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.
MT3.0D Day 2
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!
Typekey and commenting
MT. Bash. Duck. Wow
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.
MT3 release news
Ok, so the MT 3.0 Developer’s Edition has just been announced.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure whether to be happy or disappointed about the new release and pricing.
From what I’ve seen playing with the beta, MT3 is pretty cool. Significantly faster than 2.6 especially when it comes to rebuilding. Good backward compatibility with older plugins, although I don’t use too many of them. Better comment and trackback editing and handling.
There are the license changes. I haven’t read through them yet, but from what I see it looks like it’ll be more friendly for web developers and ISPs who want to offer MT to their clients.
Then there’s the money aspect. MT’s a great product, but honestly, I’m not at all sure it’s worth $100 for a personal license that only gives you 5 weblogs and 3 authors. $40 or $50 I wouldn’t object about. But I think $100 is a little steep. MT would do well to reconsider their pricing model so that it’s a little more friendly to the power user needing a personal license.
Mena Trott writes
Additionally, as promised, donors who have ever contributed $20 or more to Movable Type will be able to apply their full donation to this version. For many who donated, the difference after applying their donation will be a nominal fee.
Ok, I have to take issue with that statement. Yes, I made a $20 donation shortly after I started using MT 2.6. But I’d hardly call $50 (discount price minus donation) a nominal fee. It’s anything but that. And you still end up paying the same price in the end.
Sure, there’s the stripped down free version, but you only get one author and up to 3 weblogs with it. And a long list of No’s and features taken away from the 2.x versions:
- No support from Six Apart
- That’s fine, there wasn’t much to begin with anyway unless you donated $45
- No access to paid installation service
- I think if MT is going to offer paid installation services, they should offer it to everyone whether it’s the free version or not. Is MT going to ask people to want to buy a personal or commercial license to also pay for installtion too?
- No access to fee-based services
- May or may not be an issue, depending on what fee-based services they decide to offer
- No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list
- Needed to make a donation to get this anyway. But what about those current MT users who have already donated, and don’t have the resources or desire to shell out $100 for a personal license? I think MT ought to continue to current model of accepting donations (particularly from users of the free edition) and providing a Recently Updated Key to them and allow current key owners to keep using theirs if they decide to go with the free version.
- No commercial usage
- No problem. If you’re going to use MT to make money, then you should pay them for acommercial license.
- No more than one author and three weblogs
- Again, far too restrictive for power users that can’t afford the cost of a personal license.
Notable license items with the free edition
“Author” means one individual with a unique login name generated by the Software via the “Add/Edit Weblog Authors” function of the Software. The sharing of an individual login name for more than one person is prohibited.
Making Copies
You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU. You may make one (1) copy of the Software in any machine readable form solely for back-up purposes, provided you reproduce the Software in its original form and with all proprietary notices on the back-up copy.
So I guess what I’m saying in short is
- MT 3 release: Very good
- MT 3 features: Very good
- MT 3 licensing: Good
- $100 MT 3 Personal license: Bad
- MT 3 free version: Not so good
- MT 3 Pricing: Needs work