Movable Type 3.0

There’s been a lot of discussion online recently about Six Apart’s new pricing and licensing structure for the new version of Movable Type 3.0. Movable Type is the software that runs behind the scenes on this website and thousands of others. Previously it had been a free product with optional good-will donations. I’ve donated $40 to Six Apart for the use of this great piece of software. But times are changing.

Some people are talking about switching to WordPress, which is an open source (free, as in beer) that a lot of people like. I’m in the process of reshaping someone’s WordPress blog (people pay me to do these things for some reason) so I’m getting a chance to see it up close and personal.

I really don’t want to switch to something else. I like MT a lot, and as I indicated I’m willing to cough up a few $ to pay for a really great product. And thankfully, my previous donations, as Six Apart had indicated at the time, will apply towards the purchase price of MT 3.0, which at the introductory level is $70 and will be going up to $100 at some point.

What I don’t like about the new licensing of Movable Type is the restrictions. Previously, you could maintain unlimited numbers of blogs with one installation. That’s all changing. I use MT on a couple of websites, and I’ve got a couple of non-public blogs that I use on this website in addition to the public one you’re now reading. So maybe my modest use of MT would fall under the $70 level, but not being able to expand without forking over additional $ is a problem.

Dive Into Mark for example has already switched to WordPress. To my mind, people who are willing to quit MT at the drop of a hat are not loyal customers anyway. Let them go. It’s not like MT 2.661 has suddenly gone away. Obviously the software is installed on people’s local servers and they can continue to use it. Six Apart has already shown signs of being responsive to people’s needs. There was a backlash to the pricing, but let’s face it there’s a lot of people who don’t want to pay for software. They can have Blogger. That’s fine.

I’m in wait-and-see mode. Like I said, MT 2.661 works great for my needs, and at this point there’s not a compelling reason to upgrade—MT 3.0 isn’t a “feature” release anyway. It’s a structural overhaul, and most of the new features seem to be in the commenting system. In some sense Six Apart are trying to upgrade their product in the perceptual space. They’ve dropped the “personal” from “personal publishing system.” Maybe they don’t want to compete with the Blogger.com’s and the Radio Userland’s of the world, but that has been their core market to this point: the bloggers.

The pricing seems about right in the world of paid software, but are bloggers cheap? Perhaps. Full-featured RSS newsreaders cost about $30 (NewsGator, FeedDemon, etc.) but I’m still using SharpReader, a free one, because I like it. Movable Type has a lot more functionality and power than a newsreader so maybe it makes sense to charge $70, $100 and more. But it’s not just the price that people are balking at. It’s those restrictive terms of use that they’ve implemented. (Read about it here).

Oh, look, they are responding. The basic level ($70) has been expanded from one author to five authors with five weblogs. Okay, that answers it for me. Movable Type is still the way to go.

P.S. It’s really an issue of semantics. Movable Type has long been at the domain MovableType.org. Dot ORG is for non-profits, or at least it used to be. So by being at .org they’ve made the perception that their free software would continue to be. It’s time for them to give up that moniker and switch over to dot COM.