Does the title look wierd? No, it isn’t. Its Spanish for “New License“. And yes, I’m talking about Movable Type‘s new license. Yes, they’ve changed it again, I’m not surprised at that, they can’t seem to differentiate between good & bad & horrible. 😉
After a heated exchange of words & hot swearing, the dust has settled down at SixApart, or it seems to have. 😀 I was thinking that they might be taken apart but they withstood the storm & deserve a round of applause. 😀
Ok, now getting down to the unpleasant thing. SixApart is still standing tall on its original deal as far as the free version is concerned, 1 author & 3 blogs. 👿
Well, no big deal about it & no surprises there. 🙄
All the more reason to shift to open-source tools since those with more than 3 blogs or 1 author can’t use Movable Type 3. 😐
Some people are saying that SixApart has struck the perfect balance, got the license right now, I don’t think how they’ve got it right. A guy went as far as saying that
The details are pretty pleasing on all levels, I think. Anyone who thinks they’re unreasonable is being unreasonable themselves, if you ask me
🙄 All they’ve done is compartmentalised the paid section but left the free section as it was, & let me remind everyone, especially the purveyors of MT, that it was the free license that created the huge uproar & it is still as it was, no change in it, period. 👿
So those who say that calling on SixApart’s new License is unreasonable, well, my advise to them is wash their faces with cold water, get the sleep out of their eyes & brains, read on the old & new licenses carefully, follow the trackbacks on the old announcements(as far as you can, I won’t ask to do that for all of them since they are way too many), get on what people got so much ticked off at & then decide what Six Apart has really done, nothing, I’d say. If you got only 1-3 blogs & if you’re the only author, then MT’s new license suits you as the old one did but there are many people who’ve setup their friends blogs or their own blogs(more than 3) with their single installation of MT & they certainly don’t like the new license than the old one, as both are same for them & both means that they need to cough up $$$. To those, I can only say, its time to move on. 😉
What I don’t understand is that why people still stick with MT when there are better solutions available for FREE. 😕 The rebuilding sucks like anything & the features of MT can be had in any other script that have them all or can have by using pre-made hacks or plugins. 😉
And besides, to those who think that since now SixApart has granted unlimited blogs on all paid licenses, which means that even if they cough up $70 or so, they can run unlimited blogs. Now, what I want to know is why not get a FREE & a faster blog script like WordPress or NucleusCMS or b2evolution? And the developers of these scipts would very much appreciate it if you donate even a quarter of the amount that you planned on spending by purchasing an MT license. 😀 There are conversion scripts available for porting all of MT’s posts & entries to these scripts, so switching is painless. Now, I use WordPress, so if anyone wants to know about switching from MT to WordPress, here’s a guide published by Carthik Sharma. 😀
That’s ‘girl’ actually, not ‘guy’. And as someone who dealt with a lot of people disappointed with the original licenses, I’d have to say the bulk of the complaints were not about the limits on the free version at all. Most people realised that the product is worth paying for, but felt they should have got more for their money. Now, they do.
As someone who long ago donated, because I appreciated the value MT offered me, I’d have to agree with you. If you think the free licensed version isn’t worth it, then move on. 🙂
Ok, now I know its a ‘girl’ & not a ‘guy’. 😉
Well, its just a matter of which people you interacted with. You must’ve come in touch with people who thought the way you say & I came by people who were fuming about the free license & the restriction that a license is valid for 1 CPU, now changed to 1 website, meaning that they can’t have multiple free or paid installations. Now that there’s no need for multiple installations if you have a paid license, the free license still leaves something to be desired.
And if you think that MT truly gives out the value for what you are paying, then I’d suggest looking into the three Blog softwares that I mentioned above in my post. You’ll find them much better than MT. 😀
As for my liking the free license or not, yes, I don’t like it but then I wouldn’t care even if they dis-continue the free license. As for moving on, take notice lady, I don’t use MT at all. I use WordPress, and at the risk of sounding biased, I’d say that I find it much better than MT. The reason for me saying this is because when I started looking for a Blog software in March to start Blogging after 4 years, I first went for MT b’coz of its popularity. But when I repeatedly failed to install it on my local PC(windows 2000), I moved on to WP. And then later I finally installed MT 2.61 on my PC. By then, I was already Blogging for a month & after playing around with MT, I was all thankful that I didn’t go with MT. And there’ve been a lot of woe stories from MT users, especially against its re-build feature. I don’t consider it a feature at all & neither do my friend Jeremy Wright, who uses MT & has more than 2000 pages & MT takes his 30 minutes to rebuild. What a waste of time. Besides, it fills up your directory with a lot of static pages, making it just cluttered. I’m surprised that MT developers still persist with re-build thing. Maybe b’coz its faster if you compare to Perl hitting the database every now & then. 😉
My “move on” comment wasn’t directed at you personally. 🙂 I’ve tried all the blog packages you’ve mentioned too, and many more besides. 😉 I use TextPattern for one of my sites, even.
As for the people I interact with, as a former moderator on the MT forums, I interacted with A LOT of MT users – and read hundreds of posts made about the changes. 🙂
As for rebuilds, these are much improved in MT 3.0D. 🙂 But as you say, if people are wanting something different for free, they have their options. 🙂
Well, I thought that you were directing that “move on” comment towards me, which I thought somewhat silly. 😉
Well, the Blog softwares that I mentioned are the cream of them all. If people want to feel a bit adventurous, well, be my guest. A lot of free Blog softwares can be tested at OpenSourceCMS. Some are behind in versions but they give an insight to what its all about. And here’s an unbiased comparison of various popular Blog softwares.
As for rebuilds being fast, well, however improved they are, the question is “why stick with rebuild?”. However fast they are now, still rebuilding some 2500+ pages is not an amusing thought. And you said that many users think that MT is worth what SixApart are charging for it, well, I don’t think so. As I see it, pMachine has more features to offer which are worthwhile & while an unlimited author/blog license of MT is $99.95 for Personal Use, pMachine Pro costs just $45, less than half of what MT charges, giving more features & a fast to run blog. So if I were to pay for my Blog software, why would I go with MT rather than pMachine? As for a commercial license, SixApart wants an outrageous $199.95 for a 5 user license, why shouldn’t I get Expression Engine with a commercial license for just $199 with no limit on users? If that’s not all, SixApart wants $1299.95 for a 50 user MT license!! I mean how ridiculous can you go? You are asking more than 6 times of the amount your competitor is asking for a product that’s much better than yours. This is ridiculous!! And the features of Expression Engine pack quite a punch, giving it face on to MT. And ofcourse Expression Engine scores over pMachine Pro, but its Personal License is a bit steep. Still, pMachine scores over MT. 😀
Now I’m not a supporter of pMachine or anything, but I said this just because I thought it was absurd to think that SixApart is being resonable with their pricing. I mean that its not wrong to charge fee for a product that you’ve made & its up to you to decide what to charge for your software, but you can’t just sulk around saying that we are reasonable, our product deserve what we are charging. I mean the end-user is not a fool, he knows the value of his money.
As far as people & free software is concerned, yes, there are many options & some of them can give MT a run for its money. WordPress for example, there’s no feature of MT that it doesn’t have. Ofcourse WP still lacks in the out-of-box multiple blogs arena but that can be done with an easy & simple hack. 🙂 The next version will have this feature out-of-box. 😉
The end choice is ofcourse that of the user, whether he likes to pay for MT rather than pMachine or Expression Engine or have a free software like WordPress, b2evolution or NucleusCMS. 😉