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MT 3.0
Movable Type, the software that runs this and thousands of other blogs, is no longer going to be free. (See a sample of the discussion here and here, via Scripting News.) See also the posts linked via trackback to the announcement of these changes. Many people are unhappy, for various reasons. I guess I'm one of them.
Six Apart, the company behind MT, claims its new licensing scheme will satisfy 85% of its users. I guess those of us in the other 15% should look elsewhere for a personal publishing platform. That 15% includes people who maintain or "host" more than 10 blogs on their MT installation, or who have more than 9 authors contributing to those blogs. I currently have at least 10 different weblogs running on my installation of MT, about half of which are dormant or experimental and rarely updated. Those blogs have close to a dozen authors, again, most of whom don't post frequently, if ever. To maintain this level of use, I would need to pay $150 at the introductory rate, or $190 at the regular rate. But since most of those blogs/authors were temporary or experiments, if I cut back to just what I really use, I'd still need to pay $70 at the intro rate, or $100 at the regular rate. That's not so bad, but then, what if I want to add a blog or author down the road some time? More money, more hassle.
Or, what if I wanted to start a co-op for law bloggers? Can't do it with MT anymore, I guess. It was probably a silly idea anyway.
As for Six Apart's other options, TypePad Pro offers unlimited blogs and authors, it looks like, but that will cost you $15 per month! That's $180/year. That seems like an awful lot of money to be spending for the life of your blog, doesn't it? Maybe not. Maybe this is just the price we'll have to pay. (Or, for most people, only $60/year for just one blog/author, or $120/year for three blogs and one author.) I don't really think an idea like BlawgCoop could really work even w/TypePad Pro because, although it allows unlimited blogs, the "authors by invitation" thing makes me think different authors can't have their own blog, but can merely post to yours. That's not the idea.
So you see, my objections to charging for MT are not on principle, or because I think it should be free. I've donated to MT and would be happy to pay for the software—even for updates every year or three. I understand developers can't create software for free; they need to eat and have lives, as well. Great. However, the success of MT created a large group of people—dare I say a "generation" of bloggers—with the expectation that, even if the tool would not always be free, it would always allow them to create as many blogs as they wanted with as many authors as they wanted. That was one of the cool features of MT, and it's a feature that's critical because it allows the imagination to run free—knowing I could add a new blog/author at any time with almost zero hassle and no cost has allowed me to experiment in ways that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. It allowed me to at least consider an idea like BlawgCoop, and even if it was a bad idea, a better one might have followed close behind. MT in its current incarnation (pre-3.0) offers more flexibility and choice than 3.0 will, and that's one of the big things I'd be happy to pay for.
If I switch tools, that flexibility, the openness, the opportunity to dream about new ways to use blogs and to experiment with those ideas or even implement them—that will be why. It's not because I don't want to pay, but because I don't want the blogging software I use to stand in the way of what I want to use it for.
A quick survey of other options for people who want more flexibility:
TextPattern
WordPress
iBlog
GeekLog
pMachine
Others?
UPDATE: Jason Kottke is in about the same boat I'm in. He's got a great solution:
y not make the personal edition a flat fee of ~$60 for unlimited users and weblogs (in addition to the free version with 1 author/3 weblogs)? Here's the reasoning. Tiered personal use (per above) doesn't make much sense. Trust that people using the personal edition will use it in a personal way. The guy offering 50 of his friends MT weblogs on subdomains isn't going to pay for MT, not what you want him to pay anyway. If people start using it in that way, suggest an upgrade to the non-personal edition might be appropriate. If they refuse, they weren't going to pay you anyway.
It wouldn't cover an idea like BlawgCoop, but it would still give users room to move. See more today on Scripting News.
Posted May 14, 2004 07:47 AM | meta-blogging
We use Geeklog. It's versatile, although I think -- judging by the MT sites I visit -- it's not as easy to set up as MT and there aren't as many themes to choose from. I've had to do a lot of tweaking with hand coding, which is OK for me, but may not be for everyone. (I leave the Linux trickiness to my husband, who fortunately likes that sort of thing!) YMMV and all that.
Posted by: scm at May 14, 2004 08:52 AM
The problem with unlimited weblogs and authors is that it does not compensate the developer for the amount of use you are getting out of their product. Six Apart can offer unlimited weblogs and authors to TypePad users because they are limiting bandwidth and disk space capping the utlity a user derives. With MT they cannot do that. Limiting software by the number of users is a common software industry practice for networked software. Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, Macromedia -- they all sell their softwares by the CPU and/or "seat."
Posted by: Timothy Appnel at May 14, 2004 09:48 AM
Perhaps that's true, but don't Oracle, M$, Sun, etc. all offer a "site license" or something that basically gives the purchaser unlimited use of the software? MT could at least offer that. I'm sure it would be priced out of my budget, but at least the option would be there. Of course, they say they want to be flexible about how they implement the licensing, so I'm guessing someone who really wanted this kind of unlimited use could negotiate a unique license or something.
I understand the economics of Six Apart's decision, but to go from donation-ware to charging as much as M$ overnight does seem like a bit much, don't you think? Maybe not. They've done their studies and if 85% of their users will be satisfied with their licensing scheme, MT should do just fine.
Posted by: ambimb at May 14, 2004 01:15 PM
Perhaps that's true, but don't Oracle, M$, Sun, etc. all offer a "site license" or something that basically gives the purchaser unlimited use of the software?
Generally--or at least at the small companies I've worked at--a 'site license' is a per-seat license with a discount based on the number of seats. Huge companies can get site licenses, but not on the scale you're talking about.
85% of their users will be satisfied w/ their new license because:
a) a huge proportion of those will use MT 3.0 free (this will quite happily run my site);
and b) there's not really enough in the way of new features to make 3.0 worthwhile upgrading if you're going to pay for it. I'm assuming--didn't see anything to the contrary--that they're not going to request payment from non-upgraders?
Posted by: A. Rickey at May 14, 2004 03:11 PM
I made much the same point on my personal blog: http://justlooking.recursion.org/2004/May/13#mt3-group-blogs
Movable Type 3 kills group blogs.
And note that there's _no_ plan that would allow you to have, say, 50 users or more than 15 blogs. I think they're trying to stop you from setting up a commercial competitor to TypePad.
This arrangement is absolutely deadly for big group blogs like Crooked Timber or the Political State Project.
I read a cogent analysis of why the MovableType 3.0 pricing sucks: it charges for things that used to be free, and in fact were encouraged.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040513/183228_F.shtml
MT2.6 lets you create as many users and blogs as you want. But 3.0 charges you for the same behavior; so much so that there isn't an upgrade path available for large group blogs!
Unfortunately, there isn't a really good solution for what MT does. WordPress will probably eventually be better, but it needs to support PostgreSQL and multiple blogs from the same install before I'd be able to switch.
I agree that there should be a flat non-commercial license. If the features (SPELL CHECKER PLZ!!) warranted it, I'd probably upgrade to that. But as it is, I can't afford to pay $700 to upgrade to MT3.0 for BushOut.TV and my other blogs.
Posted by: Luke Francl at May 14, 2004 11:37 PM
I figured this was going to happen sooner or later. MT's existing licensing options and licensing agreements are sketchy and ambiguous, and were the subject of much discussion awhile back. I decided to go with MT over WordPress for configurability, and because WordPress combines comments and trackbacks into one section (which really annoys me!).
However, as a former IT admin, I would much rather be using an open-source platform. I've just finished setting up my MT blog, so I might wait awhile and use MT2.6, but I'll probably go with TextPattern or WordPress before too long.
Someday soon I'll write a sort of redux on the MT Personal Non-Commercial Licensing issue.
Posted by: in limine at May 16, 2004 09:13 PM
