Nick Bradbury: 'In the midst of the uproar about MovableType's recent licensing change, it's nice to see a few rational comments. ... Having been where the Six Apart crew are now, can I make a suggestion to those who are flaming them? Even if you live in some bizarre universe that equates earning a living with belonging to a satanic cult, if you're really not willing to pay for MovableType, at least have the courtesy to thank them for the free ride up to this point.'
Couldn't agree more. And here are some of the best responses to the Six Apart MT 3.0 announcement:
bradchoate: 'Movable Type is good software. It has served me well. I want to see it thrive and continue to be developed. Don’t you? And the prices— well, frankly, they’re not that bad. If you do require a license in the first place, the $69 you pay buys you an awful lot of product. Commercial software that supports 5 users for $69 (or $99 if you prefer to count it that way) is a bargain no matter how you slice it.'
Jeremy Zawodny: 'I never realized how many folks in the blog echo chamber were so cost-sensitive and willing to jump the gun and turn their backs on a fantastic piece of software. Well, now I know. So much for loyalty. The judgment has been largely instant and harsh. Does this mean I'll never leave MovableType? Of course not. Don't be stupid. If something far better comes along or something else evolves to the point that it's worth my while, maybe I'll switch. But for the time being, I've got more important stuff to do and that includes writing here rather than trying to figure out how to replace a perfectly good piece of software that I have the source code for anyway.'
Derek Powazek: 'I've long been amazed that such a powerful tool was free. All those bloggers pitching fits need to take a step back and look at what they've been getting for free all this time, and the facts about the new licenses. The fact is, it's still free to download and use the brand-spankin new Movable Type 3 - Six Apart just asks you to agree to use it with only one author and up to three blogs. And even then, there's no enforcement of these limits. They're using the honor system. Movable Type has grown up, kids. Giant sites like About.com use MT now. This pricing plan is not about sticking it to the little guy - it's about setting up a system for bigwig business users to pay what they should. This is a good thing, because it gives Six Apart a reason to start aggressively developing Movable Type again.'
Jay Allen: 'Are you really willing to go through the trouble of porting all of your stuff over and learning a whole new system just because you’re pissed off that Six Apart, a company whose growing pains are clearly obvious, didn’t handle things the way you would have liked them to? And if you do leave, what will happen when the Movable Type butterfly takes flight and is, by virtue of the intense development on MT 3.0D, the greatest thing anyone in the weblog world has ever seen? It’s really something to think about … I would like to leave you with one of the wisest and most forward-thinking things I have read in the last 24 hours, written by 14-year-old (!) Arvind Satyanarayan on a private mailing list to which I am subscribed.
I was also completely “I’m gonna leave MT now” but after thinking about it I’m bordering on the free license and I’m gonna wait and see what happens to prices. A lot has been promised for MT3, a lot of exciting stuff. I think I’m gonna stick around for the show :)
As will I, Arvind. As will I.'
Jason Kottke: 'The bottom line ... is that MT 3.0 is worth charging money for. Period. The fact that it was free up until now is largely irrelevant...except that for 2 1/2 years Six Apart has provided people with a very powerful, flexible piece of software for free and will continue to do so in the future. Those bastards! The one thing I do think 6A got wrong is the pricing structure for personal users. Tiered pricing of software based on the number of users was designed to make sure large companies paid more for software than did small companies...so that a company like Wal-Mart pays $3 million for a database application for 20,000 users and a smaller company like Nantucket Nectars pays $30,000 for the same software with 250 users. The same pricing structure doesn't make sense for personal users.'
Brad Choate has this analysis of the 'one author, three blogs' limit that has caused such a storm:
What is a ‘weblog’ anyway?So with the free version, you can have up to 3 weblogs. Just what is a weblog in their definition? You see, with TypePad, even if you have the “basic” account with only 1 weblog allowed, you can create “TypeLists” and photo albums to supplement that weblog. With Movable Type, those kinds of things can be done too, but you have to create additional weblogs to do it. These additional, supportive weblogs are sort of a subset of the main blog— used to control a site. Much like I do on mine. Now if you use 5 or 6 supportive weblogs, does that mean you have to pay for the high-end personal edition? I don’t think so. They are weblogs in MT’s database, but they’re not blogs. And as such, I think they fall out of the definition implied by the license restrictions.
New information on this issue is coming to light today. The Get Movable Type page has been updated with a little sidebar panel labelled “Questions about the license?”. It clarifies the following things regarding restrictions based on weblog and author counts:
Author counts are based on “active” authors, those that have logged in within the last 90 days.
Weblog counts are based on “active” weblogs, those that have had posts created within the last 90 days.
One site at one URL counts as a weblog for your license, even if it is made up of more than one weblog in the software.
That last bullet is a very important one. It is further clarified in the updated personal and commercial license:“Weblog” means a single Web site viewable at a single URL (Uniform Resource Locator), consisting of one or more weblogs as generated by the Software via the “Create New Weblog” function of the Software.
The restriction goes more to the number of web sites produced by the software, not the number of actual weblogs. Mena has more to say about this.
This means that if you are 1 author and you use 11 different weblogs to power your 1 web site, or even 300 weblogs to power your 3 web sites, you can use the free version. It doesn’t cost you $600. It doesn’t cost $1.
Ben and Mena are interviewed here.
