Monday 13 January 2003
Happy birthday
Halley Suitt started blogging a year ago on January 10, Mike Golby a day later on January 11. For me it was January 13 (a lucky day, in retrospect).
I decided to celebrate my weblog’s first birthday by making a PayPal payment to Movable Type. It’s not that I have money to throw around—things are just as tough in IT down here as elsewhere—but I’ve thought for a while now that Ben and Mena Trott don’t charge enough for MT. I paid US$20 to have Ben install it for me first time around, then another US$45 for premium support and inclusion on the Recently Updated list.
Even so, I feel that $65 is insignificant compared to the value I’ve received over the last nine months. I use MT almost every day and I love using it. Since I started using computers (in 1985), I’ve lost track of all the software applications I’ve purchased. Many of them proved useful but only a tiny number provided pleasure together with utility: Photoshop, Nisus, Japanese Language Kit, Dreamweaver, Movable Type.
So, as I settle in to another year of blogging, I’d like to say thank you to Ben and Mena Trott, and to everyone else who has worked to make Movable Type such a remarkable publishing tool.
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Congratulations on your first anniversary! Top stuff, keep it up.
Congrats on the first year!
It's unbelievable the calibre of product Ben and Mena have provided to the world. I have used very few commercial software applications that were even close to as useful and/or extensible. So I think that everyone should follow suit and if they can afford it, give a donation to the Trott's on their respective blogging anniversaries.
Ditto. Primarily on the donation to Ben and Mena, but also on the other points regarding quality of MT and whatnot. Great idea.
Umm ... need to slow down on the posts, or hit "preview" first, or something.
The previous comment (emphasis mine) should have read "... primarily ON THE ANNIVERSARY CONGRATULATIONS, but also on the donation to Ben and Mena and other points regarding ..."
Congratulations on your anniversary, Jonathon.
You had me fooled, here I thought you'd been doing this for years and years.
I agree that MT is a great product.
Thanks for the best wishes, everyone. Now let's see if I can make it to the second anniversay.
Your post brings out something that's been puzzling me for a while: why are people often very willing to pay for MT, but not for the other parts of the toolchain upon which MT depends? Perl, for example, is the result of (I'm guessing) several orders of magnitude more work than that of MT (and it's Open Source to boot)--do the people who donate to MT also make a similar donation to the Perl foundation? Why/why not?
Interesting point, Michael. I'll admit my ignorance by saying I didn't realize there was a Perl foundation. I guess it comes down to John's point that I have a personal relationship with MT (even though without Perl there might be no MT). Neither fair nor logical, I admit, but there it is.
I actually have never honestly thought about that before. It seems that people have a tendency to donate most to the projects/teams that influence their interactions the most visibly ie. MT, or any highest order software.
Another possible reason is that it is much easier to put faces (cute ones to boot) to the Trotts (the apostrophe in my first comment was a weird grammatical slip) than it is to put faces to the Perl Foundation.
This discussion is now closed. My thanks to everyone who contributed.
© Copyright 2002-2003 Jonathon Delacour
Congratulations on your first anniversary! Top stuff, keep it up.
Posted by: Gary Turner on 13 January 2003 at 10:36 PM