October 3rd, 2002:

I use Movable Type to manage revjim.net, and I hate it.

I want comment threading. It’s more than annoying to have to specifiy who you are talking to each time you leave a comment in response to another comment, just so that it is clear who you are talking to.

I want comment notification. I hate visiting another Movable Type blog, because I know if I comment and am interested in what that person might say in return, I have to go back and reload their blog every 15 seconds in hope of a reply. It almost makes me prefer to email them instead of commenting, and that takes out half of the fun. I’m sure if this annoys me, it annoys my readers as well. Perhaps, instead of commenting on other blogs, I should merely post my response on revjim.net with a link to them, and hope that they see it. I guess that’s what trackback is for but, like me, a lot of people don’t like or enable trackback. Additionally, my thoughts on his post might be short, silly, and not of interest to my readers, so posting it here means that my readers have to suffer through it. And finally, not all blogs support trackback and not all my readers have websites of their own to post a response in.

I hate Perl and therefore, I hate that it is written in Perl. Part of me wants to make my Movable Type templates just be pure XML, and then write an XML parser in PHP to read them and display them the way I want them to look. But, with all of that, I may as well design my own admin interface and bypass MovableType all together. The benfit of this, is that I can extend the functionality of revjim.net in the programming language of my choice, without having to hack it in with a server side include, or by including PHP instructions in my MoveableType templates. I want to add my own hooks into MovableType. I want to add referer tracking. I want to add pingback.

I want dynamic content. I hate that the pages are statically generated. I’d glady trade the CPU time required to generate the page everytime for the additional flexability this affords me.

Why do I use MovableType then? Because, even with all of these limitations, problems, and short-commings, it is still the best thing I have found.

I’m going to be releasing some software to the public in the next week or so and am in need of a license to release it under.

The GPL is close, but not exactly what I am looking for. I wish for the software to be Open Source. The software will actually be a set of libraries for PHP. I want anyone to be able to use the libraries on their own pages for their own use. If the software is modified and distributed, I would like to be notified and those changes should also be required to be freely distributable as these libraries are. All of this fits along with the GPL. However, the GPL is very loose when it comes to what can be done with the libraries over the web. Under the GPL, it is legal is install the libraries I have written, use them anyway the developer sees fit, and charge money for those services, as long as the code is not distributed. And, since the code is sitting on servers owned by the developer and not being SOLD to users, it does not violate the GPL. I wish to forbid this from occurring as well. If the developer of this new application modifies my libraries and allows that code to executed over the network while still running on his/her servers, and therefore not distributed, I wish to require those changes to also be covered under a free and open license. This does not forbid the developer from making a profit on the execution of that code on his/her server, but merely requires him/her to transmit those changes and/or modifications to the public and release them under an equivalent license. If the libraries themselves are not modified in anyway, then the source code has not been altered. This means that a developer is free to LINK the libraries (without any changes) into his/her own code, without distributing those changes. However, since the code will be offered as a class in PHP, that class can simply be extended by the developer, leaving the original code intact. This is okay. However, if that developer wishes to merely make a modification to an existing function in the class, while extending it would indeed get around the license issues, his extension would contain much of my original code, and therefore, it should be seen as a modification, and not an original piece of code, and, therefore, should be distributed.

I hope I am making this clear enough to understand.

Does anyone know of a software license in existence that meets my needs?