Category: MovableType stuff

Plenty already logged to the blogoverse about 6A’s clarifications to the MT 3.0D release. There still continues to be some vitriol expressed by people who insist on remaining offended by 6A’s release and license changes though. Even a troll has emerged to muddy things up and do all the nasty things trolls do.

6A’s clarifications on the licensing terms and definitions as well as changes to the number of allowed users/weblogs does make things easier, and I think goes a long way to placating the majority of people. Now what I’d like to see is some statement about where 3.0D fits in with what 6A has in store.

3.0D is clearly a developer’s release intended primarily for plugin developers to create new plugins and rework existing plugins to fit into the new framework.

It will be available to everyone, not just developers; we’re calling it a Developer Release to emphasize the fact that 3.0 itself is not a feature release in the traditional sense. With this release we hope that the developer community will implement some great extensions for 3.0.
Since many of Six Apart’s employees are Apple fanboys/girls, we make the analogy to the first releases of OS X: the first releases did not offer that many new features themselves, only a more stable and robust platform for developers to build upon.

This clearly implies that unless you want to be active in developing and testing plugins, there’s no need to jump in and upgrade. I think a lot of people missed this part and focused primarily on the licensing issues (which I think still could use some reworking).

In any case, I’m starting to feel comfortable enough with using the beta I’ve been testing to move over to the free version of 3.0D (at least start testing it). I think I still have Typekey issues to work out, but no blocking issues. And once my CSS book arrives, I’ll be looking forward to having some fun messing with the look of my weblog.

And with that I think I have blogged enough about 6A and MT 3.0D and the release. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Although not in any way an official statement from SixApart, Jay Allen offers some thoughts and insights on the release of MT3.0D. And some very good thoughts too. Good words, Jay.

It’s the second day since the release of MT3.0D, and the griping, whining and bitterness continues. Over 350 trackbacks to Mena Trott’s announcement. So far, not a peep out of 6A since the announcement. I hope they’ve got good shields to deflect some of the hostility being directed at them.

To the 6A folks:

Wait a little bit for some of the hubbub to die down, but don’t wait too long. Plenty of users are already frustrated with 6A about the lack of communication over MT. Give your users a well thought out response and any plans on addressing some of your users’ concerns. Drop the prices on your PE licenses. Show us you’re listening and want us to keep using your excellent product. I don’t mind paying. Lots of MT users don’t mind paying. You’re just asking us to pay too much.

3 days ago, I was invited to join the beta testing program for MT3.0. Downloaded and installed 3.0b4 the next day. The day after, I learned that MT3.0D was released. Now, I’m not a developer, but if I were, I wouldn’t be inviting more beta testers to test a product 2 days before it’s released.

I’ve spent many more hours than I probably should have reading posts, weblog entries and comments about people’s feelings on the matter. One item in particular from Mena’s post caught my eye.

We would recommend that, if you’re not the type of person who likes to tinker with Movable Type or would require a installation, you hold off until the general release.

So, does that mean that MT3.0D is intended primarily for MT plugin developers? Is there going to be another release, perhaps with different license conditions for regular users, or a different feature set?

Since there doesn’t appear to be any hardcoded enforcement of user/weblog limits with the free edition (I’ve not dug into the source code to confirm this though), 6A is trusting the MT community to follow the license restrictions on their own.

We’re big on honor at Six Apart. We haven’t built in any nagware for license violations or phone home mechanisms. We trust our users’ good judgment and intentions. We intend to use our good judgment in being flexible about enforcing these limits.

In that, I think the free edition has become something of a shareware product, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Use it, if you like it, then pay for it. Problem is, I think they’re just asking us to pay too much for it.

Update: The hubbub has even reached Slashdot.org now!

Ok, looks like bug report 1065 and 888 cover my problem with Typekey authenticated commenting. Now to read through them and see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Wow, a lot of bitterness, griping and bashing going on with the release of MT 3.0D.

There are a lot of angry people out there ranting about SixApart’s (SA) new licensing scheme and pricing for MT3.0. Some of it I think goes a little over the line, but the majority of it seems to question the wisdom of SA’s actions.

Personally, I think if they made the pricing scheme a little more reasonable (ok, a lot more reasonable) and simpler, it would go a long way to making people feel better. However, I think it’s going to make a lot of people abandon MT as a weblogging platform.

In the meantime, I downloaded and set up the free version of MT and pointed it at my existing database. It unpacks itself as MT-3.0D-full-personal-en_us and as far as I can tell so far, any user/weblog restrictions seem to be on the honour system. In fact I made this entry using the free version using a database with 5 authors and 6 weblogs. No complaints either when I created a 7th test weblog.

So, SA people, if you are listening (if anybody is listening), I think MT3.0 is great. I have no problem with paying for a Personal license for MT. I just think your pricing scheme needs to be changed to make it more affordable. Drop the cost of the Personal Edition license by half and you’ll have another paying customer.