Bloggers Assail Movable Type's New Pricing Scheme 391
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."
Good example of why open source != free (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS talks about free speech........ (Score:5, Insightful)
How dare they! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not Bait-n-Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
From their website (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Yeah, Income Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Moveable Type is so cliche (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just Switched (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I got hit with it too (Score:4, Insightful)
With software, it's generally much more difficult to switch vendors. System requirements and means of configuration, not to mention configuration options, are often vastly different.
Granted, proficiency with the underlying principles (Component functions in a car, protocols in software) go a long way in easing change. However, while many people aren't familiar with cars beyond filling the tank and checking the oil, most people aren't familiar with the workings of databases and HTTP.
Re:How dare they! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily.
Product A (commercial) is non-crippled, and non-free.
Product B (shareware) is crippled, and free (gratis).
Product C (GPL) is non-crippled, and free (both ways).
Product C is hence a non-crippled, free alternative to A. Non-crippled is not redundant, as there are other free alternatives to product A which are crippled: C's advantage over them is that it is non-crippled and free.
No ill intention (Score:3, Insightful)
Metafilter discussion (Score:2, Insightful)
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).
Re:Blogging sucks anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)
The development of a meta tag that stopped Google from indexing a blog (or any site, really) would keep them from interfering with people who don't care about it, but could be removed for applications like political blogs or news sites. (Most of the people who blog couldn't tell the difference between a meta tag and a meat tag, so including it by default wouldn't be a bad idea.)
Blogging has genuinely useful features, the least of which is the recording of the human experience in a way unprecedented in the history of the world.
Re:From their website (Score:4, Insightful)
Why most users are bitching... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [sixapart.com] 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 [typepad.com] 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.
YAWN (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I love you but hope ya don't mind if I shop around (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:I got hit with it too (Score:5, Insightful)
In the general case, yes. In the case of MoveableType... well, you have the code... it is written in Perl... and all your data is safely stored away in a format that is easily retrievable.
At the end of the day, MT is just an interface into and out of a database. An open source database at that.
It has really cool features for puttting and getting the data... but, it doesn't "trap" the data.
Re:How dare they! (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't quite work like that. In practice, I find it's more like: "Find the product with the best feature set. Then look for second best, and so on down until features start lacking or you run out. Be mindful of ties. Consider crippled payware as two products, one with registration and one without. Then, check prices, and download/buy the one with the best features for the lowest price."
The important distinction I'm trying to make is that, if two products offer identical features, and one costs and the other is free, the free one is obviously the correct choice, and that's what seems to be the case here.
Re:Please oh please oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously.
The internet is supposed to be many things to many people and one of those is a forum for expression of ideas and thought. Who appointed you the gatekeeper? Do you really have the gall to think that just because someone posts something of no interest to you, that it is somehow not worthy?
More elitist crap from the geek contingent is all I'm seeing.
Pricing 101: what not to do (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If you like it, pay for it (Score:1, Insightful)
What's this morbid fascination that software should be free (as in beer)? If all software is free, then all programmers are worthless. If you cannot create a product that someone is willing to pay for, then you are a total loser.
Re:hack it! (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have a license to modify and distribute it.
Re:Pass the crack (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
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"
Shareware, Freeware, Extortion (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The Other Restriction (Score:4, Insightful)
"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 [evilcoder.com].
Some people never stop bitching... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Please oh please oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that Slashdot is a blog, right?
Re:Please oh please oh please (Score:3, Insightful)