molly.com
Saturday 15 May 2004
six apart responds to movable type 3.0 outcry
Anyone in the blogosphere who’s been watching the Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition saga of the past few days will be happy to know that Six Apart has revised its position regarding licensing and is expanding options for the free version.
Specific points in the revised structure I found interesting:
- Anyone who has donated 20 dollars or more to Movable Type in the past will be able to apply their full donation to this release of MT 3.0.
- The Personal Edition will now allow 5 weblogs instead of only 3. There is no nagware in the edition, so how you actually use the Personal Edition is based on honor.
- You can add 1 new weblog and 1 new author for 10 additional dollars. You may purchase as many of these as you require, of course.
It does appear that Six Apart was admittedly surprised by the response :
“One of the most valid comments we heard is that the personal licenses do not work well for many people who are currently using Movable Type. This surprised us because in a survey of 2500 people, a whopping 85% of respondents had 5 of fewer weblogs or authors.” - Mena Trott
While many people remain upset, suspicious, or unfulfilled by the compromises, I applaud Six Apart for responding honestly and openly to the public response. Many people advocated their original position, still, it must have been pretty awful to be on the wrong end of such profound backlash. Six Apart could have said nothing, let the ragers rage on until they tired themselves out, and stuck to their original plan. But they have retained an open dialog and have responded very quickly with a compromise. The desire to remain communicative and community-oriented appears to be very much alive at Six Apart, and that’s reassuring.
In terms of the good folks who wrote in or blogged concerns about the Teach Yourself Movable Type book that Porter Glendinning and I co-authored and which is hitting the shelves just this week, it’s interesting to note this bit:
“We would recommend that, if you’re not the type of person who likes to tinker with Movable Type or would require a installation, you hold off until the general release. We won’t be providing installation services for 3.0 (we’ll still install 2.661) during this period to reinforce that this is a period for diehard Movable Type users.”
Many thanks to those folks who were concerned for the welfare of our book, it was really awesome to find that a significant number of people were genuinely concerned about our position in all this. For now, I’ll be sticking to the 2.661 release here at molly.com, at least for a few months. After that, I’ll be making the decision whether to upgrade, or to move to WordPress, which I’m personally interested in for a number of reasons. WordPress fans, now’s your chance to convince me.
Hat tip: Radio Free Blogistan.
Filed under: blogging
Posted by: site admin | 5:03 am |
May 15th, 2004 at 2:36 am
I’m still relatively new to MT and web development. With 15 years under my belt in mainframe application development, I was stunned to find something as robust as MT to be so accessible to ordinary folks, and yet so readily extensible.
It didn’t surprise me that the tool I like best for me (SQLyog) for managing my MT MySQL database cost $50, and I figure some cost will be attached to the most promising Win32 xmlrpc-based blogging tool I’ve seen (ecto) once it’s fully developed.
Six Apart is no doubt learning valuable lessons about researching their market and setting expectations, but it seems to me they’re also being more than flexible in offering a free option, using the honor system, using distinct URLs to count blogs, and excluding inactive blogs and authors from counts for licensing purposes.
With that structure, it will remain possible for someone launch a smart new blog like this one (which uses MT 2.6) without putting a penny in SixApart’s pocket.
Like you, Molly, it doesn’t makes sense for me to upgrade to MT 3 for a while. I want to give it a chance to mature a bit, and for plug-ins to be adapted and developed. I like the idea that MT development is being driven by folks who are bright, thoughtful, pragmatic, and determined to build a sustainable product.
May 15th, 2004 at 5:28 am
For the moment, one of the things that attracts me to WP (I’m still on MT) is the possibility of having sub-categories. I also like the templates (which is silly, as I like designing my own thing, but I think the WP templates are really sexy).
I also like the fact that I can catch the developers in #wordpress, and that I know some of them (probably not a good reason to choose WP over MT for the general public, but it is for me).
Another interesting point for me with WordPress is the possibility it might have support for multi-language blogs in the future — an issue I’ve been concerned with for a long time, and that I know Michel cares about.
May 15th, 2004 at 6:58 am
Nice summary of the MT-gate controversy. And good luck with the book.
May 15th, 2004 at 9:39 am
Six Log: Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition
I got an email this morning from SixApart (a standard email though), where they promise to clarify the licensing agreement to all and to explain goodwill discounts for MT3.0 beta testers (of which I am one). So it was not
May 15th, 2004 at 10:56 am
I think I’ve finally decided that I’m in the same boat. Sticking with 2.661, wait-and-see, not immediately jumping ship to WP (though I do have an up-and-running WP clone of my existing blog, just in case). So far I have no real reason to upgrade.
May 15th, 2004 at 11:07 am
I still object to per-seat licenses for blogging software. I would gladly pay a large chunk of cash for using MT as I have been using, as I find it invaluable.
But any decision that forces you to fork over an extra $10 each time you decide to set up a new blog or add a new author to a group blog is asinine.
Why exactly should Ben and Mena get an extra ten dollars because I decided to devote my machine’s resources to a friend’s communication on the Internet?
This is a step backwards in terms of the true power of the blog to fulfill the original TBL vision of “everyone publishes” and it’s only done because Ben and Mena can’t figure out how to make money with Six Apart.
I am so switching to WordPress as soon as it gets a little more mature.
–Kynn
May 15th, 2004 at 11:31 am
You should check out Mark’s post - ‘Why would one switch from Moveable Type to WordPress?’ - which has a list of WP’s good points.
May 17th, 2004 at 2:05 am
This is the only way I think of, to convince you…
Move To Wordpress - A tutorial at my blog for moving from MT.
Molly, you will get meta-satisfaction over there
Trust me, your inputs to WP will be much appreciated and acknowledged.
May 18th, 2004 at 3:24 am
Blogging Technology Going Open Source
Blogging Technology Going Open Source. Interesting move by Dave Winer to keep his code alive. May not be such a…
May 18th, 2004 at 3:51 am
Give a try to Mambo as well, I heard comments it’s a good CMS, and open source: http://www.mamboserver.com/
May 18th, 2004 at 6:10 am
Hi Molly and everyone else
I have just started learning css and blogging. Thats atually how I came by your blog. And your blog got me started on my own heh. I came upon wordpress when searching for blogging software and tried it. I would not hesitate to reccomend wordpres. I am certainly not a techie type and even I found it insanely easy to use.
Sincerely
Toadstool
May 18th, 2004 at 8:48 am
I switched from MT to B2 a couple years ago because my domain host said MT was being a server hog, and then to Wordpress once development on B2 slowed down. It took some getting used to, but after a while, it got easier and easier.
PHP in general is an easier language to understand. I have minimal knowledge on PHP, but I’ve been able to make my own mods. I like that WP is all dynamic as well. Everything is updated instantly–no rebuilding, no lag time.
The only thing that was annoying in the beginning was having to install WP for each blog (you can’t control all blogs from one program like in MT). But as installation got easier, this became less of a problem. I also like that you can use the same database to handle more than one blog.
MT is still a powerful program I think. But for my needs, WP handled the job more efficiently.
May 19th, 2004 at 1:36 am
The Best Choice - Wordpress
Lately, mostly because of Six Apart’s decision to charge licensing fees for Movable Type 3, many users have been considering and switching over to different content management systems for the blogs. At one point in the past couple of years, Movable T…
May 19th, 2004 at 7:04 am
I applaud MT for listening to users and forming a moderate compromise, but I’m very disappointed by the blogosphere’s nasty response to an important business plan. It’s sad to see people so criticial of the very people who delivered — for free — the product they love in the first place.
Businesses with employees and futures need to make money. You can’t and shouldn’t get everything for free. When is the culture of the Internet going to change?
May 19th, 2004 at 9:51 am
The Great Blogtercation of 2004 : Or on social networks and data mining
UP
May 19th, 2004 at 12:50 pm
The Great Blogtercation of 2004 : Or on social networks and data mining
Six Apart, the people that created Movable Type, the blogware that runs this here site, released the much anticipated MT 3.0 with a licensing agreement radically different from the ones they’ve ran up until version MT 2.661 … and all hell broke loose…
June 18th, 2004 at 5:18 am
Any of you have a copy of moveable type 2.661 that u can send me? I’ve been looking for it everywhere!!
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