4/25/2003
In my freshman year of highschool (many many moons ago), one of the organizations I was involved with worked in conjunction with Apple to facilitate PDA’s, more specifically Newtons, in the classroom. By in large, the project was a colossal failure, like many public education initiatives. The select few that had Newtons were both teased and envied upon by other students, creating unnecessary rifts and otherwise straining student relationships. It would be like giving 10% of the student body a Gameboy and telling everyone to go about their day.
In the classrooms those with them (myself included) would dink around, play Tetris or send “I think Jessica is hot” and “I’d tap that” messages to one another. The teachers weren’t too thrilled because most of the students that used them didn’t actually bother to take notes with them (the primary reason for having the Newton in the first place). By the end of the school year few, if any, took them to school. Besides the distracting games and applications the Newton itself was unpleasant to use:
- It was bulky. If you are familiar with the graphing calculators from TI or HP, it was about twice that total volume.
- It bled batteries. Fortunately for the school Apple had the foresight to place rechargeable batteries in the Newton’s (on some of them at least). Leaving the Newton on for any extended period of time or using the backlit display (that was really cool) was not in your best interest if you disliked down-time.
- Terrible handwriting recognition. This, despite the advances in Apple’s Skunk works R&D facility (the cafeteria) and despite the supposed ?customization? level for each user (each user is prompted with several screens with little X’s you tapped and despite your best efforts somehow the OS generated results similar to those poorly aimed guns at arcades).
By in large the Newton experiment failed. By the end of the next year the school (or Apple or both) canceled that PDA program - at around the same time Apple (Steve Jobs) also canceled further production of the product itself.
Since then, I have never actually bothered to purchase a PDA, despite several friends and family members owning them. Last year I worked for a software firm and among other tasks was given the instructions to rigorously test their software on a couple of PalmOS-based PDAs.
Palm has had an interesting history; they came out of nowhere (well, originally the US Robotics Pilot product) and won accolades based upon their slim design, easy-to-use and accurate Graffiti system as well as longer battery life. With the Newton it seems Apple tried to shove all the amenities of a desktop into something the size of a small book, including a sound card. Several years ago Palm started licensing it’s Operating System (like Apple did for 3 years) and it has since then fallen in disrepair (somewhat)
They hit that wall so many successful start-ups do and are suffering a similar problem that Sun in having a clear definitive vision for future products. Last Christmas in fact, I purchased a Palm m105 for my mom (my older sister actually uses it) and compared its feature set with competing products - afterwards. What enticed me to purchase it: its low price tag and the fact that the Victorian Holiday was the very next day.
Anyways, feature wise most of the competition had color-based screens, more RAM, faster processors and were often even cheaper than Palm’s lineup - a continuing trend.
Which brings me to the Zaurus, a newer Linux-based PDA a friend of mine is now a semi-expert with - his synopsis is as follows:
In the second year of his reign, King Sharp had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the mathematicians, engineers, source-morphers and astronomers to tell him what to do, they replied: Find the Zaurus.
In the four and twentieth day of the first month, as the King was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel, he lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, a PDA clothed in open source, and yea, upon it was a Secure Digital slot, but one which was free of the taint of proprietary device drivers.
The Zaurus that you saw, which grew, and was strong, whose Wi-Fi connection reached to the sky, and the sight of it to all the earth, brought with it peace and comfort to all who by happenstance touched and used it.
It is you, O end user, that hath grown and become strong; for your freedom is grown, and your Wi-Fi connection reaches to the sky, and your dominion to the end of the earth.
Then King Sharp went to his house, and made the thing known to Bill, and to Ballmer, and to the RIAA, and its companions: that they would desire open source drivers concerning this proprietary format; that Linus and his companions should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
Linus answered before the king, and said, The secret which King Sharp has demanded can neither hackers, vendors, OEMs, nor even IBM, show to them; but there is a coder in Megog who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the end users what shall be in the latter days.
And the Angels sang: You, O RMS, are king of GNU, to whom the God of MIT has given the root access, the power, and the strength, and the glory.
And wherever the children of RMS dwell, the threads of the system and the daemons of inetd has he given into your hand, and has made you to rule over them all: The Hurd that Stallman has created shall be strong as iron, because iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things; and as iron that crushes all these, shall it break in pieces and crush.
The Zaurus SL 5 series (pdf) marked Sharp’s entry into the Linux market, using an Embedix kernel that was derived from a former Caldera/SCO offshoot called Lineo. A developers-only version, the SL-5000 featured a 200 Mhz Strongarm processor and 32 MB of RAM was sold at Java developers conventions by Sun and Sharp, and later the SL-5500, which sported a full 64 MB of RAM. The Zaurus offers expandability using both a CompactFlash and SecureDigital slot. It uses Qtopia, a GUI from Trolltech instead of XWindows, and also supports Jeode, an embedded Java 1.1 machine. Theoretically you can add 2 GB of storage to the Zaurus with a 1.5 GB cf microdrive and a 512 MB SD Card. Of course, if you put a Microdrive in the CF slot you’ll get almost no time out of the battery.
Now tell me that doesn’t sound geektastic? The newer models (SL-5600) use Intel?s Xscale processor which is not only faster but consumes less power. Some geeks I know even thought about somehow building a cluster of these chips to use in rack mounted servers (those can get hot inside) ? but the expenses and time associated with developing motherboards and chipsets for such clusters translates into: it ain?t gonna happen anytime soon.
Despite the biblical proportions that the Zaurus is presented in, I?m actually holding out on buying any new PDA until they?ve all merged into one nice and neat fully-featured package with cell phones ? Richard Giles has some good information regarding Wi-Fi, check him out. And check out Jason Ditz?s prophetic tales of Prince Zaurus.
The printing press or more accurately, movable type launched the information age. This innovation could now allow faster and cheaper reproduction of knowledge.
MovableType.com (not to be confused with MT) has this to say:
Possibly the greatest invention of all time. The printing press had developed from the wine press in the Rhine Valley. It was there in 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg (c.1397-1468) began using the printing press in conjunction with a series of blocks each bearing a single letter on its face. The press used by Gutenberg was a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of hand-set letters held within a wooden form and the form was then pressed against a sheet of paper. Gutenberg’s name does not appear on any of his work but he is generally accredited with the world’s first book printed with movable type, the 42-line (the number of lines per page) Bible, also known as the Gutenberg Bible or the Mainz Bible (for the place where it was produce.
Of course, what is not mentioned is that Johannes Gutenberg permitted the ‘free’ non-commercial use of his invention and hired the State to prosecute companies and individuals that installed the Printing Press for others and charged for doing so.
Oh wait, that did not happen - imagine if it did though. Can any of you write on a calfskin (vellum) or sheepskin (parchment) with a plucked feather? Certainly someone invented those too. The creators and their families are missing out on a ton of royalties, like Zug and Ugzug mentioned in the Tim.Movementarian.Com EULA.
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR VIEWING TIM.MOVEMENTARIAN.COM Original 4/25/2003
THIS IS A CONTRACT between you (either an individual or a single entity - no multiple personalities) and the owner of the site (”Licensor”) which is made available for download via your browser and internet connection which covers your use of the data and related data components (such as HTML tags), which may include printed materials and “online” or electronic documentation. All such data�s and materials are referred to herein as the “Mickey Mouse.”
BY READING THIS STATEMENT, DISCUSSING THIS STATEMENT, AND/OR MODIFYING THIS STATEMENT, THE INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY LICENSING THE PRODUCT (”YOU”) ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY AND IS BECOMING A PARTY TO THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT THERE IS VERY LITTLE THAT YOU CAN DO AS READING THIS STATEMENT SIGNIFIES YOUR CONSENT TO THE TERMS OF SERVICE. FURTHERMORE, IF WE SUSPECT THAT YOU HAVE POSITIVELY GAINED MONETARILY FROM ANY OF THE IDEAS EXPRESSED ON THIS SITE WE WILL ACT WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. NOTE: THIS DECISION IS AT OUR SOUL DISCRETION.
1. Condition of Use. Licensor grants you the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Mickey Mouse to manage and update your lifestyle. You may not redistribute the Mickey Mouse without Licensor’s prior written consent. Although you may modify or create derivative copies of the Mickey Mouse for your own use, you may not distribute modified or derivative copies of the Mickey Mouse. You may not, without Licensor’s prior written consent (a) charge for any legal counsel to discuss these conditions, (b) charge for copies or modified copies of the Mickey Mouse, or (c) charge for support services including legal counseling to discuss the Mickey Mouse. You may not rent, lease, lend or in any way distribute or transfer any rights in this Agreement or the Mickey Mouse to third parties without Licensor’s written approval. All rights not expressly granted to you are retained by Licensor and may be revoked at any time without prior notice. You may make copies of the Mickey Mouse as reasonably necessary for the use authorized above, including as needed for backup and/or archival purposes. No other copies may be made, including daydreams, nightmares, ruminations, fantasies, visions, pipe dreams, hallucinations, speculations, thoughts, delusions, trances, mental depictions or in short any mental replication of the Mickey Mouse.
2. No Warranty and No Quarter. The Mickey Mouse is being delivered to you “As Is” and Licensor and its suppliers make no warranty as to its use or performance. LICENSOR AND ITS SUPPLIERS DO NOT AND CANNOT WARRANT THE PERFORMANCE OR RESULTS YOU MAY OBTAIN BY USING THE MICKEY MOUSE. LICENSOR AND ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS, INCLUDING ZUG AND UGZUG OF UR WHO ARE THE ORIGINAL CREATORS OF WRITING AND DUGALUG WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL LICENSOR OF THE SAID TECHNOLOGY. FURTHERMORE THE LICENSOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR PHYSICAL FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. YOU BEAR THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE MICKEY MOUSE. SHOULD THE MICKEY MOUSE PROVE DEFECTIVE IN ANY RESPECT, YOU AND NOT LICENSOR OR ITS SUPPLIERS ASSUME THE ENTIRE COST OF ANY SERVICE OR REPAIR.
3. Limitation of Liability. IN NO EVENT WILL LICENSOR OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY LOSS OF REVENUE, DATA, MEMORY, PRODUCTIVITY, DRIVE, AMBITION, ENTHUSIASM, INCONTINENCE, OR PROFITS, EVEN IF A LICENSOR REPRESENTATIVE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, AND REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE CLAIM IS BASED UPON ANY CONTRACT, TORT, PHONE CONVERSATION, FORTUNE COOKIE, IM OR IRC CHAT, OR OTHER LEGAL OR EQUESTRIAN THEORY. Some States do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, or the exclusion of implied warranties or limitations on how long an implied warranty lasts, but then again some States tax every purchase and parcel of property one has and sets arbitrary ages for drinking, marriage and gun ownership, so the above limitations or exclusions may not apply to you.
4. Indemnification. You are hereby indemnified. You agree to indemnify and hold Licensor, parents, babysitters, cousins, step-fathers, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers including non-commissioned and those on the local safety patrol, and employees of Shelbyville, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys: fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the Mickey Mouse, or the infringement by you, of any intellectual property registered through any source, including opt-in electronic mail specials originating from Mauritius and Nauru, or other right of any person or entity or inanimate carbon rods.
5. Termination. Your extension on life is hereby terminated. You may not terminate this binding one-way Agreement at any time. Furthermore, the Licensor shall have the right to immediately terminate this agreement at any time in the event of any hull breach by you of this Agreement at the Licensor’s sole discretion. In such event, you must destroy all copies of the Mickey Mouse that you have received from Licensor or made pursuant of this Agreement.
6. CHANGES TO TERMS. LICENSOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THIS AGREEMENT AT ANY TIME WITHOUT POSTING ANY PRIOR NOTICE, SO AS LONG AS YOU ARE BREATHING WILL BE BOUND BY THOSE CHANGES. IF THIS AGREEMENT IS REVISED, IT WILL NOT BE IN YOUR FAVOR AND THE CHANGES MIGHT BE POSTED THROUGH HARD TO ACCESS ALLEY WAYS AND PASSWORD PROTECTED PAGES. A MORE RECENT DATE AT THE TOP OF THE POSTED AGREEMENT THAN THE DATE AT THE TOP OF THIS AGREEMENT WILL SIGNIFY THAT WE COULD BE TESTING YOUR LOYALTY AND BREAKING POINT. YOUR NON-TERMINATION OR CONTINUED USE OF THE MICKEY MOUSE AFTER CHANGES ARE POSTED CONSTITUTES A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE OVERALL PLAN, YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS AGREEMENT IS NON-NEGOTIABLE AND WE WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY LIP.
7. Governing Law. You are hereby governed by all Hague and Geneva Conventions as well as any treaties signed and broken with the Indians. Additionally, this Agreement will be governed by the laws, whether expressed or implied, of the United States and the Great Country of Texas, excluding the application of its conflicts of law rules, even if they are diametrically opposite. You consent to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction and venue of state and federal kangaroo courts located in Dallas, Texas and Sticks, Arkansas.
8. General. Let it be known that in the event of meeting the Licensor, you will address the Licensor as General or General sir. This Agreement constitutes the entire understanding and education of the legal profession. Furthermore it represents the firm unbending understanding of the parties and revokes and supersedes all prior agreements, oral, semi-oral, sign-language, written in brail or of the written technologies of Zug and Ugzug mentioned previously. The dialogues between the Deltas, the Crypts and the Weaver family may not be modified or amended except in a writing signed by the Licensor who ownz j00. This Agreement shall take precedence over any other documents that may conflict herewith. If any one or more provisions contained in this Agreement are held by any court, tribunal or Pow-Wow to be invalid, illegal, or otherwise unenforceable, each and every other provision shall remain in full force and effect forever.
9. Contact information. Do not call us, we will call you. If you have any questions about this unilateral Agreement, or if you want to contact Licensor (”General”) for any reason, please direct all correspondence to tmcclure@inandoutlegal.com through email.
Note: the term “Mickey Mouse” is not licensed from the Disney Company, it was manifested through the use of an arbitrary Scrabble method.
Note: the term “Scrabble” is not licensed from the Hasbro Company, it was manifested through the use of an arbitrary anagram system devised by Juggs and Mejuggs the wives of Zug and Ugzug.
I held off from posting this yesterday to see if any additional information would be released. Six Apart (the company that created Movable Type, the blogging software I use) is launching a blog hosting company called TypePad on May 1.
This is not surprising for several reasons all of which point back to their licensing scheme:
Movable Type is ‘free’ for non-commercial use and they stress this many times on their website, especially in terms of other webhosting providers who offer to install Movable Type for others. Prior to Wednesday’s news release, a colleague of mine requested (via an email to Six Apart) information regarding the legality of their license, it was not answered (this was weeks ago). Another hosting service also contacted Six Apart several months ago and was told to refrain from installing the Movable Type software for clients, without a justification.
While I myself am no lawyer (though I did belong to the Pre-law society) Six Apart’s claim would be equivalent to any other software firm mandating the same condition, which is preposterous. I will agree that the software is the “property” of Six Apart (I won’t delve into the ‘intellectual property’ issue here), however what is not theirs to control is how someone goes about installing it.
Below is a copy of the End User License Agreement for Movable Type.
1. Conditions of Use. Licensor grants you the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Software to manage and update your website. You may not redistribute the Software without Licensor’s prior written consent. Although you may modify or create derivative copies of the Software for your own use, you may not distribute modified or derivative copies of the Software. You may not, without Licensor’s prior written consent (a) charge for any service that uses the Software, (b) charge for copies or modified copies of the Software, or (c) charge for support services associated with the Software. You may not rent, lease, lend, or in any way distribute or transfer any rights in this Agreement or the Software to third parties without Licensor’s written approval. All rights not expressly granted to you are retained by Licensor. You may make copies of Software as reasonably necessary for the use authorized above, including as needed for backup and/or archival purposes. No other copies may be made. Each copy must reproduce all copyright and other proprietary rights notices on or in the Software. (emphasis is mine)
The key parts I would like to highlight are (a) & (c). I work for a hosting company and install various patches, fixes, updates and software packages for clients. Some of which is proprietary (like CPanel) and some of which is open-sourced (like Linux and MySQL). None of these companies associated with the various software packages attempt to claim what Six Apart does in parts (a) & (c). The minute a EULA (End User License Agreement) similar to that of Movable Type becomes mandatory on MySQL (for example), is also the day that software dies and/or many lawsuits occur.
Note, I am not mentioning any of this because I wish to take Six Apart to court and prove them wrong, I am mentioning this because it shows just how twisted legalese can be.
Imagine if you will, the entire collection of software you use, whether it be freeware, shareware, time-limited demo’s or a product you actually purchased (like Office XP). Among others I have: WinZip, UltraEdit, SmartFTP, WinACE, DeadAIM and Trillian, all of which require someone to download and install. Take a moment to reflect on how you would react if WinZip told users:
“You may not, without Licensor’s prior written consent (1) charge for any service that uses the Software or (2) charge for support services associated with the Software.”
InstallShield, ACDSee, Opera, Netscape, WinRAR, Quicktime, Paint Shop Pro, Jabber - the list is infinite. What if any of the companies mentioned tried to do what Six Apart does?
I even googled those particular EULA passages to see if any company had a EULA similar to Six Apart: the results - negative. Surely Microsoft would have tried that route if they could use the courts to bend OEM’s and others for some extra cash. Apple, Novell, Sun, IBM - if such a condition was plausible, one of these large companies would have tried it at one point (and may have unsuccessfully).
Moving along, Six Apart has another revenue stream through commercial licenses, each priced at $150 (I can buy a legitimate copy of Windows for less). Their commercial license isn’t much friendlier compared to the non-commercial one either. It essentially says: “Thanks for giving us the money we do appreciate it. Now if you wouldn’t mind we need to find commercial-esque sites running Movable Type that didn’t pay us and ask their hosting provider to cancel their account.”
No, they don’t really say that, they do say this however:
This gives you license to (a) use one (1) installation of the Software for commercial purposes and (b) charge for support services associated with one (1) installation of the Software.
Even that license fell short in the google search, though I wouldn’t doubt that there are similar licenses out there with different wording styles - that clause is a bit more inconsequential than (a) and (c) from above (here are two blog posts discussing Six Apart tactics though).
There you have it, they want their ducats (not that I don’t blame them, but there are other easier and friendlier ways at doing so, just ask MySQL AB or Redhat). In the end, all a hosting company has to do to avoid any sort of ramification is simply state:
“Do you need assistance installing Movable Type? We can walk you through and show you how it is done. Here are the installation instructions, let us know if you have any difficulties.”
Next, hosting companies like Blogomania work out special deals with Six Apart, in which a license costs about 1/5 the normal price (~$30). And Six Apart does not play “fair” as another company, GNS Hosting, was turned down for a similar exchange policy (GNS now installs Cafelog). Yes, it is the sole discretion on the part of Six Apart to decide who can receive discounts, however that case is a moot point as they do not have the legal authority to make the specific demands in their license. If they do have some sort of legal backing, I will personally email each executive at the top 20 software firms and detail this exciting new way they too can wrangle potential and existing customers as well as web host providers (not that it would matter because their business model is nearly dead).
Anyways, I was not at all surprised with this business move. Six Apart has maintained an installation service for some time now, in which they charge $40 to install Movable Type on your server (as you can see, they wanted a monopoly on all aspects of their software, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start charging for each use of TrackBack or every time you visit the Forum).
Several months ago Six Apart also announced they would release a Pro version of Movable Type. How this will fit into their TextPad service is not clear at this point, however there is a niche market that pMachine and others have found (Manila) in professional weblogging.
Conclusions
What does this mean for you as a non-Movable Type user? I would file this under ‘yet another example of executing a poor business model.’ Will they succeed? Yes, but only in the short-term and only for as long as a cheaper, better alternative is not existent. All an enterprising company would need to do is take Cafelog, Pivot or Nucleus and emulate the interface at Blogger.com.
So what does this mean for you as a Movable Type user? That same press release discussing the ‘Pro’ version also mentioned that they would continue supporting the ‘light’ version. I do not think they will bail on anyone, especially considering that pMachine has a similar business model (who’s license, as out-moded and draconian as it is, is still less twisted as it does not call for an all out war against companies that offer customer support - ie: installation and setup).
For the time being, pMachine, MovableType, BigBlogTool and all the other commercial blogging software will continue to flourish - for many of the same reasons companies like Oracle and Microsoft continue to exist. Their days are numbered however, with the combination of open-source software and unrestrictive licenses (like the BSD or GPL), commercial software will go the way of the Dodo.
Please do not flame my inbox either. I hold no grudge personal or professional against Six Apart. The very fact that I use their software should suggest that I respect it and in fact think it is a great solution. I am merely pointing out observations and explaining the ramifications of certain actions. Lastly, TypePad should not to be confused with TextPad a text editor — though I’m sure they thought through that already — confused yet?
