Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Six Apart released new pricing information today, and no matter how you package it, it’s not going to have people happy.
Yes, there will be a free version of Movable Type 3.0.
Mena Trott writes, but what she doesn’t say in the page is that free only works if you have one weblog author and three weblogs.
One of the reasons people haven’t moved to WordPress or other weblogging tools is lack of support for multiple weblogs–yet. Movable Type provided this, and it was simple to create a new weblog and add new authors, and many of us have done so. We didn’t see that this was going to be an issue someday. There was a major storm headed our way, and we never saw it coming.
I’ve created weblogs for multiple authors, and I’ve created multiple weblogs on one installation of MT. I have enough weblogs on my current installation that if I had stayed with Movable Type, and moved to 3.0, I’d have to go with a commercial license, and be paying upwards of $600.00. No, I didn’t see this coming. There wasn’t a clue.
All along we’ve said that we’d pay for a pro version of MT that provided what we needed. Several people understood that this new release wouldn’t have everything we asked for, but it was still free. Now we find out the caveats, the hammer dropping.
If it was just a ding to the toe, people would hop about and grumble a bit, and probably pay. But damn, this is a sledgehammer.
Nothing wrong with making a profit. But all the $20,000.00 contests in the world won’t make up for the fact that you don’t encourage people to use a product a certain way, and then charge them what are, frankly, extremely high fees–the highest in the business by my figuring–to upgrade to a new version.
If I were still a MT user now, I’d be furious. Now that I’m not, frankly, I feel a bit smug.
I need to return quickly to my Survival Guide to LAMP series. I expect a lot of movement to Textpattern and WordPress about now, and folks might be wanting help. But no fears–I won’t charge you to read my writing.
Yet.
Hee. I like Steve’s take on the license.
By the way, I want you all to know that I made a prediction in Phil Ringnalda’s weblog earlier this week, saying that WordPress and Textpattern would surpass MT in users in a year. This was before the pricing announcement, so I want you to have some respect for my crystal ball reading ability.
Second update
Just caught this. The following are what you get, specifically, with the paid version of MT 3.0 that are conspicuously missing from the free version:
# Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
# A guaranteed path to future versions
I think that after MT 3.0, you can probably kiss free versions of MT good-bye. I see the TypePad/TypeKey writing on the wall.
third update
From Paul Freeman I found out that you have to be registered with TypeKey in order to download the free version.
We were assured that TypeKey wasn’t required for Movable Type. I specifically remember this being said.
I also didn’t realize the physical limitations of the free version–one installation only, and no installation on multi-CPU machines. Most hosted environments are multiple CPU machines. Does this mean even if you are a single author/single weblog user, but hosted, you still can’t use MT?
update four
Looks like the trackback for the Six Apart entry is broken at 79, but you can get links at Technorati.
