the day Ben and Mena started collecting donations to fund the development of Movable Type, Six Apart relied exclusively upon the honor system when it came to collecting payments for people's usage of the platform. One story in particular exemplifies Six Apart's attritude towards its very own license, a story that can only be described as legend within the walls of Six Apart: that the Huffington Post, the poster child of Movable Type, never actually paid for their license to use the software. To this day, even as Huffingpost is sold for over $350,000,000, its success can be attributed to the effectively free platform it built a business on.
2 What makes Movable Type hard to install has actually nothing to do with Perl at all. It has to do with CGI. CGI was originally architected to allow any script to be run and invoked via an addressable URL, and when that capability was first introduced system administrators and programmers feared the security ramifications of allowing any arbitrary script to be executed in that fashion. Therefore, they instituted a number limitations enforced by the web server: 1) only certain directories on your web server can possess the ability to run CGI scripts, 2) only executable files can be invoked via CGI, and 3) no static files (html, css, javascript, or any text file) can be served from the same directory as a CGI script. These limitations are often inappropriately attributed to Perl only because Perl became the dominant, if not the only scripting language used to author CGI based web applications early on.
Disclaimer: Byrne Reese is the former Product Manager of Movable Type and TypePad and worked at Six Apart from 2004 to 2008. Byrne Reese is now a Partner at Endevver, LLC, a premiere Movable Type and Melody consulting company, as well as the chairman and a leading contributor to Melody, a fork of the Movable Type platform.
Recommended Entries
73 Comments
As a Blogger user, heads up for "Have you ever tried to
teach someone new to HTML how MT or Blogger templates work? It's pretty
confusing stuff."
Its new Blogger Template Designer is awesome, but I think it came too late. And changing templates from scratch (i.e. editing the html-css sources mixed with blogger code) is a PITA, at least the 5 or 6 hours until you just "get it" and can more or less tweak freely.
Cheers,
Ruben
Its new Blogger Template Designer is awesome, but I think it came too late. And changing templates from scratch (i.e. editing the html-css sources mixed with blogger code) is a PITA, at least the 5 or 6 hours until you just "get it" and can more or less tweak freely.
Cheers,
Ruben
This is Awesome. Thanks.
Very interesting. Definitely a new perspective to read it from a "corporate insider."
An excellent summary Byrne. As a long time supporter of
MT, I have sadly had to roll my sites over to WP over the last year.
I'm not technical enough to swim against this tide. My greatest
frustration with MT was the installation. While Perl expertise was
never a requirement, issues with configuration and installation commonly
manifested as Perl issues - so troubleshooting was always a challenge.
I'm hopeful that Melody will overcome these issues and that I am someday writing about switching off of WP. I will stay connected when I can.
As an aside, you have been an insider in this drama. You should write more on the subject - there are lots of lessons here for others to benefit from.
I'm hopeful that Melody will overcome these issues and that I am someday writing about switching off of WP. I will stay connected when I can.
As an aside, you have been an insider in this drama. You should write more on the subject - there are lots of lessons here for others to benefit from.
Byrne -- There are two important points that get lost in
the Perl/PHP divide. 1) It wasn't Perl vs PHP. It was MT's template tags
vs PHP. I love Movable Type and have used it for eight years. The
template language in MT is very powerful, but it has a steep learning
curve. Documentation is a huge advantage WordPress had over Six Apart.
Even today, the template tag documentation for MT is rudimentary at best
with many tags lacking any examples or even useful information.
2) In terms of Perl/PHP, WordPress was also successful because they tagged MT's static HTML publishing preference as the PAST, and Wordpress' dynamically-driven PHP pages as the FUTURE. When buzzwords like Web 2.0 were used, people thought WordPress was where they wanted to be, not with some clunky blog that takes five minutes to re-publish every time you make a template change.
But as Matt pointed out, WordPress' huge Achilles heel is security. Have you watched the roll out of the updates from 3.0 to 3.0.5? It's a mess, including a critical security update the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. I think you'll see Enterprise support for WordPress weaken as these security problems continue year after year. Drupal is huge in my world (academia) and is serious iron. It's got a learning curve like other serious contenders, but Drupal and others like it are the best way to go these days if you want to host more than your run-of-the-mill get-rich-quick content farm.
2) In terms of Perl/PHP, WordPress was also successful because they tagged MT's static HTML publishing preference as the PAST, and Wordpress' dynamically-driven PHP pages as the FUTURE. When buzzwords like Web 2.0 were used, people thought WordPress was where they wanted to be, not with some clunky blog that takes five minutes to re-publish every time you make a template change.
But as Matt pointed out, WordPress' huge Achilles heel is security. Have you watched the roll out of the updates from 3.0 to 3.0.5? It's a mess, including a critical security update the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. I think you'll see Enterprise support for WordPress weaken as these security problems continue year after year. Drupal is huge in my world (academia) and is serious iron. It's got a learning curve like other serious contenders, but Drupal and others like it are the best way to go these days if you want to host more than your run-of-the-mill get-rich-quick content farm.
I think the Documentation really is the biggest point.
Sure themes are a huge reason but the availability of documentation and
support from the community was AMAZING compared to anything else at the
time.
Counter, this is the also the reason BBpress is a pile of crap. The documentation is terrible to non existent.
Counter, this is the also the reason BBpress is a pile of crap. The documentation is terrible to non existent.
Really great to see this measured, thoughtful post-mortem, Byrne. Lots of lessons here.
Agreed, Matt, re: WP exploits-- I just did a mass upgrade to about 30 sites and 5 of them failed for some unknown reasons w/ scary SimpleScripts error messages.
Agreed, Matt, re: WP exploits-- I just did a mass upgrade to about 30 sites and 5 of them failed for some unknown reasons w/ scary SimpleScripts error messages.
Over the past several years, I've been finding people
outside the web and technical communities shifting their interest in
hosted services from Blogger to WordPress.com as well.
WordPress has their finger on the it-just-works needs of lay users; the hosted service is impressively streamlined even compared to a standalone installation.
It seems somewhat odd to people in the trade, because as hosted services go, Blogger provides far more comprehensive features and amenities - and cheaper, too. And I suspect the it-just-works advantage may be usurped by newer, minimal platforms like Tumblr. For the time being, WordPress is in a sweet spot, but as it continues to aggregate and embed more features (and as platforms like Drupal aggressively push UI improvements), I wonder if it's going to start sagging around the edges and lose its charm.
WordPress has their finger on the it-just-works needs of lay users; the hosted service is impressively streamlined even compared to a standalone installation.
It seems somewhat odd to people in the trade, because as hosted services go, Blogger provides far more comprehensive features and amenities - and cheaper, too. And I suspect the it-just-works advantage may be usurped by newer, minimal platforms like Tumblr. For the time being, WordPress is in a sweet spot, but as it continues to aggregate and embed more features (and as platforms like Drupal aggressively push UI improvements), I wonder if it's going to start sagging around the edges and lose its charm.
You suggest that WordPress users have a "poisonous
mentality" in their distaste for Six Apart. I was an MT user at the
time of the great bait n' switch, I remember staring at the new pricing
structure, I remember the extent to which it undermined my immediate
plans and I feel that a certain amount of antagonism is justified - not
incivility or mindless invective, but I sure got a wake-up call that day
and never forgot what the wonder couple tried to pull.
Having said that, the overwhelming majority of WordPress users today have no idea who Six Apart are or what Movable Type is. The principle movers in the WordPress world seem to be fairly stable, reasonable people and Anil is treated with nothing but respect as he does the rounds and attempts to re-invent himself.
You seem to be reading a lot into the fact that a young company aggressively competed for customers and, once they won those customers, had a marketing department that did its job and trumpeted those wins. You know, that is what companies do before they become necrotic on venture capital and presumptions of easy victory; they compete.
Your piece accepts that Automattic's win was largely due to Six Apart's failings but, all the same, you criticize Automattic for doing what a young, ambitious company is meant to do and which your company failed to do, despite the obvious potential and importance of the mission. I don't know what went wrong in Six Apart's culture but, seriously, don't make out that Automattic were somehow unethical or crass simply because they weren't hit by the same malaise. In EVERY industry, competent sales people do whatever they (legally and ethically) can to win business. Your clients were not idiots, they knew you better than most, they received a better offer and trusted someone else more.
I appreciate hearing your angle, I respect Movable Type as a pioneer and I thank you for drawing my attention to Melody but, having considered what you've said here, I do wonder if, perhaps, you are using a competitor as an emotional pinata for all the things that didn't work out as you hoped they might.
You guys had the ball, you dropped it; you were the undisputed leaders, you should have continued growing to Facebook levels of importance but some dumb, dumb, dumb decisions were made. Matt Mullenweg had no part in that, he was just watching in horrified fascination like the rest of us. It was a confusing market - the decisive moments in fast-moving markets usually are - but Automattic were a little more awake and they didn't do anything that they shouldn't have; why begrudge them the victory with these mealy-mouthed excuses?
Having said that, the overwhelming majority of WordPress users today have no idea who Six Apart are or what Movable Type is. The principle movers in the WordPress world seem to be fairly stable, reasonable people and Anil is treated with nothing but respect as he does the rounds and attempts to re-invent himself.
You seem to be reading a lot into the fact that a young company aggressively competed for customers and, once they won those customers, had a marketing department that did its job and trumpeted those wins. You know, that is what companies do before they become necrotic on venture capital and presumptions of easy victory; they compete.
Your piece accepts that Automattic's win was largely due to Six Apart's failings but, all the same, you criticize Automattic for doing what a young, ambitious company is meant to do and which your company failed to do, despite the obvious potential and importance of the mission. I don't know what went wrong in Six Apart's culture but, seriously, don't make out that Automattic were somehow unethical or crass simply because they weren't hit by the same malaise. In EVERY industry, competent sales people do whatever they (legally and ethically) can to win business. Your clients were not idiots, they knew you better than most, they received a better offer and trusted someone else more.
I appreciate hearing your angle, I respect Movable Type as a pioneer and I thank you for drawing my attention to Melody but, having considered what you've said here, I do wonder if, perhaps, you are using a competitor as an emotional pinata for all the things that didn't work out as you hoped they might.
You guys had the ball, you dropped it; you were the undisputed leaders, you should have continued growing to Facebook levels of importance but some dumb, dumb, dumb decisions were made. Matt Mullenweg had no part in that, he was just watching in horrified fascination like the rest of us. It was a confusing market - the decisive moments in fast-moving markets usually are - but Automattic were a little more awake and they didn't do anything that they shouldn't have; why begrudge them the victory with these mealy-mouthed excuses?
I do not begrudge Automattic at all for any measures it
took to compete, even if that included what can only be described as
"poaching customers." As I said, no customer ever switched to WordPress
against their will. Their tactic was in fact brilliant because it forced
Six Apart to be defensive, and it was also extremely disruptive. As
such it was frustrating to me, and to others I am sure, but not once did
I ever hear anyone at Six Apart say what they were doing was wrong. What they did was smart.
Next, when you say that Automattic's win was due largely to Six Apart's failings it leads me to believe that I wasn't clear in my writing. This piece is not about Automattic at all. It mentions Automattic sure, but this piece is about WordPress. Nor do I imply in any way that WordPress' success is due "largely to Six Apart's failings." My piece is attempt to break down just some of the many contributing factors to its success and Six Apart's inability (for which I must take some responsibility for the part I played) to provide compelling competition cannot be ignored.
I also would never argue that the people who were hurt, angered and even infuriated by Movable Type's licensing fiasco had every reason to feel the way they, and you, did. It was a colossal mistake. But to say that anyone is justified to be "antagonistic" is flat out wrong. For you, "antagonistic" might mean some ribbing here and there in comments. It might even mean some harsh language thrown in for good measure. But for others, it meant vitriol and hatred the likes of which I have never seen. It meant personal attacks and insult that I would not even invite on my worst enemy. There was a high ground for the community to take, in spite of all the completely justified anger. The high road however, was not the one most people chose to take, and it was never the one people were encouraged to take. Movable Type became WordPress' Alamo. It was a rallying cry, and I believe it struck the right chord for a victory at the time, but an unfortunate chord nonetheless.
The fact that the licensing change is most often characterized as some pre-meditated attempt to extract money from every corner, as something "the wonder couple tried to pull" for example, is the most inaccurate characterization possible. Although I can appreciate the fact that to the outside world one has little to draw upon to come up with a different conclusion. The licensing change was in fact not "premeditated" at all, it was effectively un-meditated. The licensing scheme was devised without adequate consideration for who would it affect, it was made suddenly and without warning and it was made without even the chance for the community to provide its feedback. The mistake in my opinion was not that they chose to go commercial. The mistake was one of communication and community management.
Next, when you say that Automattic's win was due largely to Six Apart's failings it leads me to believe that I wasn't clear in my writing. This piece is not about Automattic at all. It mentions Automattic sure, but this piece is about WordPress. Nor do I imply in any way that WordPress' success is due "largely to Six Apart's failings." My piece is attempt to break down just some of the many contributing factors to its success and Six Apart's inability (for which I must take some responsibility for the part I played) to provide compelling competition cannot be ignored.
I also would never argue that the people who were hurt, angered and even infuriated by Movable Type's licensing fiasco had every reason to feel the way they, and you, did. It was a colossal mistake. But to say that anyone is justified to be "antagonistic" is flat out wrong. For you, "antagonistic" might mean some ribbing here and there in comments. It might even mean some harsh language thrown in for good measure. But for others, it meant vitriol and hatred the likes of which I have never seen. It meant personal attacks and insult that I would not even invite on my worst enemy. There was a high ground for the community to take, in spite of all the completely justified anger. The high road however, was not the one most people chose to take, and it was never the one people were encouraged to take. Movable Type became WordPress' Alamo. It was a rallying cry, and I believe it struck the right chord for a victory at the time, but an unfortunate chord nonetheless.
The fact that the licensing change is most often characterized as some pre-meditated attempt to extract money from every corner, as something "the wonder couple tried to pull" for example, is the most inaccurate characterization possible. Although I can appreciate the fact that to the outside world one has little to draw upon to come up with a different conclusion. The licensing change was in fact not "premeditated" at all, it was effectively un-meditated. The licensing scheme was devised without adequate consideration for who would it affect, it was made suddenly and without warning and it was made without even the chance for the community to provide its feedback. The mistake in my opinion was not that they chose to go commercial. The mistake was one of communication and community management.
If I'm allowed to chime in here. I think I understood
WordSkill's comment right, since I got the same feeling while reading
the article. I also read to many 'yes, but...' and downright
contradictory things.
It's most obvious in the part where in two sentences the purchase of Apperceptive is characterized from devastating in the long run to a huge and unquestioned success. I realize that the keywords were meant to be 'in the long run', but it just doesn't fit together under any circumstance and it's a good indicator of the whole theme of the article. Which I read as 'we had a competing product, but...'.
When people ask me what I do, I always try to avoid saying that I'm a programmer, since I don't consider myself one (although it's what people see me as, unfortunately). Therefore, I'd avoid getting into technical details of what is better: WP or MT. But I will say this: the technical aspect is not the only one that is important. WP was better for most people, and so I agree with the last part that it doesn't mean that it was better. If somebody would come up to me and ask me to build something with MT, I wouldn't scream and say that I only use WP. I just think it's irrelevant to say that it's because Six Apart lacked focus.
It's most obvious in the part where in two sentences the purchase of Apperceptive is characterized from devastating in the long run to a huge and unquestioned success. I realize that the keywords were meant to be 'in the long run', but it just doesn't fit together under any circumstance and it's a good indicator of the whole theme of the article. Which I read as 'we had a competing product, but...'.
When people ask me what I do, I always try to avoid saying that I'm a programmer, since I don't consider myself one (although it's what people see me as, unfortunately). Therefore, I'd avoid getting into technical details of what is better: WP or MT. But I will say this: the technical aspect is not the only one that is important. WP was better for most people, and so I agree with the last part that it doesn't mean that it was better. If somebody would come up to me and ask me to build something with MT, I wouldn't scream and say that I only use WP. I just think it's irrelevant to say that it's because Six Apart lacked focus.
First, thank you for sharing your view of what happened.
It's an unusually honest and insightful view, from the inside, of what
was going on with SixApart. A view that most of us never saw at the
time.
I started out using Movable Type back in the day, because it was the ONLY tool to use if you wanted to blog and not create the pages by hand. Because, when I started blogging, that's what I did; I wrote out the HTML, made the links and uploaded the page. Movable Type changed that and really opened up blogging for a lot of us. Movable Type inspired me to really dig deep into Perl, too. I had already been using Perl for some other things and got really excited about MT for that reason. Unfortunately, it was poorly documented and frustrating to develop for at every level. Still, I did actually write a plugin for it. A calendaring function that let someone blog in the calendar used for an official D&D setting. Geeky to the max, right? But, by the time I was done, I swore I'd never write another plugin for MT because of all the time and frustration involved. It was horrific!
I was one of the many who moved to WordPress at the time of the license debacle, or, as I think of it, the Time of Troubles. But, by then, as you pointed out, so many of the support resources were private and only available for a fee too steep for me to pay at the time, I was already souring on the entire MT ecology. Anyone who was any good, it seemed, and helpful in the community got "bought up", as it were, by SixApart and stopped offering any help for free. Their right, to be sure, but it killed the community. And, to me, that was the on-going problem with MT all along, almost from the start, but certainly after they really got rolling; they all but ignored their community. I'm sure there are people who would disagree, but, well, my recollection of trying to get help with the tags and the code was that it was like being locked outside the school while class was going on. More frustrating than I can describe!
WordPress, on the other hand, was better documented. Not much at the time, but even then it was better documented than MT. And, I rewrote that geeky calendar plugin for WP in a fraction of the time it took to write it for MT. That was an eye-opener, to be sure! And, of course, because of how WP has been setup and positioned, I never have to worry about waking up to a sudden fear of charges and corporate lawsuits for licensing fees, as you pointed out in your article.
I loved MT when I started using it and it changed the face of the web forever. We owe Six Apart a debt of gratitude for opening up that market so widely and so well. I honestly hope Ben and Mena are getting along well with all the acquisitions and such that have been going on. They've worked hard and deserve to do well and I hope they are! But, for now, WordPress is easier to use, to develop for and has fewer things for me to be afraid of in the future.
Of course, right now, somewhere, some kid is in their parents' basement inventing the Next Big Thing that will knock WP from the top spot. At least, I hope someone is being entrepreneurial enough for that!
(And, to be fair, I've heard plenty of Drupal and Movable Type fans bash everyone else as I've heard WordPress fans bash anyone. It's the internet; it happens!)
I started out using Movable Type back in the day, because it was the ONLY tool to use if you wanted to blog and not create the pages by hand. Because, when I started blogging, that's what I did; I wrote out the HTML, made the links and uploaded the page. Movable Type changed that and really opened up blogging for a lot of us. Movable Type inspired me to really dig deep into Perl, too. I had already been using Perl for some other things and got really excited about MT for that reason. Unfortunately, it was poorly documented and frustrating to develop for at every level. Still, I did actually write a plugin for it. A calendaring function that let someone blog in the calendar used for an official D&D setting. Geeky to the max, right? But, by the time I was done, I swore I'd never write another plugin for MT because of all the time and frustration involved. It was horrific!
I was one of the many who moved to WordPress at the time of the license debacle, or, as I think of it, the Time of Troubles. But, by then, as you pointed out, so many of the support resources were private and only available for a fee too steep for me to pay at the time, I was already souring on the entire MT ecology. Anyone who was any good, it seemed, and helpful in the community got "bought up", as it were, by SixApart and stopped offering any help for free. Their right, to be sure, but it killed the community. And, to me, that was the on-going problem with MT all along, almost from the start, but certainly after they really got rolling; they all but ignored their community. I'm sure there are people who would disagree, but, well, my recollection of trying to get help with the tags and the code was that it was like being locked outside the school while class was going on. More frustrating than I can describe!
WordPress, on the other hand, was better documented. Not much at the time, but even then it was better documented than MT. And, I rewrote that geeky calendar plugin for WP in a fraction of the time it took to write it for MT. That was an eye-opener, to be sure! And, of course, because of how WP has been setup and positioned, I never have to worry about waking up to a sudden fear of charges and corporate lawsuits for licensing fees, as you pointed out in your article.
I loved MT when I started using it and it changed the face of the web forever. We owe Six Apart a debt of gratitude for opening up that market so widely and so well. I honestly hope Ben and Mena are getting along well with all the acquisitions and such that have been going on. They've worked hard and deserve to do well and I hope they are! But, for now, WordPress is easier to use, to develop for and has fewer things for me to be afraid of in the future.
Of course, right now, somewhere, some kid is in their parents' basement inventing the Next Big Thing that will knock WP from the top spot. At least, I hope someone is being entrepreneurial enough for that!
(And, to be fair, I've heard plenty of Drupal and Movable Type fans bash everyone else as I've heard WordPress fans bash anyone. It's the internet; it happens!)
This is really a fabulously clear and enlightening post. I
can actually place myself in this story: I started with Movable Type,
became frustrated with CGI woes at times, and then fled after the
licensing changes. I tried at least a dozen CMS before settling on WP.
Wordpress seemed to have a more welcoming and active community, and I
haven't really looked back since, even if it has given me headaches...
but I do wish that there would be more robust competition and
innovation!
Thank you for writing this up. I think it is so important
to revisit what worked and what didn't during the history of Six Apart.
I've got an essay of my own brewing in the back of my head. Hope all is
well!
Thank you for an excellent insight into the development of the most popular CMS's of the last decade.
When I started blogging many years ago I tried Movable Type first as it was the first platform I'd heard of. I was a novice and couldn't get the damn thing to install - so you're article is right - difficult installation pushed me into the arms of Wordpress and I've been content ever since.
When I started blogging many years ago I tried Movable Type first as it was the first platform I'd heard of. I was a novice and couldn't get the damn thing to install - so you're article is right - difficult installation pushed me into the arms of Wordpress and I've been content ever since.
Matt,
Every time I investigate a compromised WordPress install, it is either because they were running an old version (usually not just a little bit old, but really old), or because their web host was compromised. All of the large scale instances of WordPress being compromised lately were because of web hosts who don't prevent users on one account from accessing files on another account. In these cases, WordPress wasn't exploited so much as it was victimized due to a lower level security issue on the server. WordPress is almost always public-facing, and is the most popular user-installed web app. If you're going to write a script to compromise hosting accounts and inject spam links onto established URLs, WordPress is the obvious target. That's what these scripts do... they look for WordPress installs on other accounts, and they inject a blob of base64-encoded PHP that allows them to remotely control the site and inject spam links. The state of shared web hosting security is grim. Customers need to demand better. It's not an unsolvable problem. Hosting companies have just mostly been competing with a race to bottom-barrel pricing. When you're paying $5 a month for hosting, three things will usually suffer: Stability, Security, and Support.
That's not to say that we haven't had our security issues. But they're manifestly not how up-to-date WordPress installs are compromised. In our next version's development cycle, we're going to focus even more on updates, so it's even easier to keep your install up-to-date.
Two big priorities right now are: (a) making it super easy to stay up-to-date and (b) pushing web hosts to get their act together.
Byrne,
Enjoyed the writeup. I don't deny that in the early days the rivalry aspect between WordPress and Movable Type was a bit... pointed. There were a few contributing factors there, for our side. We were young, we were the underdogs, and we felt that we had the philosophical high ground. The tone has matured a bit, since. In 2005, Movable Type was thanked on our about page, and remains there to this day. I viewed Six Apart's fumbling attempts to right the Movable Type ship not with hilarity or disdain, but with sadness. Movable Type made me fall in love with web publishing, and I personally owe it a great debt. I wish it had gone open source much sooner. I wish Six Apart hadn't (in my estimation) ceded to WordPress the personal blogging space in favor of the enterprise market. Six Apart wasn't the "enemy" to me. They'd just disappointingly lost their way.
It is worth distinguishing between Automattic/WordPress.com vs. Six Apart and WordPress/WordPress.org vs. Movable Type. Movable Type is a Six Apart product, but WordPress is not an Automattic product. It is an independent project that Automattic contributes to. But the community is much bigger than that (take me, for example, an independent). The rivalry between Six Apart and Automattic is a run-of-the-mill business rivalry, and one I'm glad I could sit out. The rivalry between Movable Type and WordPress was different. It was about a product versus a project. I loved the Movable Type community while I was involved with it. But it always felt that I had my relationships with other Movable Type users and supporters, and then I had my relationship with Six Apart. I was a fan of a product, and that was it. When I became involved with WordPress, I felt like I was actually part of something. It was empowering. And that feeling wasn't just limited to developers — it extended to users too. Had Movable Type been open sourced and turned into more of a community effort (say, if Melody had happened in 2004), history might have been quite different.
WordPress was in the right place at the right time. There were a few good decisions made early on (Movable Type importer, for one) that contributed, and there have certainly been decisions made since that have further solidified the lead (themes cannot be emphasized enough), but the turning of the tide in 2004 had a lot of luck involved.
One is the constant threat of exploits with your own WP install. It's crazy and like running Windows 95 without patches. Everyone I know with a self-hosted WP has been exploited in the last year or two and worries about it regularly.I haven't seen an up-to-date WordPress install get directly exploited in around five years. Seriously.
Every time I investigate a compromised WordPress install, it is either because they were running an old version (usually not just a little bit old, but really old), or because their web host was compromised. All of the large scale instances of WordPress being compromised lately were because of web hosts who don't prevent users on one account from accessing files on another account. In these cases, WordPress wasn't exploited so much as it was victimized due to a lower level security issue on the server. WordPress is almost always public-facing, and is the most popular user-installed web app. If you're going to write a script to compromise hosting accounts and inject spam links onto established URLs, WordPress is the obvious target. That's what these scripts do... they look for WordPress installs on other accounts, and they inject a blob of base64-encoded PHP that allows them to remotely control the site and inject spam links. The state of shared web hosting security is grim. Customers need to demand better. It's not an unsolvable problem. Hosting companies have just mostly been competing with a race to bottom-barrel pricing. When you're paying $5 a month for hosting, three things will usually suffer: Stability, Security, and Support.
That's not to say that we haven't had our security issues. But they're manifestly not how up-to-date WordPress installs are compromised. In our next version's development cycle, we're going to focus even more on updates, so it's even easier to keep your install up-to-date.
Two big priorities right now are: (a) making it super easy to stay up-to-date and (b) pushing web hosts to get their act together.
The second problem is people ditching the self-hosted route for Wordpress.com don't get to run their own ads or make any money, just the parent company does and that feels grossly unfair to writers.I prefer to think of WordPress.com as WordPress training wheels. You can get up and running, learn the software, start writing... and then when you're ready to run a shop or sell some ads or add custom functionality or do anything else that isn't allowed or isn't feasible on WordPress.com, you can upgrade to WordPress. There is a happy middle ground to be found. The folks over at Automattic are already attempting to find it with their VaultPress backup service for self-hosted WordPress sites.
Byrne,
Enjoyed the writeup. I don't deny that in the early days the rivalry aspect between WordPress and Movable Type was a bit... pointed. There were a few contributing factors there, for our side. We were young, we were the underdogs, and we felt that we had the philosophical high ground. The tone has matured a bit, since. In 2005, Movable Type was thanked on our about page, and remains there to this day. I viewed Six Apart's fumbling attempts to right the Movable Type ship not with hilarity or disdain, but with sadness. Movable Type made me fall in love with web publishing, and I personally owe it a great debt. I wish it had gone open source much sooner. I wish Six Apart hadn't (in my estimation) ceded to WordPress the personal blogging space in favor of the enterprise market. Six Apart wasn't the "enemy" to me. They'd just disappointingly lost their way.
It is worth distinguishing between Automattic/WordPress.com vs. Six Apart and WordPress/WordPress.org vs. Movable Type. Movable Type is a Six Apart product, but WordPress is not an Automattic product. It is an independent project that Automattic contributes to. But the community is much bigger than that (take me, for example, an independent). The rivalry between Six Apart and Automattic is a run-of-the-mill business rivalry, and one I'm glad I could sit out. The rivalry between Movable Type and WordPress was different. It was about a product versus a project. I loved the Movable Type community while I was involved with it. But it always felt that I had my relationships with other Movable Type users and supporters, and then I had my relationship with Six Apart. I was a fan of a product, and that was it. When I became involved with WordPress, I felt like I was actually part of something. It was empowering. And that feeling wasn't just limited to developers — it extended to users too. Had Movable Type been open sourced and turned into more of a community effort (say, if Melody had happened in 2004), history might have been quite different.
WordPress was in the right place at the right time. There were a few good decisions made early on (Movable Type importer, for one) that contributed, and there have certainly been decisions made since that have further solidified the lead (themes cannot be emphasized enough), but the turning of the tide in 2004 had a lot of luck involved.
What's worse is the fact that Six Apart sapped its community of its greatest leaders and contributors.This is an excellent point. I know for a fact that Automattic was cognizant of the danger of draining a market of talent, and their hiring restraint in their early days was intentional and in retrospect, quite prudent.
When I got into blogging in the early days I used and was a big fan of Movable Type. Unfortunately I now quite dislike Movable Type and it frustrates me to no end that I have to use it every day.
From my experience and that of the team I work with, the publish time situation and lack of dynamic page generation is a huge deal. A commenter above spoke of 5 minute publish times for a site. That's an irritant but bearable. Unfortunately it does not reflect my experience.
A site that I work on daily takes over an hour to publish. Furthermore, making one new post to the site is counted in minutes not seconds as I would expect.
Make a typo in a post? You can't fix it for a while. What if you update the header template and accidentally don't close a tag and the whole site blows up? Sorry, you have to wait an hour for it to be fixed everywhere. As you can imagine this situation is a horrible suck on productivity and can lead to some really challenging situations with keeping a site functional and up to date in a fast-paced environment.
Now I do understand perhaps this is our fault. Perhaps the way our servers are set up is wrong. Perhaps the way we code our sites is inefficient and is causing these massive publishing times. Perhaps we just need to throw more server power at it. Though I would say if we have to throw more server power at MT, why not just throw the required server power at Wordpress. One of the big critiques of Wordpress' dynamic nature is that it will crash your site under heavy load. Perhaps, however, by properly using caching and throwing more power at it that would be a more reasonable situation than having the day-to-day maintenance and development of a site be bogged down in endless publish times.
The point is, while this may be our fault at the end of the day it is happening and I suggest that the software should not let us get to such a state. If it cannot be prevented in Software, Six Apart (or whoever will own this going forward) should provide support to its big customers to advise on speeding things up, the architecture of sites, etc.
Lets me also touch on developing a site with MT. Even if we presume the best case low-publishing time situation (which I do once in a blue moon witness when developing a new site on a new fresh install on our development server in the middle of the night when nobody else is bogging it down) that delay in seeing your changes reflected live and the requirement of clicking publish and all that is a big deal when compared to Wordpress. With Wordpress I open the file directly and save it. After that when I reload the page I see my change. It's a small difference (under ideal circumstances which I rarely operate under) but that small time adds up and the break in my flow going over to click publish and all that harms my productivity as well.
As previously mentioned MT's template tag system is also poorly documented in comparison to Wordpress. I find it much easier to figure things out in Wordpress from their documentation, and if I can't there is a much greater chance that I can find out from the community. When I search for things about MT I sometimes even end up on websites talking about Wordpress instead!
The fact that Wordpress is so closely tied to PHP is also a really big deal. I'm not really an advanced programer by any stretch, but I know enough to make my way through things and do some pretty good things by mucking around with PHP in my Wordpress templates. (I can even get PHP code executing in the posts if I want to!) Wordpress is so closely tied to PHP that I feel like I have the freedom as a pseudo-developer and with assistance from real developers to do whatever I can think of within the templates themselves. In Movable Type I don't have anywhere close to that freedom and constantly feel like I'm operating within a cage of what features and functionality MT has decided to give us or what the small community has produced plugins for. (Plugins which are often very poorly documented or unsurprisingly out of date.)
There are other frustrations which crop of as well, but those are what my mind currently is identifying as the big ones.
At the end of the day I and everybody else on our team absolutely loathes MT due to the day-to-day frustrations and slowness we experience. If I recorded the comments made around the office and played them back it would be the kind of stuff that would make a brave PR person weep.
Wordpress has its limitations and problems (security, uptime under heavy load, etc.) but when you work all day fighting against MT and waiting for it to publish and then go home and use Wordpress yourself or for freelance work with minimal trouble it's not surprising that MT seems to be the devil and Wordpress the saviour.
Once again, I recognize that the problems may not be fully MT's fault or may be entirely ours, but for whatever reason perhaps this can shed some light on situations which cause people to want to abandon MT.
from http://www.majordojo.com/2011/02/how-did-wordpress-win.php
This allowed people to easily gather up all the bits and bobs that make up a site's design and easily share them with others. This also meant there was a giant pile of options when it came to selecting a template (other blogging engines offered one of maybe 50 selected themes, where Wordpress seemed to have thousands going back to 2003 or so). This also meant there were so many options one could set up a marketplace for selling the best designs and designers could flock to making templates and everyone with little-to-no knowledge of HTML could have an awesome looking blog.
Have you ever tried to teach someone new to HTML how MT or Blogger templates work? It's pretty confusing stuff. Getting to pick out any template, download, install, and enable on your WP blog is a million times easier.
Now that they've won the battle, I think the biggest problem for WP now is two-fold: One is the constant threat of exploits with your own WP install. It's crazy and like running Windows 95 without patches. Everyone I know with a self-hosted WP has been exploited in the last year or two and worries about it regularly. The second problem is people ditching the self-hosted route for Wordpress.com don't get to run their own ads or make any money, just the parent company does and that feels grossly unfair to writers.