Pricing changes.

[John Gruber]

Here's something else I've been meaning to mention, prompted by
Matt's nice news about Markdown's inclusion in WordPress 1.2:

Effective in the next public release of Markdown, I plan to change
the "pricing" terms. Right now, the Markdown license and pricing
page states:

    *   Markdown is free for personal use. Enjoy.
    *   For commerial use, Markdown costs US$50 per domain. Click here
        to purchase Markdown from my eSellerate web store.
    
    But those are social terms, not legal terms. Legally, I'm
    releasing Markdown under the GPL, which permits everyone to
    use, copy, and modify it for free.
    
    Thus, if you're a commercial user, I'm asking you to pay
    $50, not requiring you to. [...]

The "GPL'd, but still a 'social term' fee for commercial use" idea
was an interesting experiment, but it's caused way more harm than
good. Whereby "harm" I mean confusion, and by "good" I mean it has
generated zero dollars in revenue.

Starting with the next release, I'll be switching to something along
the lines of "GPL'd, if you'd like support further development,
please donate, thanks." I.e. no distinctions whatsoever with regard
to commercial/non-commercial use, and thus no obligations other than
those of the license itself.

I want it to be clear to everyone that things like Michel's PHP
port, and then WordPress's inclusion of Michel's port, are all
perfectly cool.

-J.G.