look for changes soon!

I know I keep saying this, but soon, very soon, I’ll be moving away from MT. I’m thinking now, (yes, I know complete 180) that I’ll probably end up running some kind of custom app. I want it to be somewhat like blosxom, but I don’t like a lot of things about blosxom. Basically, they (the developers?) are sacrificing usability for the sake of customizability. I personally don’t feel that’s a necessary sacrifice.

The irony is, of course, that I will spend far more time setting up (customizing) my own personal application than I would setting up pyblosxom (or whatever blosxom flavor I chose to taste). But if I’m going to invest that large a chunk of time, I’d rather have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings.

The other reason for my turnabout is that I’ve had a small epiphany about comment spam. Basically, that it’s never going to go away, and that using any “out of the box” web application (CMS) is just asking for people to spam you. Maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the long term. User submitted data is inherently volatile.

As a result of this, one idea that I had is that I might still have comments on this site, but that they would be “unmarried” from entries. So anyone could still comment anonymously, but their comments would only show up from the front page, not in the archives, and only for a limited time. I haven’t decided yet whether there would be “archives” for this new comment system.

Another (probably better) option would be to just limit the ability to comment to the entries that show up on the homepage. (like the last 7 to 10 or so.) I have found that the moment a post slides off the homepage, the chances of it being spam exponentially increase.

Whatever the case, I want to switch from MT. OK, I really want Ben and the gang to suddenly make MT opensource, but that’s probably not very likely.

You know, there really aren’t that many differences between the scenario I envisioned just now in that last paragraph and reality. I mean, SixApart could still charge for installations and support. Hell, I’ll bet they have requests left and right for development contracts. But no, they want to play the licensing game. The arguments for free software are many, and I won’t repeat them here, but I’m a firm believer that they’ve gone the wrong way. Copyright is in for some major changes in the next 10 to 20 years. In the mean time, SixApart want to just sit back and let the money roll in. But I’m not buying it. Literally.