MT has become crippleware, and *expensive* crippleware! No one is happy about it, and I only wonder what Six Apart were thinking when they did this.
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I find it difficult to believe that Six Apart have done this … after the history of offering a fully featured free version, I suspected that they may have a more featured pay version, but not a limited, restricted release. The present free version, limited to one author and three blogs is great, fine, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s needs it fits, but it doesn’t fit mine.
I’m actually quite appaled by this move. I’ve been watching the alpha, and beta forums and blogs, I’ve reported bugs etc, and not once did I see this coming.
The community is in uproar right now, I can only imagine the droves of people who will abandon MT now. I’m sticking with this, fully featured, non crippled beta for a while, it does what I need, but eventually, I may have to leave for something else. —Show me the money! (Blogroll.org)
Oh, crap. This doesn’t look good…
Previously educational versions had been free, but now educators are invited to contact the company for discounted pricing.
I don’t begrudge a company trying to make money from its software, but I certainly hope the pricing is reasonable.
It’s rather amusing that MoveableType’s own “trackback” innovation shows how many bloggers are unhappy with the announcement on the MoveableType website.
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This might have a tremendous impact on our blogs... the largest commercial license is nearly $700, and that only gives you the right to use 20 blogs. We have 80 already on our site. Of course, we aren't a commercial operation, and it's entirely possible that Six Apart will have a reasonal alternative for us... fortunately we don't have to upgrade from the setup we have now. Still, I can't imagine teaching blogs with four year old software, so eventually we'll have to do something.
I have been looking at non-SHU blogs lately and I can't believe how many times this topic is discussed. I guess they are pretty biased in their coverage though.
It's quite amusing to read a long string of commentary in the trackbacks.
Somewhere in the middle of the article, they also started trying to imply that their new pricing was a "good thing", because "we have created licensing that allows and encourages the development of software and services paid or free." This is really one of the most polished (and thus worthless) press releases I've read! (to be fair, I haven't read that many). These things just really irritate me - they pretend to pass on information, but to get at the actual information you can develop a headache trying to read between the lines.
Anyways, Dennis, you can always just continue using the old version of Moveable Type. You don't have to upgrade to the new version, which costs money...
Or, maybe this is just more incentive to get a dedicated server, where we can run our own stuff (I know of a couple of decent, open source, fairly easy to use weblog tools)