Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
<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
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!!!!
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).
...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.
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).
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.
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.
Serendipity.
Written in PHP. Uses MySQL. Lean. Mean. Flexible. Extremely nice plugin API. GPL.
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.
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 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?
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.
- 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
There is nothing at all wrong with developers "charging" for their services. What I have a problem with is when a community develops the majority of the features of the product, then someone else grabs them, sticks a price tag on it and sells it. MT would be nothing like it is now if it werent for the MT community.
http://www.providenames.com
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"
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.
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.
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.
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
...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.
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
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.
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