Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Part of the process I’m going through of “eating my own dogfood” that is, using free software (open source) tools whenever I can includes taking myself off of proprietary platforms whenever possible. One such platform was Typepad. Typepad is a paid service based on Movable Type, a very popular blogging platform, that is proprietary. They are going to release an open source version later this year, which is wonderful, but I also would have had to pony up another $149 for a year of a Pro account, and that seemed excessive, since I could just as easily set up a Wordpress blog on the host I’m already paying for.

This migration, unlike the Mac OS -> Ubuntu migration, has been completely painless. A few tweaks (mentioned in the previous post,) and I was up and running with all posts and comments intact. Add a few important plugins, and I’m back to where I was just a few days ago on Typepad.

Two and a half years ago when I moved off of the blogging platform I wrote, I wanted a platform that would allow me to concentrate on writing, and not on tech. Two years ago, there wasn’t a platform that was really ready for that. Now, there is. Actually, there are several. There is no question in my mind that free software has won the CMS/Blogging race, hands down.