Home »

Free Speech or Free Beer?

Posted by Stuart at 10:20 AM on May 15, 2004

As I mentioned yesterday, there is quite a big controversy in the blogging world surrounding Six Apart (6A), the makers of Movable Type (MT, which I use to run this website).

The problem is that 6A is going to start charging for websites that have more than one author and more than three weblogs. For sgtowns.com, I have only one author (me) and two weblogs (the journal and the photos). So I can upgrade to v3.0 for "free".

I use the quotes around "free" because I am just now starting to learn what "free software" really means. In the case of "free software," does that mean free use or does it mean free price? Are we talking about "free speech" or "free beer"? In the case of MT, it is free price for me but not free use. I am severely restricted in what I can use it for and what I can do with it.

There is a part of me that wants to support "free use" software. I incorrectly also thought that "free software" meant "free price" software. Of course I love "free price," but I still want to support "free use" software. It just seems like a better way of developing software than a heavily-licenced proprietary model. And why do I even care about all of this? Because still, in the back of my mind, I would love to see "free use" intelligent educational software, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

By the way, that speech vs beer analogy was taken from gnu.org's article The free software definition. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about free software and open source.

As far as MT goes, my current version is working fine, so I don't see any need to change. Not to mention, I don't have any time to make any changes! I will continue to watch how this will play out, though.