Six Apart Musings

Via email, someone asked me a number of questions about my thoughts on the future of Movable Type, Six Apart, and my plugins. These are questions I seem to be answering a lot lately, so here’s my public response.

Do you plan to continue to develop plug-ins, etc for MT?

I will probably develop plugins as I find a need for them. I’ve got a few that I wrote for my own use but didn’t release. It takes a lot of time to support plugins and other tools. No matter how simple and bulletproof something is, people always seem to be able to screw things up and need help.

I don’t plan on creating any PHP plugins for MT. I certainly don’t plan on porting existing plugins to PHP. If someone wants to turn my plugins into PHP, they’re welcome to take a crack at it.

What are your thoughts on the job Six Apart is doing?

Six Apart needs to start innovating again. As they grew larger, they stopped innovating. The features of MT 3 and 3.1 appeal mainly to developers. TypeKey and dynamic publishing are mainly reactionary developments.

The outside investment and the new seasoned management have turned the company’s focus to creating a stable, viable business. They focused on making the product offerings profitable and sustainable. That’s great and was probably needed (most growing companies need to do that). But now it’s time to start looking again at the product. Most of the great features of blogging platforms today sprung out of Six Apart. They existed first in Movable Type. I’d like to see some more of that.

MT will slowly become a product that is marketed to power users, businesses, and developers. TypePad will be the product of choice for those just looking to start a blog. It’s already started heading this direction and will probably do so more once TypePad can start using plugins.

The addition of Sippey to the team at Six Apart is smart. He’s a bright guy and will hopefully get them innovating again. The developer features in MT 3 are fantastic and allow people outside the company to extend the product, in essence moving innovation outside the company. That’s a good move because not all the smart people in the world work at 6A. But not all the smart people work outside of 6A either. So let’s take the scary amount of talent and brains that’s inside that company and come up with something that blows everyone’s minds.

Have you looked at WordPress?

I’ve looked at Wordpress and it’s fantastic, but it doesn’t suit my needs. If I move from Movable Type I’ll likely end up on a full-fledged CMS instead of another blogging tool. I’m guessing that by the time I’m wanting a full CMS, MT will be ready to fill that role nicely.