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."

Please oh please oh please

[SpiffyMarc]

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.

Charge for Software? Quel Horreur!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Please oh please oh please

[gkuz]

Couldn't agree more that if this leads to fewer blogs, it's a Good Thing. They should raise the price even more.

I got hit with it too

[Hanna's Goblin Toys]

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.

Re:Please oh please oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't agree more that if this leads to fewer blogs, it's a Good Thing. They should raise the price even more.

But how will I be able to get through the day without Jerry B. Smith's Blog entries? Today he got up and found his cat had vomitted on the floor in the middle of the night. HILARIOUS! You can't pay for writing that good. A few days ago he described how he had to take his car in for an oil change and it took 15 minutes instead of the more industry standard 10 minute quick change because they were jerking him around. Damn quick change places.

Re:Good example of why open source != free

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmmmmm Free beer..... GULP GULP GULP.. mmm MORE free beer GULP GULP GULP... (footstep) (footstep) (footstep) "HEY! stop blocking the bathroom door man, i gotta pee... What do you mean its $25 to use the bathroom!!! This is an OUTRAGE!!!"

Faux-outrage

[stratjakt]

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.

The software should be free...

[El_Smack]

...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.

And yes, /. is included, so I owe Taco 53 cents. Sigs don't count.

Re:Moveable Type is so cliche

[Seth Finklestein]

W h a t ' s - t h a t - y o u - s a y ?

I thought everyone l o v e d super-wide fonts

and double-spaced lines. MovableType lets me

bring a truly r e a d a b l e blog to the

blogosphere.

Comments (0) [google.com]

Oh no! Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That makes me sad like a panda without any bamboo :( Meh, meh, meh! :( :( :(

Re:YAWN

[prostoalex]

This is not an open source vs. closed source issue. You get the source whether you pay or whether you download, you just don't get the re-distrubution rights.

MovableType is written in Perl, so you do get all the sources. Ironically, since it's written in Perl, MovableType can be considered a closed-source package, since who the hell wants to parse someone else's Perl code.

Re:Good example of why open source != free

[CaptainFrito]

It's not just a Microsoft thing, folks.

Yeah, maybe, but you know that's who they all learned it from...