The Philosophy of Yes

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Mena Trott writes about Six Apart's "Philosophy of Yes" (emphasis is mine):

At the Supernova conference, I spoke about Six Apart's "Philosophy of Yes." For the most part, we try to accommodate what our users want and have a hard time saying no to features. We support a number of protocols and formats because we feel it is important to err on the side of mass support. From day one of Movable Type to day one of TypePad, we have provided not just an import mechanism but also an export mechanism. We never wanted to hold content hostage in order to guarantee tool lock-in.


The "export" button in Six Apart's products keeps us on our toes. Knowing that you can leave at any time is our motivator to keep on developing stable, intuitive and flexible applications. We want you to stay because you like the product, not because you can't get out.

A bold yet unfortunately uncommon philosophy among many commercial software companies, or music majors for that matter.