Movable Irony

In light of recent developments going on with MovableType, I find it somewhat ironic that Userland, who makes a content management system that in years past went closed and paid (which SixApart has squarely positioned themselves as a competitor to now), has decided they need to release their kernel under the GPL. You can read the specifics here.

You can try to make distinctions between the two situations, and that's fine, as history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Amusing.

Posted by drunkenbatman
May 17, 2004, at 04:27 PM

Comments ⁽²⁾

Posted by: Adam at May 18, 2004 03:06 AM

I may have missed something, but Dave just said that one day in the future the software kernel (not the products themselves, I guess?) will be Open Sourced - but the license is still uncertain (ie. not GPL for sure):

And that's what I want to announce today. At some point in the next few months, there will be an open source release of the Frontier kernel. Not sure what license it'll use.

And his link to Ted Leung's page didn't shed any light on the userland opening (if it's actually related - I can't find any connection).

Posted by: Pete Prodoehl at May 19, 2004 12:15 PM

We can only hope for the GPL, but I have a feeling Dave might create his own license. I know he's released some stuff before (MacBird) as somewhat 'open-source' or with some very open-license...

I wouldn't doubt if it's closer to a BSD-type license than the GPL, but you never know, these are crazy times!