More MT 3.0

People are still talking about the MT 3.0 upgrade and new licensing scheme. Luke notes that it might spell the end for many group blogs. That would be a sad loss; I wonder if Six Apart even thought about that. He also points to this note at Tech Dirt that sums up the pricing problems fairly well:

it seems that [Six Apart] 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. One other rule of pricing: recognize the competition. There are an awful lot of blogging tools out there, and more are coming out every day. Not all of these are free, and people clearly pay to use certain tools. However, ignoring competitive pricing (as Six Apart appears to have done, since the prices they're offering are well above the competition) doesn't make much sense - especially when the switching costs really aren't that high.

In case I wasn't clear enough yesterday, I'll reiterate that I'm happy to pay for MT. I paid when I first discovered it because I loved it, and I'll pay again (probably) for a license for the new version. Six Apart has produced a terrific product, and they deserve to be compensated for it, plus the upgrades, speed improvements, etc., are all valuable to me. So I'm not suggesting that Six Apart should not charge, I just wish they'd provide licensing options that would enable users who are willing to pay to continue using MT in the legitimate ways they've been using it for years now.

Also, and maybe this isn't true, but this feels like a shift in blogging from a start-up to a corporate entity. I'm not just talking about Six Apart, but about blogging as a phenomenon, a social space, a new territory. For a while the territory was largely commercial-free—outside the dominant paradigm under which profit drives all decisions. Now, MT has moved into the realm of capital, as has Blogger now that it's been bought by Google and now that Google is going public. Suddenly blogging may become about business, and that shift hasn't proven a positive one for most things web-related

I know the reaction of many, if not most, readers will be that this is a good thing. As a profit-generating business, blogging will grow and flourish, people will have incentive to maintain and continue developing the tools, etc. Whatever. Profit also ensures we always have new movies to watch, but that doesn't mean they're any good. People deserve fair compensation for their work, but money changes things.

UPDATE: It sounds like Six Apart is listening to the critiques of its new licensing scheme and has announced some changes. The best one:

We're adding a new "Personal Edition Add-On" package that gives someone who has purchased a Personal Edition license the ability to buy 1 new weblog and 1 new author for $10. You can purchase as many additional author/weblog packs as you want, each for $10.

That sounds pretty fair to me and allows users quite a bit of flexibility.

Posted 09:11 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging