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Bloggers Assail Movable Type's New Pricing Scheme
cioxx writes "An immensely popular weblog publishing tool, Movable Type, has announced a new pricing model based on "support level, number of authors permitted, and the number of weblogs permitted per license". MT3D (Developer Edition) for non-commercial users has drifted away from its full-featured, free predecessor and managed to upset many blog authors whose entry summaries can be seen via the trackback feature originating from the initial MT3D announcement. Is this a case of bait-n-switch, or simply a company trying to capitalize on its dominant market share? WordPress (GPL), which is an equally powerful CMS, seems like a perfect candidate for those who are considering a switch to a non-crippled, free alternative."
I've been hit by this kind of thing before. Now I really look hard at the license. If you use proprietary stuff, you are at the mercy of the owner. It's not just a Microsoft thing, folks.
Retroactively revoke all of their licenses... and somehow sue Google and get them to shut down Blogger.com... and and... then maybe I'll be able to locate actual information when searching the Internet for stuff.
Well, that sucks. At least I have a few of their old (i.e. free) versions on my hard drive.
Gotta love the proprietary world. Dole the juice, cajole the users and then when some event horizon is met, flip the tables and stick it to your users. Yeh haw I love it.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
....but what everybody is really interested in is free beer!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
note that download.com still has version 2.661... this might be the version people should start mirroring.
WordPress (GPL), which is an equally powerful CMS, seems like a perfect candidate for those who are considering a switch to a non-crippled, free alternative.
Presumably you believe it's crippled because you have to pay for it, which I have to say I find a poor argument. Pay for the stuff if you think it's worth the money, use something else if you don't. It's not a hard choice.
I just switched from Movable Type to Text Pattern and I couldn't be happier. It's more CMS like AND easier to use (granted MT was easy to use but Txp feels much smoother). It makes a good separation of content and display and has a few goodies that make this feel natural. It's got a few minor bugs that'll be fixed before release; but it's worked great for my blog.
Oh, and it imports movable type files. Seriously, with the wide variety of free, quality, blogging software out there, Six Apart has their work cut out for them.
Photos.
Come on you ninnies! Software, data, music, movies - THEY SHOULD ALL BE FREE!
How dare this company charge money to recoup what they spent on developing this product. Why, if every company did that, it would be anarchy!
Er, no no... OLIGARCHY!
Um, no wait, PLUTOCRACY!
No, got it... it would be CAPITALISM, savior of the common man and the greatest force for freedom ever known.
Now, let the whining begin!
Given MobableType's popularity, this really shouldn't come as a surprise. The more people they have using their service, the more it costs to maintain a quality level of service. That's the price they pay to give blog space to anyone who wants it.
So as with any business in a capitalist society, if you don't want to go along with this pricing plan, do as the submitter suggests and go to another service.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While I use Wordpress for both my blogs, I think that everyone is being rather harsh on these people who are just trying to make a living.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
You can upgrade to as high as version 2.66.1, and the new pricing scheme won't affect your Movable Type site. That's what we're doing at Polstate.com.
By the way, shameless plug:
Polstate.com is the Political State Report, a web site held together by contributors from each state (US) who report on grassroots and statewide political news, especially when relevant to local and state elections. We offer a different flavor of political news, distinct from most other blogs and news sites that focus on the Presidency, war on terror, and national economy.
The november 2003 issue of Business 2.0 showed an intention to go in that direction, even the MT license debate gave clues a long before. It shouldnt be a bad surprise for anyone, but a great loss to the blog comunity.
"OMG, my free blog software changed, i have to pay for it now"
"i'm poor and can't afford it, if you read the past entries of my blog, which are all bitching about how i'm poor and can't afford anything"
"i'm going to bitch about MT changing to a non-free system on my blog."
Really, who cares? There's some blogs out there that are worth reading (pervscan, MSDN Blogs), but 99% of the users of Movable Type are retards. Charging for MT is keeping the shit off of the web.
I bought a Honda Accord in 1994, and when I bought a new one in 2004, they raised the price by almost eight thousand dollars!
It seems like with anything you buy today, you're at the mercy of the people working to make the product and sell it.
I guess I am gonna have to work out that user registration system that I always wanted but was too lazy to code. I was waiting for 3 to come out so I could have it up and running and have it not cut into my UT2k4 time.
Oh well.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Or, we could all just RTFSite, which apparently our dear submitter didn't do, and see that they clearly state that they will still offer a free version. I read the news yesterday (since I've been waiting for the 3.0 release to install it) and was slightly disturbed by the "pricing scheme", but I actually read the whole thing, and it does state that they will still offer a free version (the google cache hasn't been updated since the new stuff has been posted, so it's pretty pointless to check it out).
do not read this line twice.
The post containing the rationale for the licensing change contains hundreds of trackbacks from the MT community. Guess what most of them are saying.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Because I love Perl and I don't much care for PHP/SQL. Check out Coranto here. It's more of a news system (the successor to NewsPro) but it works quite well for my website, destination-life.com
Reprinted from their website:
Not willing to pay for Movable Type yet? This fully-functional version of the application is available free of charge. Important limitations of this license include:
* No support from Six Apart
* No access to paid installation service
* No access to fee-based services
* No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list
* No commercial usage
* No more than one author and three weblogs
So let me interpret these points...
* No mooching.
* No mooching.
* No mooching.
* No commercial use.
* Limited (yet otherwise fully functional) personal use.
Why is this so bad? I've paid a lot more than $70 for software that I've really liked. This is pretty cheap.
Corinna
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
There's no bait or switch going on here at all. There is still a free version available, it's not crippled in any way:
The only thing this does is a) allow SixApart to eat, and b) allow large corporations to buy MT. I know plenty of organisations that want to use it, but couldn't even look at it until it cost more than nothing. Many procurement processes can't deal with Free.
From backroom hobby to multinational company in three years: Good for them, frankly.
bloxsom and pybloxsom (a port of the original Perl) offer an elegant plugin-based architecture with a gentle learning curve if you want to set up your own blog. And because so little is hardcoded into the app itself, you can leverage it to do all sorts of non-traditional sites; I wrote a plugin to enable a webcomic in a few hours.
I've used it for 100 posts with their last and now I'm going to be switching to another content management system.
Freedom of the press and all that.
Cheers! It's time for Guinness.
I especially don't ever want to continue to give away a free version, but charge people who are using it in a business environment. That would suck even more if people who are using my software to make money themselves.
PEOPLE! You can still use MT for free with one or two authors, personal blog, etc. If you're using it for more industrial stuff, then don't expect it to be free forever, especially since you GET SUPPORT FROM THE DEVELOPER.
I'm not talking about the typical "RTFM, l0s3r" support you get from certain GPL apps, I'm talking about actually ask-a-question-get-a-polite-and-helpful-answer kind of support.
Just because they need to make money (who doesn't?), doesn't mean you should dump them completely.
For the K5 members out there, there are more details here--apparently the licensing structure is considered a bit outlandish (for what used to be a free product), perhaps to push their (cheaper) blog webhosting services. But for those outside the "Blogosphere", this will only lead to momentary head-scratching, as to what these crazy kids are talking about now.
/. and K5--I can't stand discussion forums that don't at least have nested comments and a few other basic refinements, and it's even better if they have sane implementations (that don't involve doing O(n) SQL queries recursively to build the list of comments, for example)
Personally, I've been spoiled by
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Movable Type Free
(Unsupported License)
Not willing to pay for Movable Type yet? This fully-functional version of the application is available free of charge. Important limitations of this license include:
No support from Six Apart
No access to paid installation service
No access to fee-based services
No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list
No commercial usage
No more than one author and three weblogs
In other words, pretty much the same "free" usage as before. If you need MT for multiple authors, it's not expensive.
If you need MT for commercial use, it's only a couple of hundred bucks.
License is: PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL USE LICENSE Revised 6/01/2003
and overrated anyway. Everyone's freakin blogs look the same with MT. Boring. It's like what Powerpoint has done to the art of giving a presentation.
Livejournal.org hosts the codebase (GPL'd) used on Livejournal.com and other clone sites.
I use a Mac and have had no problems with iBlog, from Lifli software. The price fluctuates based on your currency and it's relationship to the Indian Rupee. I paid close to $20 for it. You can install it on up to two seats for that price. It integrates extremely well with .Mac hosted sites too. Read all about it.You can even hack the css and such with your editor of choice.
I hate sigs.
He thinks it's 'crippled' because of the new restrictions involved (and by implication, that it isn't worth the money); that seems like a perfectly good use of the term. Especially since the restrictions are artificial in nature.
I can certainly see people being upset by what looks like a classic bait-and-switch, exploiting the goodwill of the community for personal gain. Like so many other sites who have tried this (and failed), it requires its biggest fans, supporters, and users to pay the largest price, so the alienation and sense of betrayal is not surprising.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
It would be a shame if this raised the entry barrier for blogers so high that angsty teens, burnouts and uninteresting 30-somethings couldn't post about every little thing that happens to them.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
<rant>
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ is a good site to search for alternative weblogs. The nice thing is that they have working demos up that you can access to try out stuff.
The reviews are pretty generic and not much help.
Does anyone know of a good source for reviews on CMS systems?
I also have to question the stats on the link stating moveable type is the most popular weblog. Some prominent blogging software is not counted, such as geeklog, scoop, and (ahem) slashdot.
It's not entirely fair to lambaste moveabletype, they are still offering a non-commercial version of limited capability.
A few weeks ago, when I was evaluating CMS systems, I came across moveable-type, and their lack of a free license is what turned me off. The system that most impressed me was PHPNuke.
My biggest complaint about most of these CMS's are the big holes in documentation.
</rant>
evanchik.net
I was a Movable Type user, but with my latest ISP change I ditched MT for Geeklog. Geeklog is really cool, and nicely integrates with Gallery which I use for images. Both are Open Source and free, so the decision was easy.
A great article over at the other site:
8 23
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/2/171117/8
If you like the idea of a mod_perl/Postgres-based BLOG, check out http://blog.dachte.org, and if you like what you see, drop me a note and we'll get it installed on your system. I'll start to regularly make public packages soon..
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The "fix" is to stay with what you have if you don't like the new pricing schedule.
Money is dear to me, but I'll probably pony up. The enhancements seem worth the price tag. But if I decide differently, there are plenty of other blog engines out there.
Comparing Six Apart to Microsoft is grossly unfair. These folks care about their work and have always provided excellent service. Power to 'em.
My MT weblog: PaperFrog.com.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
...their 20-some-odd employees somehow! Right?
You know they're all just as happy as pigs in shit to actually have an opinion to write in their blogs.
It's like when I reboot one of my linux boxes and see Segmentation Fault during init, which is happening more than it should with 2.6.5 but that's another topic, it gives me something to do. Hell, the only reason I even have linux boxes is so I can perpetually fix them.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There are plenty of other ways to publish a blog. My favorite happens to be Multiply because it offers so much more than just straight blogging.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Amazingly enough, some people start companies to make money. A shocking concept, I know, but it's true. Now, when you start using a commercial product by a commercial company that presumably is in business to make money, why on Earth would - should - it surprise you when down the line they re-evaluate and change their pricing schedule? Bleat on and on and on about "proprietary" software and such if you must, if that's your ideological axe to grind. But when you use a commercial product, this is to be expected, and no one, not even Movable Type, is "bad" and "evil" for it, it's the rules commercial software plays by.
Now then: Why in the fuck would you use MovableType anyway? Commercial or not, it's crap. There are dozens of solid blogware out there. Slashcode, anyone? GeekLog, all the *nukes? And broaden your horizon to general purpose CMS, there's Mambo, Typo3, many many more...
This poster makes incorrect assumptions based on total lack of knowledge of the topic.
MoveableType is not a service. It's a piece of software like OpenOffice or Slackware. There is no 'price to pay to give blog space to anyone who wants it.'
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I've been reading ALOT of the track backs over the last 24 hours linked from Mena's post on the SixApart web site. Clearly there are some angry users... and their anger isnt' entirely unfounded. I don't think Six Apart's intentions were to screw anyone or to try and capitalize on a dominent market position via bait and switch. That said, I do think the new pricing schedule is a bit ornerous and it doesnt' seem to have much of a migration strategy for people who are hosting multiple blogs on a shoestring budget. Hopefully SA will add one or two more pricing schedules that will accomodate the grass roots community they helped build. At the very least I think folks would like to see more blogs / authors available at the lower cost teers of the pricing schedule. Just my $0.02
Have a Happy.
Get you to rely on an application it so that its costly to look at alternatives, then slowly raise the price.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Since MT is written entirely in perl and other non-compiled languages, how hard could it possibly be to hack these limitations out of the free version? I'd bet you just have to comment out a few simple checks, and then distribute a patch...via your blog, of course. :)
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
"You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU."
Who came up with that one?? I'd wager that the vast vast majority of hosting clients have no clue how many CPU's the server their website is running on has, while a very large number of hosting providers use multi-CPU servers.
That clause is basically setting up thousands and thousands of people to break the license agreement they agreed to without even knowing it.
The only reason I can see for that clause, other than pure oversight on the behalf of Six Apart, is they want to push people using MT to their own hosting service(TypePad).
I agree, but it's really time the bloggers picked a better business model than:
1.Write journal entries
2.Post them online and call it a "blog", or if you're cutting edge, post pictures too
3.Include system to show when other people link back to you saying "look at this dork" 4.????
5.Profit!
Oh, you mean the blog software companies? My bad.
Please help metamoderate.
...but it should cost .01 cent (or 1/100 Euro) per word entered. If every blogger had to think about what they were writing, blogs might not the emo, angsty, tedious wasteland they are now.
/. is included, so I owe Taco 53 cents. Sigs don't count.
And yes,
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
"Is this a case of bait-n-switch, or simply a company trying to capitalize on its dominant market share?" .. or maybe, just maybe.. a company trying to make money? Could it be something even more sinister like a guy trying to pay his bills?
If you are developing software on your own time to benefit humanity, I say give it away, just don't punish those of us who run our own companies and try and pay our mortgage by charging money for the one thing we know how to do.
Bag groceries by day and code by night. Noble maybe, practical. Nah.
Sing it with me now..
"If I had a million dollars.."
If you are one of the people who is confused as to why this is such a big deal, the Metafilter post on this subject (mainly the comments on the post) should help clarify.
Personally, I use LiveJournal (i keep it friends only, and use it so my friends who have scattered across the states can keep up, and so i can keep up with them).
Fuck em. Thats a little too underhanded for my tastes, let alone my dollar.
I'm not a cheapskate. I believe in paying for good software.
But I won't pay for Movable Type. Here's why.
On SixApart's behalf, they made several big mistakes in launching their pricing structure. Since they announced MT3 and that they were going to charge for it, they also promised a free non-crippled version of MT3. Blogging is generally a communual experience. I blog casually, and I have a couple of friends who write posts on my blog from time to time, and a wife who keeps her own blog. The free version of MT3 is crippled, because it limits the users and number of blogs. Limiting user base is bad thing to do when blogging is still relatively new.
Secondly, the pricing structure is much higher than what people anticipated. Those in the beta test for MT3 had absolutely no idea that it was going to cost this much, and many who did participate have publically stated they wouldn't have if they did know. Why the hostility?
Two reasons. It's the community that made MT what it is now. There's not really that much new functionality in MT3 that makes it worth paying $100 for (the $70 is a temporary discount remember?). Many of the features that made MT2x worth using were coded by non-SixApart people. Users - with no profit motive whatsoever - coded hundreds of MT plugins that exceeded the coding ability of SixApart. Others wrote far more detailed tutorials and instructions than SixApart provided for their own software. So, SixApart is compensating them by running a contest for the best plugin? That's insulting, honestly.
Secondly, there are blogging apps that do as good a job as MT3, if not better. And, they're free. Others have similar pricing structures as MT3 but do more. So, why MT3? And let's get this straight: using something for free isn't necessarily being a cheapass. If maintaining my blogs as they are will cost me upwards $150, why shouldn't I migrate to a free solution? Imagine if Windows had the same stability and security as Linux, but cost the same as it does now for a company to run. Why wouldn't a company move to Linux? Are companies being the durgatory form of cheapskates by moving to a lower priced product? No. It's common market sense, and because of its love for linux and open source, slashdot should be aware of this better than anyone. Some MT users probably are cheapass, and will warez the MT software if they can or do whatever they can to avoid paying.
But a larger portion are paying for accounts on livejournal and blogger. They are paying for internet access and webhosting. They're not cheapskates. Instead, like me, they just don't want to pay $150-200 for what is basically a hobby, and a hobby that can continue for free if we switch software. Why should we support a company that doesn't announce its pricing structure beforehand, and keeps it as close to their chest as possible? Why did SixApart do that? Why didn't they announce it before time? Because they knew people would be pissed. This reaction is no surprise to anyone.
The learning curve is pretty steep for newbies, but the features, scalability, and price are hard to beat. It's not the standard Apache/MySQL/PHP approach, but there is alot to like about it.
Warning: Zope has some religious followers that make RMS look tame by comparison. Fortunately, most of the enthusiasm is justified by what the product can actually do.
http://www.zope.org
http://www.plone.org
Sounds like a classic bait and switch. Of course, just about everything in the dot com and Linux worlds was built on the bait and switch business model. The sad thing is that the baiters managed to convince the world that software has to be free. The baiters have successfully driven companies trying to work on an honest, up front method out of business.
I am not sure how you conclude that this is an evil of the proprietary world when bait and switch techniques are generally loathed by property rights advocates.
Traditional property rights advocates believe in outright ownership. You pay an up front price for something; Then you own it. Traditional property rights advocates loath the new economy business models where nothing is full purchased, and where are designed with hooks installed.
BTW, who is greeder, the people creating the bait and switch scheme, or the grubby hands clawing at the bait?
I'm currently running MT2.6 and my usage falls just beyond the free-beer MT3 allowances (I've got a friend's blog running on my server as well as a couple of mine). I'm a bit irritated by the change of terms, but I don't consider it a betrayal. I knew the software wasn't free-speech when I started using it, and I figured that the terms might change. It's certainly within Six Apart's rights to change it. Now I just need to make a rational decision whether I can comply with the terms of the free-beer MT3 licence, and if not, whether to stick with MT2.6, convert to a different system, or pay the fee to Six Apart. It's my choice, and I'll take responsibility for it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I feel very sad for those bloggers. Now they can no longer fill up the Internet full of their mindless self indulgent drivel for free. (AS IN BEER OF COURSE) Now they have to pay to fuck up search engine results.
:( Meh, meh, meh! :( :( :(
That makes me sad like a panda without any bamboo
I've never personally used it, but I've noticed what seemed to be a large number of security issues found in the product at a time when I was doing a security audit of a system that was using it.
That's not to say that the other CMS systems don't have their own security problems, and I know the couple that I've written probably had their own issues, but I didn't pull a Matt Wright [of FormMail fame] and go distributing crappy software all over the place, either.
Nuke Security seems to have some information about securing various versions of PHPNuke.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I'm in the process of writing weblog software (that I call GMPP). Who knows; maybe with enough unhappy movabletype users, I might actually get somewhere! muahahaha.
Serendipity.
Written in PHP. Uses MySQL. Lean. Mean. Flexible. Extremely nice plugin API. GPL.
If you are looking for a standards compliant, feature rich, and open source weblog solution written in PHP have a look at Serendipity.
I've been hit by this kind of thing before. Now I really look hard at the license.
If they can do this, it can't have been an open source license. So these kinds of problems are actually a good reason why you should look for software whose license is compliant with the official open source definition, not just software for which you can get the source. You can get the source for Windows or Java, and you sell your soul if you look at it.
Actually, given MT's presentation, this shouldn't come as a surprise anyway. With many projects, you can tell whether they are commercial and use source availability (under an OSS license or not) to try to get into a market in which they would otherwise not have a snowball's chance in hell, or whether they area genuine community-driven open source projects. Unfortunately, source availability as a marketing gimmick is becoming more and more common and developers keep falling for it, sometimes in really big ways.
So you see folks, there ARE other alternatives to Moveable Type.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
And no one mentioning another one called Nucleus? It's GPL as well.8) I have been using it since last Oct, it's very stable, tons on plugins available.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
b2evo This is what I would recommend people check out first.
BBlog (requires PHP version 4.1 or greater & MySQL version 3.23 or greater)
Bit 5 Blog
blosxom (only need ability to run CGI scripts)
drupal.org (mySQL or similar required)
LiveJournal.org
MyPHPblog/Simplog (seems to require MySQL would have to download to be sure.)
Nucleus (requires PHP version 4.0.6 or higher and access to a MySQL database version 3.23.38 or higher)
Pivot (only php required)
pLog (requires PHP 4.1.x or higher and MySQL 3.1.x or higher)
Scoop (requires Apache with mod_perl and mySQL)
TikiWiki (requires PHP 4.1+ and MySQL. Very powerful software.)
WordPress (requires PHP version 4.1 or greater and MySQL version 3.23.23 or greater.)
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
Many alpha bloggers have been waiting for MT3 a long time - SixApart has been dragging it's feet, since they were very busy developing their big purely commercial version TypePad.
... especially since TypePad has all those goodies!
TypePad has many features many MT users have been waiting for a long time - especially since many MT users paid some money to use their tool. Some of that money kept SixApart alife and financed the developement of TypePad.
MT3 hardly offers ANY new features - none of those we can see in TypePad, like list management, gallery etc.
MT was for many people the only real alternative to Blogger, but MT2.x or even MT3.x now lags behind in terms of features and most of all performance.
There has been a long time announcement for a MT3 Pro version - which never surfaced.
MT3 is still based on static pages, so if you change your layout (CSS or templates) you have to rebuild all pages - which can take down many shared servers. There have been reports that some ISPs won't allow MT installs on their severs, because those rebuilds eat all cpu power. MT is also very slow when it comes to comments.
Many long time MT bloggers with hundreds or thousands of postings and comments are sick and tired about the rebuild issue. Many of the other weblog systems are dynamic since they are based on PHP.
One of the main points for MT2.x have been it's active plugin developer scene - which was mostly born out of the lack of features. Many people hoped that MT3 would include many of these plugins as regular features
SixApart has a bad reputation in terms of licenses and communication. They behave a bit like Apple: we are sooo cool therefore you have to pay more. This may work if you have a product like the iPod, which is really outstanding - but MT3 is not really far ahead of the competition.
Many MT users will switch, because they are disappointed, because they are sick and tired of waiting for better features and constantly putting up with bad communcation.
The pricing schemes is confusing and not very useful for neither private nor business users. A good CMS/blog is worth some money, but not several hundred dollars/euro.
Another point certainly are those many more dynamic weblog systems based on PHP - they are easier to hack for most people and less bitchy about server performance. They should have released a home (around $30) and a business version (around $75) - PLUS different kind of support contracts - like so many other companies do. Let's say a MT3 Gold service contract will cost you $500 a year, but you will hava a three hour response time etc.
MT/SixApart once hat the lead and they had the buzz. The negative wave has been building up for at least six months now. I am sure SixApart won't disppear over night, but it will take them a long time or a very bold business move to get rid of that bad vibe and earn the trust of their users again.
Meanwhile I personally will go for WordPress some day (my weblog).
AFAI understand, the main reason why there's a lot of bitching going on against the MT authors is that they were using their loyal users to beta-test their new MT release (3.0) while keeping them under the mistaken impression it was going to remain free. I quote from one blog:
No business ethics problems? How about this.
You ready a beta release of a piece of software, and ask people to beta test it. Mention nothing about paying, or even that you are considering changing the license. Being the loyal folks they are, lots say "OK" and you give them the software. They upgrade to it, and there's no way to downgrade.
Then, about 5 weeks later, you say, "Oh, by the way, most of you will have to pay to upgrade out of beta". Keeping in mind that most of the people who are the most loyal to MT, and therefore the most likely to have signed up for the beta program, are the ones who take MT to its' limits by using multiple blogs for things like link sidebars, book reviews, photoblogs, etc., and a lot of them no longer qualify for the free version because of the three blog limit.
You've just stranded a whole bunch of people on a beta version of your software, and you're basically extorting them to allow them to upgrade to a non-beta release.
It does look like SixApart have shot themselves in the foot and alienated themselves from their fanbase. They have violated the golden role of starting to charge for something that was previously free. In the world of tech where everyone wants the latest and greatest (and MT users are particularly tech-savvy given the requirements to install and maintain the software), this was always going to be an unpopular decision. How could they not have foreseen this?
The launch of their TypePad service last year (which is basically a fully commercial, hosted MT package with bells and whistles like photo gallery management) was a smart business move; make a service out of your product, and keep the original product free. This latest move, though, is beyond comprehension and will only hurt them. It will sure be interesting to see how they backpedal from this.
---- scrm
I've seen that mentioned elsewhere, but it's a totally different thing. Most people use cheapish shared hosting, and it's pretty much impossible to run the LiveJournal code without your own server.
I am sick of hearing how some company that used to give away software for "free" suddenly starts charging money or imposing adverts or whatever.
..... like when I was trying my hand at a bit of C programming in a spare 15 minutes, got a bit adventurous, and forgot I was logged in as root. That's not a mistake you make twice}.
My software procurement policy is "no source, no sale" and I have never had cause to complain. I don't get spyware. I don't get adware. I don't get browser hijacks. I don't get banner adverts {they are blocked at the proxy}. I don't get viruses. I don't have to reboot my computer for unexplained reasons {I have had to do so for explained reasons
Purveyors of closed-source software are really just after something they can get from you -- whether it be money, or information about you that they can sell to other people for money. You get what you deserve for using it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I think the problem with MovableTYpe isn't that they're charging $$, but rather their pricing architecture is too restrictive to the 3rd party programmers that made it happen
More on this at:
What we can learn from MovableType's new pricing schedule
--- have you healed your church website?
Besides, it isn't about the money. It is about the community. MT has quite the devoted community around the and Six Apart pissed on a lot of shoes.
Time will tell if it is worth it, but perhaps Six Apart now wants to get into the commercial CMS business dominated by other, just as crappy, outfits providing 'solutions' that include invalid markup, bad Information Architecture, and outrageous fees.
Count me a very happy WordPress user; the install is simple, no restrictions on use, and it validates. Most importantly though, no more using stupidto fake paragraphs.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
Ummm ... while MT has been 'open code' ... MovableType has NEVER been Open Source ... says so right in their documentation.
--- have you healed your church website?
When I said open source, I didn't mean the official open source definition. I meant available source.
PS: I also paid my version of MT2 - like so many have. I guess for many people it's not an issue to pay something - but the whole bad management, communication and no new features for a hefty price tag. Many MT users are not willing to support an expensive maintenance release. They don't want everything for free - but a good release, good features and a reliable company behind it.
Quitcher bitchin'. This only applies to a) individuals posting to MORE THAN THREE blogs, and b) blogs with multiple authors. Anybody meeting one of these criteria is likely not doing this 'just as a hobby', and can afford to pony up a one-time software fee that seems perfectly reasonable. Or switch to something else. Just quit whining already.
People can use the free version, that does not have all the features of the pay to use version.
Whats wrong with a company that is still offering there product for free, but trying to make money off it by offering more features to the people who are willing to pay for it.
Just because a company wants to make SOME money does not make it a bad thing.
TruePunk | Games
I quote from Techdirt Mike's analysis:
It seems that they've screwed up one of the most basic rules in pricing: never take away features and charge for them. You can charge for new features - but taking away features that were included for free before always pisses off your most loyal customers. They feel suckered. They feel like you've pulled a bait and switch on them. In this case, many MT users set up multiple blogs with multiple authors. That's what the software encouraged them to do. Now, they're looking at the pricing and realizing to continue doing so on the new platform would cost them around $600. "Costs more for doing less" isn't a way to make users happy.
---- scrm
I read a article about blosxom in Linux Journal recently. Sounds like a pretty sane Blogging system.
I've tried a few CMS and read about many. Obviously some are more suitable than others for certain situations. Drupal has been perfect for running my two sites. One has a book and news stories while the other is purely a blog. Drupal's online documentation is very good and the community is very very helpful with users. I highly recommend it.
Developers: We can use your help.
DailyKos, one of the more popular political blogs (mentioned on Air America quite a bit), is using a slightly modified form of Scoop. If you haven't heard of Scoop, it runs Kuro5hin.
Finding God in a Dog
I'm new to blogging and group/forum CMS systems, so forgive my n00b-idity.
In terms of features and target implementation, how do WordPress and MT stack up against stuff like PhpNuke, Drupal and Plone? Don't they all do basically the same thing?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Really, the GNU license surrenders all rights to constrain distribution of the software, it's derivatives, and collected works.
The fallacy that companies can charge for GNU licensed software is another stallman boondoggle intended to obfuscate the true purpose of the license.
You cannot charge me for software I can download and run myself. It's called commoditization. I will pay no higher than the marginal cost of acquisition. E.g. Box + Book
That's why companies must sell something else, such as service / support / hardware etc...All of which run counter to the production of high quality software.
You don't need service or support if your software performs as advertised. You don't need custom code if it's user friendly. Ergo, the better the software becomes, the lower your revenue return.
It's a downward spiral of loss for those that invest time, money or talent. You cannot recapture more than your initial investment over any period of time. That's an economic sinkhole.
Don't worry, VC's have already caught on and other firms are waking up. E.g. Sun Microsystems.
Have you had a look at OpenCMS? Its not really intended for blogs, but for more formal web content management. I've used it on a couple of projects and its free as in both beer and speech.
I'd publish a tool to migrate MovableType data to WordPress DB format, but I'd charge for its use. Why do so many in the developer-centric Slashdot community resent paying developers?
--
make install -not war
Then why didn't you say "available source" instead of spreading FUD? What a troll.
The only thing I really see as changed is that they don't allow free users to create more than 3 blogs.
should cost $10,000 per copy with an additional charge of $10 per word entered into each Blog.
The Internet would be a much better place.
The NucleusCMS weblog is probably worth considering as MT users look for options. It allows creation and management of multiples weblog from one install, and from one mySQL database. It's setup is simple, it's configuration of simple.
Some of the weblog software that is being recommended is not, in fact, as equivalent in features to MT as are being advertised.
NucleusCM can be found at http://nucleuscms.org
It might be too late for SUNW. It kind of funny that for all the hate linux users have for Microsoft, Linux will run all the *nix companies out of business well before they'll even touch MSFT.
http://www.pivotlog.net/ , Pivot is a great opensource product made in the Netherlands.
http://www.mijnkopthee.nl/ , this guy made it.
- Derek
I will no longer be using MT. Sure it was a great product, but for Mena, Ben, and the crew I think this was a bad move. Especially since they did this not even a week after Blogger released their upgrade. Why pay for something that should be free.
BTW, I can convert your MT weblogs to pretty much any other weblog if you are interested!
http://www.providenames.com
If you use it, and like it, why shouldn't the authors be able to make a living selling it?
What's this morbid fascination that software should be free (as in beer)? If all software is free, then all programmers are worthless. If you cannot create a product that someone is willing to pay for, then you are a total loser.
1) I wanted to know whether anyone was actually visiting my page and from where and how often; and
2) I wanted the option of putting my own advertising up in the event I ever get a significant number of hits. Sure I might make $2/yr, but the option is still there.
Yes I could have configured blogger to upload to the same account, but in the end, I chose Pivot. Good reasons for choosing it were that you only need PHP and berkely db running on the box (very very common software), so you didn't need to configured any backend databases. The only downside to this of course is that you need to make everything under the blog dir writable by the apache process.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
Basically, anyone running MovableType right now has several options:
I've developed and ran sites based on MT, pMachine and WordPress, the site in signature is completely WordPress-based and you can read my impressions in WordPress Testimonials section. I find pMachine the easiest to use, MT the most powerful and WordPress the most attractive with licensing terms and least likely to pull shit like that.
Hopefully this decision by SixApart will move more bloggers and developers into WordPress, which would accelerate improvement. I mean, realistically, MT is not that much better, and even though Wordpress can be rough if you don't know PHP or not willing to play with the code, they seem to be progressing at good speed right now.
I think everyone really wants free as in speech
That just isn't true. I, like every other slashdotter, don't want to pay for my cool software tools. That's the plain truth of the matter.
But "people have to eat"
I believe my blogging system cant be beaten, and its only a few lines of bash and emacs lisp : link here :P
As a Shareware author in the late 80s and early 90s, I have some specific opinions on these issues. I wouldn't be as successful as I am today if it weren't for the jump start Shareware provided, but I often wonder whether or not I could do the same thing in today's industry. I doubt it.
I can see both sides of the issue. On one side you have people and companies whoring themselves out, giving away free software and services in order to compensate for not having resources to advertise, but at some point they need to see some return or else they can't sustain the development of their products.
On the other hand, you have have users who have become spoiled and selfish and expect everything to be free, and eveything to be super-cheap.
On yet another front, you have both commercial and shareware companies flooding the market with buggy and inferior products with little or no tech support. And then you have mafia like Quicken, forcing users to pay more and more each year to simply maintain the functionality of their software once they hoodwink users into converting over.
The whole industry is a mess. The one shining star in all of this is Open Source. There is a clear delineation between the for-profit and for-development arms of most of these projects and that's a refreshing change.
It used to be a gamble relying on shareware. You never knew if the company was going to be around or there'd ever be an update, or whether things would just suddenly stop working or break. Now you have the same thing with most of the commercial companies. I don't blame the users for being cautious about which products to support, but the bottom line is that people work hard to create these systems and if they don't get compensated one way or another, they can't keep up the work.
In the end, you get what you pay for, literally and figuratively. If you've never given a dime to the developers of systems you use on a regular basis, then shut your trap when they close up shop or are forced to adopt the new industry-standard of strong arming users into paying.
What many of the posts here have failed to mention is the restriction Six Apart has carefully hidden in their Terms of Service:
"You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU."
This presents a problem for many people who purchase webhosting; if their webhost using servers with more than one CPU (very likely), they legally cannot install/use Movable Type.
Oh, and to address the people who say to stay with version 2.6: holding back on the upgrade is only a temporary solution. The next time a Movable Type bug or security hole is discovered, I'm willing to bet that Six Apart is only going to patch the 3.0 tree.
I have a much longer rant about the license change here.
I'm Trappped at Berkeley.
I spy someone who hasn't read a typical modern AUP/TOS document...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Don't forget pMachine! It's the best.
Just use Drupal instead. Free, powerful, extensible... Oh, and the blogger stuff is just a part of it, it's actually a lot more than that (kinda like a software to build Slashdot type of sites).
I installed it on my server and dumbed it down so only the blog is active, and it's working great.
Warmest regardes,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
If you wanna come to wordpress, you might find this moving guide handy with all the details about what needs to be done before, during and after the move.
Yes, there are options, but not having to rely upon an outside service for updating the content in your blog or gallery is what MovableType provides.
I agree that MovableType (and sixapart) should have the right to charge for their program. But going from free to crippled 70-600 dollar licenses is a bit of a shock to those of us who didn't see this coming.
Blogger or livejournal, etc are of course for people who don't want to get their hands dirty with setup and maintenance. It's a great service. But what happens if the service goes belly-up? Think mp3.com and the artists. While there's a great deal of minless drivel on many blogs, still others provide witty, insightful, funny, local, or even newsworthy content.
It's a shame that MovableType has deliberately alienated their community support and likely will end their own dominance over the weblog content management software.
For people starting out on weblogging, I agree that multiply, blogger, livejournal, or some such service is definitely worth a look.
For those of you already using MT and looking for alternatives, the ones that have been commonly mentioned in the past day may be worth checking out. For example, TextPattern, Drupal or Wordpress.
Don't like the free alternatives? MT's success came from community support. Do the same thing for these. Test them, report bugs, develop them, use them. Show MT that they're not the only game in town, just one of the most expensive.
Ben & Mena Trott, created MT while both of them were unemployed from the dotboom. While wondering how they were goingt to pay for their bills, they continued to work on this awesome program that thousands of people got to use for free. So now they want to get paid for all the work they did....i say good for them. If somebody is cool enough to still have the motivation to develop a product while under great stres, they deserve sucess....
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Could you PLEASE publicly (as in, post it in a blog, and then e-mail a copy) challenge M&B about this! I remember this as well and I find this kind of about-face to be a real kick in the teeth.
Yes, I understand that they're trying to run a company and keep a roof over their heads, but this new license is really not suitable for a LOT of the folks who use and love MT. I mean, c'mon, I'm running MT on a dual-CPU PII, a half-dozen blogs (only 2 public) and 20+ authors (my friends and a couple of accounts that are just for automated postings & such). Do they seriously think that I'm going to cough up $600+ out of brand loyalty?
I appreciate their effort, and I've donated to them in the past, but they're putting themselves in competition with several free (speech & beer) alternatives.
While I can see MT becoming the tool of choice for ISP/ASP markets who want to provide weblog services to their clients, I think that the 'hobby' and 'lightweight' marketshare will either freeze at MT 2.6x or go elsewhere and take their marketshare to other blogging tools.
I also imagine that all those folks writing MT 2.x plug-ins will quickly start duplicating the 'new' features that MT3 is hawking.
Remember what happened when Kazaa sold out and a raft of other free P2P clients turned up the heat and started giving them a real run for the corporate money?
I'm sure that this won't be the last we hear of it, and I wouldn't be suprised if MT rethinks it's licensing policy, but I'm almost positive that I'm going to move my MT blogs over to something else in the next 3-6 months.
Best of luck to Mena & Ben in the wild woolly world of corporate software, but I hope you've got your mittens; a lot of folks are going to start giving you the cold shoulder over this.
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
I was thinking about MT, but then I checked the license. It was a commercial product. I figured something like this might happen. That's why I continued looking.
I found WordPress. WordPress's license is GNU/GPL. Free software. No matter what happens, it's free. Unlimited use. WordPress happens to be excellent software.
MT users will miss a few features. Trackback doesn't work out of the box with WordPress. You have to jump through a hoop to get it working. WordPress has categories, but not subcategories yet. WordPress does not yet support multiple blogs on the same page.
On the whole, though, MT users will be happy with WordPress.
so its ok to make thousands in ad money from your blog, but the people who actually work hard to make the software you use cant make anything? logical, oh wait this is slashdot
WAAAAAAAH!!! I want all my toys for FREE!!! WAAAAAAAAAH!!! No ads! No fees! I don't care if you put thousands of hours of work into it, I want it my way and if you don't give it to me I'll call you names!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Anyone who cares to chime in and let Six Apart know how they feel should both weigh in vie Trackbacks to Mena's post on http://sixapart.com/corner/ and chime in at the support forums and http://www.movabletype.org/support/index.php?s=73e 99f66b1894f2bafe8c17f192d13d6&act=ST&f=11&t=40800& st=32&#entry182353 in particular.
WordPress, here I come
They have the fantastic strategy of including friend settings and friendlists, which gives them a huge leg up over other services; basically locks all those us who want to communicate with friends using blogs into the same system. Which I admit isn't exactly ideal from a privacy/security standpoint, but it works pretty well.
I like the ideas of categories, but not hierarchies per se. I can file a piece under art & politics or art & me for instance. You can't comfortably do that in a hierarchy. That said, I wish Txp let you use more than two categories.
Photos.
...Was the bit at the end of the licensing statement, that you may only install one copy on a single processor server.
Didn't Oracle try something like this and it blew up in their face?
Why not price it in the realm of sanity, More then one author and/or three blogs you owe us $50.00US.
If you only use it for yourself, one author and/or 3 blogs then it's still free.
Simple, fair, and a lot more people would be willing to pay. As it is you're chasing your customer base away.
My grandfather asways said it's easier selling 100 items for a buck than 1 item for 100 bucks.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
For those of you concerned about the TypeKey account required to download MT3.0, why not use this handy Dodgeit email account?
http://unxmaal.com
you got ROCKS, and medium ones!??!11! Why, back in the day, we had to make do with moose antlers, after first rasslin them down with our bare hands, then gnawing the antlers into points with our teeth! And we LIKED it!
You kids with your technology....
It is free, look on the site:
Not willing to pay for Movable Type yet? This fully-functional version of the application is available free of charge. Important limitations of this license include:
* No support from Six Apart
* No access to paid installation service
* No access to fee-based services
* No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list
* No commercial usage
* No more than one author and three weblogs
Download Movable Type Free.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
How is this a free upgrade to my commercial MT 2.6 license? (Hint: it isn't)
Here's what DJB has to say, anyway: Software Law.
Just ask your loyal readers to donate some money(paypal) for the license. If your blog is any good you will easily get the required amount. If not, just quit - there are already way too much blogs out there.
my 0,02 (im european)
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Nuke is full of code like:
$result = $db->sql_query("SELECT rid, name, url from ".$prefix."_related where tid=$id");
which pass URL parameters directly to the query without validating them and don't enclose them in quotes. By simply appending some SQL code to the end of a URL it can alter that query to do nasty things. Simply quoting all user parameters in SQL queries and using intval() to insure that any values that should be integers actually are fixes a huge number of holes.
Nukecops has a secure patched version which fixes the known holes and adds extensive parameter checking.
This is the perfect way to prove the socio-political democratizing empowerment powers of Blogs: bloggers 'round the world must blog in protest to win the day!
I love it when people complain about bloggers, and QUOTE THEM when they complain.
I love it when people don't know what the hell they are talking about. But thanks for playing.
That is a very bad case of vendor lock-in. What, does your "urination implement" fit in only their "proprietary toilet"?
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
What they have done was get the blogging community nice and addicted to their software. Now that we are addicted, they want money.....just like the drug dealer. I am sorry. GPL'd or not ( and it is NOT GPL'd), this is just a bad bad thing to do with a community as big as the blogging community condering that there are more CMS out there that ARE GPL'd. I WAS going to launch a personal site based on MT (just me and mmy wife as authors) and the free one won't work for me.
Gorkman
Greymatter all the way.
seriously there are many free alternatives that are as good if not better. Personally I really like greymatter.
first, please stop that stupid blog bashing ala "the web would be a better place without all this uninteresting shit". a) remember: http is a request/response protocol, you only see what you requested. b) i'm sure in the next discussion about anything web-related on /. you're going to put your tinfoil hats on and start argueing against censorship (which is a good thing).
;) ) and just want to browse and read. blogs are far more interesting than most commercial websites.
second, i like reading blogs. there's this certain time (mostly a sunday afternoon) when you're to lazy to do anything serious (and to smart to watch tv
beer as in "free beer"
1. Nobody wants to be surprised.
It would have been better for Six Apart to discuss the new pricing scheme while 3.0 was in Beta. Maybe they could have made their case more effectively.
2. Nobody wants to be insulted.
Six Apart shouldn't even offer a free version if they are going to insult the people who use it. "Not willing to pay for Movable Type yet?" Why don't they just say "Wanna be a big jerk and not pay us anything?" If that's how they feel, don't offer the free version.
It's more CMS-like than a normal blog, but it's no CMF+CMS. For a magazine, I'd really go with something like zope/plone or another full fledged CMF/CMS solution.
Photos.
Well, good for you. I suspect that you'r'e in a minority here - esp paying for distros. I gave up that game after buying SuSE 6 (superceded 3 months after I purchased it) and RedHat 8 (superceded 4 months after I purchased it).
The obscure point i was making in my original post is that this entire discussion and all the outrage that it contains exists purely because the average Slashdot reader doesn't want to pay for software. Simple.
I wrote my OWN blogging scripts. I don't have to pay for features I DON'T want and don't have to pay for features I DO want. Plus, I have the satisfaction in knowing I did all the hard work.
-- Two in the pink, one in the sink.
Is there any other blog software out there with the template flexibility of MT? My main index template and other templates for MT2.661 are actually aspx pages, with aspx extensions. I use MT for the blogging and maintenance of the static pages. But the page templates can be anything you like, in my case they are part of an asp.net website. One big appeal of MT is that you can use it as a defacto CMS system for your entire site.
I'll probably be modded down for plugging my own work, but I wrote a very simple blogging tool that uses phpBB to manage blog entries and replies. It's phpBB Blog, and it's available under the new BSD license (no advertising clause). So it's free beer and free speech. I'll have a new version release in early June. Maybe some of the MT defectors here could consider it (although really, it's quite simple, probably not useful to many MT fans).
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Can't agree more!
Of all the free CMS that I recently saw, Drupal is the best of the crop for sure.
It is not only a blog, forums, publishing system, but even have modules for things like syndication, weather, e-commerce and more.
You can see it as a product, or as a framework that you can customize to your own liking.
It runs on Windows or UNIX, either Apache or IIS, and MySQL, Postgresql, or even MS SQL.
Writing a module is not a hard task.
Unless you are anti-PHP or a Perl bigot or something, give Drupal a try.
You will not regret it.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
We rest our case.
However, table and field names are bound by other rules, so you can throw an error if it contains any illegal characters:Of course, I didn't like that I was tied into using a particular database by the function calls, either -- I guess I've gotten spoiled with DBI in Perl.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Presumably you believe it's crippled because you have to pay for it, which I have to say I find a poor argument.
I would agree its a poor argument, but it probably wasn't the argument intended by the author. Since your presumption is likely incorrect, so then would be your conclusion.
What I think he is getting at is this: There is a free (beer) version for non-commercial use under the new system, but it is limited to single-author, single-user blogs and doesn't have all features.
In other words, he was used to an all-features MT, and now he can only "upgrade" into a more limited-features MT. Of course, he need not upgrade, or he can opt to pay for the the features in the upgraded version.
At the end of the day, I tend to agree with many of the others here. MT was the best of what was out there for free for awhile, and intertia precluded me from thinking about redoing it in a new world. Now, I have the choice of upgrading MT (which, by the way is always a chore), and hopefully sorting it quickly, and paying money. Or I can spend the money on pizza and beer while I do a convert to an equally powerful alternative.
I'm inclined to do the convert now, just for the amusement. I think MT did great stuff and they are to be commended. I guess I would agree with you as well: I'll use something else, because it probably isn't worth the money in a market with excellent free alternatives.
This is where it really bites. If you are a MT 2.x user, and some security bug is discovered, will 6apart fix the bug and release the fix free for 2.x? Or will they force you to upgrade to the pay-for-play 3.x?
Always. Go. With. GNU. GPL.
Always.
"They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"
Here's a concept for ya: blogs are a fad. In some number of years, probably 2 years or 1 year, they are no longer going to be "in" and instead they are going to be "out". At that time, no one will care.
So, (a) don't get too worked up about it, and (b) it makes sense for Movable Type to try to figure out how to make money off this now, since now is all they've got and all they're ever going to have with this product.
/.'ers are all about the free ride, and they like to whine when its over.
information doesnt want to be free, they just dont want to pay for it
Did you get the URL correct? The page doesn't exist anymore.
Today, Six Apart responded to the comments, making some changes based on feedback and clarified the things that they didn't communicate well.
I've written my feelings already: pre- and post-clarification
b2evolution has pretty much all of the features supported by MT's paid-package, unlike WP. Trackbacks/pingbacks, multiple blogs, multiple languages, extended categories, clean permalinks, you name it - the list of features seems to never end. Version 0.9 was just released today (Check the snazzy press release.) A MT migration script should be out within the next two weeks, and we're hoping to scoop up some of the disenfranchised MT bloggers. The dev team for b2evolution, in my experience, tends to be extremely responsive to users' needs and feedback. The support is extremely good, and the documentation is growing rapidly. Overall, a very flexible, powerful, and user-friendly system. (It's also one of the only open-source CMS systems that I've seen that will run on an IIS platform!) Best of all, it's free, and looks like it's going to stay that way for a long time.
Isaac Z. Schlueter
http://foohack.com
URL was working, but I figure they ripped it.
If you don't want to be indexed, either use robots.txt, or the ROBOTS meta tag:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"/>
(Or else typoed a hyphen before "nude".)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt