MovableType 3: A New Plan
May 13, 2004
Six Apart released the Developer edition of MT 3 today and changed their entire payment scheme. Needless to say, people all over the blogging world are calling this the worst move they could have made and at first glance, it definitely seems that way.
As I said, the pricing plans have changed. MovableType 3 has an incarnation for personal use (with no definite list of features - I'll check this later) and then a 'personal' plan and a 'business' plan with different levels of how many blogs you can create. I'm stuck trying to figure out if upgrading to this 'free' edition will cut in to what I can and can't do with MT. They mention that software pirates will have no trouble with this since it has no 'phone-home' software attached with it. I pondered finding a copy but my attachment to Six Apart got the best of me and I decided against it. I'm not going to make a judgement on if this was a sane or stupid decision because we're only 5 hours in to it. This might be an amazing boost for sales for Six Apart but it will undoubtably leave a void between 6a and their previously loyal masses who have loved this product (and the fact that it's been free) for so long.
We shall see where this goes. Until I read the 'free' liscence fully, I'll be sticking with 3b4.
Updated: Jay Allen has been one of the most helpful beta testers for MT 3 and makes point after excellent point about why this release is exactly what it's supposed to be.
And lastly, I'd like to say that with this install of MT 3D I have 6 blogs and 3 users (mostly test blogs and users) but the point is that the MT lisencing scheme is under the honor system. I will most definitely pay for MT but I'm not using more than $70 worth of blogging software and so that's what I'll pay. If I have one extra test blog and another user so I can test new builds of ecto with a limited user no one is going to flip out. I haven't tested the commercial or personal-pro versions yet but something tells me that you're downloading the exact same software at the moment. The difference is all in the lisence and what you legally 'own.'
Comments
Does this mean that there won't be any free copies of Movable Type past 2.661?
Posted by: Maura | May 13, 2004 9:54 PM
It sounded that way when I wrote it but 6a is committed to a free version of MT. You can find it on this page (on the right side).
Posted by: authgeek | May 13, 2004 9:59 PM
Personally, I would be more worried about them killing the 2.6x development tree in favor of 3.0. They already but a nice sharp knife into the hand, why not just cut off the arm to stop the bleeding?
I've used MT for almost two years now, it's become my baby. However, by simply having a friend that blogs occasionally, I am looking at throwing down $50 dollars (seventy minus donation). As much as I love blogging and love movable type, I can't in good faith pay $50 dollars for it.
Makes me wish I had gone to the beta.
Posted by: Jakob | May 14, 2004 5:31 AM
SixApart don't seem to be looking to kill off the free version of MT, which is quite good. However, it does restrict the user to one blog one author, but for a lot of people that's fine. For more techy people that's not quite the same.
Imho the 2.661 tree is dead - they'll probably make security patches for a year or so, and then leave it for people to move to 3.
Having one or more friends is going to really push the price up. :/ I think that they need to alter the pricing strategy ... perhaps a subscription which people pay every 6 months to use the latest and greatest version of mt? (becuase surely there's going to be an upgrade cost too?) They have suggested than for an extra $10 you can someone onto your blog: i.e. one extra author and one extra blog.
Posted by: Edward | May 15, 2004 9:53 AM
6a offers "Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)" with a lisence. This hopefully means 3.x will be free to anyone who's already paid for 3D (or other versions of 3). In terms of how long it will be until 4 comes out... hopefully longer than an OS 10.x cycle :)
Posted by: authgeek | May 15, 2004 2:33 PM