The Six Apart-LiveJournal merger is not a roll-up.

Roll-ups happen when there is an established way to make money at something. No one has really found a way to make a reliable dollar from blogging.

Not that people aren't trying. There are tons of new blogging programs out there, tons of new file types to blog, tons of new blogs (of course) and tons of new paradigms.

It's an industry in the process of discovering itself.

Here's the short-form. Roll-ups are about money. Without money, mergers are about people.

From reading the statements of the principals, this merger is what I call a "team-building" exercise. The VCs behind Six Apart (the company that owns Movable Type) are trying to build a winning team. That's one of them over there to the left, Joi Ito.

Let me explain.

Brad Fitzpatrick (left) started a company to do what he wanted and found that he wasn't doing what he wanted anymore.

This is Dana's Iron Law of Entrepreneurship in action. No matter what you're passionate about, when you try to start a company around it you're no longer going to be doing it. You're going to be in bidness.

And Brad Fitzpatrick didn't really want to be in business. He wanted to build this tool, and the community around it. So it made sense for him to want to sell. The only question was who he would sell to.

He sold to Six Apart (that's the company behind MT), I think, mainly because of Ito. Joi is the Japanese VC who has backed Six Apart. Joi is what I call a "blue investor." He buys people and builds companies based on societal values, not based on an income statement.

At this stage of an industry's development, this can work. Until its IPO Google was a values play. The idea is to do good and hope to do well by it.

UPDATE: Six Apart President Mena Trott (right) was kind enough to write us after the initial post, noting that she is no longer CEO but is mainly, like Fitzpatrick, involved in product development.

She added:

Now, a lot has been said about the acquisition but the assumption that a profitable company is a bad thing. Believe me, the employees at Six Apart and now Danga are happy to be part of a stable, growing company.

And, I'm more passionate today about weblogging and journaling than I was three years ago.

Tough lady. (That's a compliment.) The software that writes this is in good hands.