Come on man, that's a pretty big overgeneraliztion. I don't see a $4 latte and mac anywhere near me. I donated money for MT. I paid for Blogger Pro too. But the prices for MT are a little nuts. I would actually pay $69.95 for an MT 3.0 license, but I can't. That license doesn't cover enough authors and blogs that I need. The license I need doesn't even exist on their chart and would probably be well over 200 dollars. Thats pretty nuts if you ask me. Also, I'm more upset because they had said nothing about a pay version of 3.0 before today. I was a beta tester and heard nothing of this.

I can't speak for everyone, but my personal complaint is the per-user license. I've been providing free blog space to 11 of my personal friends and workmates so we can keep tabs on each other. In order to continue doing this under the new license agreement, I'll have to pay $699.95. Now I don't mind paying Six Apart something; they deserve it--but even you have to admit that price is insane.

More people than you probably realize work a lot more than Ben and Mena do on software just to give it away for free. Simply to benefit their respective community.

I have nothing against Ben and Mena trying to make money from their product--they've worked hard on it. Their license is ridiculous, however, and not at all reflective of how they said they were going to introduce paid options.

We also cannot forget that a lot of their "innovation" was coding done by the Movable Type community.

True, a lot of people are whining about it, but oh well. It's their blog, let them. You're whining about them as much as their whining about MT.

Your missing something important. For many people, this isn't about the money at all.

As somebody who made a post on his own MT powered blog today about this subject, I would like to respond. I have nothing wrong with SixApart charging for MT 3.0. I know they have to make some money, they can't live off of Joi's investments forever.

However, I was already thinking about moving away from MT before today's announcement and now that they want to charge me for what I already am doing, I'm definitely going to switch now. I would have been ok with it if they had kept their free version the same, I don't care about support of any sort, I can do that on my own. But I randomly create new blogs to try out an idea. I already have 4 blogs on my current MT install and I find being limited to three is unacceptable. They want me to pay more for a lesser product.

Partly I think this is a PR snafu. It would have been nice to get a heads up a few weeks ago saying, "There will be a free version of MT 3.0 but it will be limited in a number of ways." Had they just made that statement a few weeks ago, let everybody know, they wouldn't be facing all of these people up in arms over this issue.

Or, something that Six Apart could do that would win me over would be to give developers free copies. If you make an MT plug-in that is useful and adds new functionality, then you get a free license of your choice. I would like to see MT support enclosures, something I think was left out of MT 3. And I would be willing to write that plug-in, however I have no interest in contributing to a project that I also have to pay for. So instead I will add enclosure support to Scoop.

So to recap, Six Apart is raising their prices, they have had a failure to communicate with their customers, and they have alienated their devel community. All in all it seems like a bad move to me. They should have just added a support license, and not put these restrictions on the free version. I think that would have been a smarter business move. They have the market share to make a killing off of support, but I realize that they are a software company, not an IT support company.

Another non-cheap-bastard checking in. I greatfully plopped down a $45 donation a couple years ago for MT. And, frankly, I disagree with the many folks who argue that the MT 3.0 prices are outrageous. I think they may be, perhaps, a bit on the high side, but not horribly so.

What I DO object to, is SA's shocking lack of disregard for their customers, and in particular, for their beta testers.

I've beta tested DOZENS of products. In every case, I was told one of two things from the moment I began testing:
1) As a beta tester, I'd receive a free license (lifetime or for a year, etc.)
2) Or, once the beta testing was done, I'd have to pay for a license (perhaps at a discount) if I wanted to continue using the software.

Ben and Mena, however, somehow decided to overlook this basic courtesy, basically giving the finger to all their beta testers.

I've been willing to forgive SA for the company's poor communication skills and lack of customer relations savvy, but this is the last straw.

I haven't decided what blogging tool I'll use for my upcoming blogs (and I may even pay $149 for ExpressionEngine), but I won't be using MT.

Do Ben and Mena deserve money for their fine work? I think so! But at this point, I don't believe they have earned our trust.

My BMW only cost me $2000 on eBay. :-p

Looks like I kicked the hornet's nest.

Well, I got to call them like I see them.

I think there is plenty of room for thoughtful discussion about SixApart, but that not what I see most places on the net.

When I see bombastic inflamatory hyperbole, I'm going to reply with bombastic inflamatory hyperbole.

I must say that I'm suprised that my derogatory mention of Macs hasn't drawn any fire. I think you Mac folk are slipping a bit...

(don't know what I'm talking about, but will shoot my mouth off anyway.)

I have little respect for the "I'd pay for Moveabletype, but their price isn't reasonable" argument. These are the same people who say "I'd buy Photoshop, but it's too expensive so I have to steal it." PS Elements has everything they need to stick their sister's head on the body of a St. Bernard for less than half the prcie, but do they buy that? No. These are the same people who say "I'd buy CDs, but they're too expensive so it's my right to steal the music." You can legally download a CD for $10, but do they do that? No.

I love how people say they NEED Moveable Type. No. You NEED to pay the electric bill. You NEED to get an operation. You NEED to move out of your parent's basement. Suck it up.

You're overlooking one set of people bitching. Those who have the skillz (or a husband that does) not to need the support, don't give a damn about being on their Recently Updated list, who also run "family" servers (currently 6 blogs, 4 authors), and who simply cannot afford the $150. That may not be alot of money to some but for us it is, especially for something that we can find for free that will work just as well for us.

I don't begrudge them charging for the support, I can't even imagine the headache they have to experience. But I don't see the logic behind limiting the number of authors and weblogs in the free version. It costs them no more time, money, or grief if you have 10 authors on 10 blogs than just 2 authors on one blog.

I'm not angry about their decision, just put out, especially since I JUST went back to MT the last month or so and am now going to have to start looking for yet another tool (Thank God I can run the old version until I find something).

They have every right to charge whatever they want for their product, but they can't be suprised when their users abandon them for a similar product that's free.

Michael, I've given up on getting all up in arms at you about your "Mac hate" thing, that's something you'll have to deal with :)

Did you like see me or something? I was sitting at Starbucks with my fists clenched over my Powerbook, sipping and almost spilling my $4 Mocha when I read about this MT 3.0 pricing issue. You had me dead on... So I guess that makes me a cheap bastard... Hey at least I paid for photoshop.

MisterP: I've seen a hack of a lot of discussion of MT in the last 18 hours... none of it that I saw had to do with "Warezing" it. In fact, invariably, if someone mentions that the license is on the honor system and they conceivably COULD get away with breaking the license, they simply don't WANT to, because the license MEANS something to them.

I think the blogging community needs a little more respect than that. Sure, there are the ones going into histrionics (and they're the most vocal and venomous of us)... but so far, there hasn't been dishonor. Yet. And no one I've read NEEDS MT... Lots of people are extolling the virtues of other blogging software that will fit their needs nicely.

You might need the chill pill that's getting linked all over the blogosphere today, sir. :)

I'm ~so~ glad someone actually wrote a post like this. I can't belive how much people are bitching about having to actually -pay- for quality software.

Moveable type gets patched, upgraded, worked on, and its a nice piece of software. Is it perfect? Hrm ... no. But I've not seen anything better.

6A doesn't just fiddle around with the software when then feel like it ... the work on it *actively*.

And now a billion cheap, whiny bastards who never sent 6A a cent are crying "I'm going someplace else!". If I were the six apart owners, I'd say "good riddance".

Seriously. Hell, I paid real money for Live Journal years ago, and compared to MT, its not really that slick.

- erik

For years now, Ben & Mena had been providing a great product for free to people. I know for a fact that the vast majority of people that downloaded and use MovableType, didn’t give one penny to them as a donation for the software.

oOooOo Econ.

Called the network effect, same as people 'pirating' .doc. Ben & Mena benefitted from this (they released it for free dude, back off). More people using it meant greater mindshare, meant lots more people developing plugins and tutorials, which lowered the barrier to entry to more users, of which they syphoned off the top to make cash. Typepad, installs, anything business related (I know tons of designers who laid out their $150). They already had a very, very limited license. People were looking for more, not less.

MovableType becomes the premier blogging tool in the blogosphere with power and flexibility that is barely matched by anything else out there. They innovate, they give, and the help foster the explosive growth of weblogging.

They gave much, but MT has been dying on the vine for quite awhile as they focused on Typepad. And really, while I like MT, most of the value comes from the great plugins.

After a few years, Ben & Mena decide to make a business out of their skills and start SixApart. The incorporate, they get investors, they hire employees. Now they are going to make some money.

More power to them. As much as I didn't like MT's license, I always thought it had a certain... class. That's pretty much gone. I don't think anyone can find anything classy in this.

I’ll go slow here, try to follow along.

Yay! I like slow.

If SixApart wants to make money, they need to charge for their products.

They already were... typedpad, installs, commercial usage from designers.

Of course they are making you pay for all the good stuff. It’s the same thing that every other business does. The better the stuff you get from them, the more you pay.

Wait, help me out here... what's the real 'good stuff' in 3.0 that's being paid for? Except for developers, who have to pay to develop plugins... I'm not sure you were going slow enough.

Some people are complaining that they expect more from MT 3.0 and for a lower price. I expect more from a BMW (where’s the friggin’ auto-shotgun that I saw in the James Bond movie?) and they should charge less for the car, like about $10,000. Do you think that ranting about BMW or buying a different make of car is going to change the costs that BMW incurs making a car? No.

Um, people were expecting more out of 3.0 simply because it took a long time, was delayed, and the competition has caught up. In some cases not perfectly, but they're there. And GPL'd. And growing. MT has what's called a "sustainable competitive advantage" problem.

SixApart is still going to provide a free version, but to many, that just isn't good enough.

Read the license? Single server (means hosting providers who do load balancing could be in trouble), and the server you use can only have one CPU (do you know how many people have virtual accounts on machines with more than one CPU?)... but, hey, they do have this service called typepad if you'd end up having to buy a commercial version for some reason that would be super-duper expensive.

Maybe your precious blog might actually be worth paying someone to get help with. I mean, you’re a busy person and you just want to focus on the blogging, not the software, right?

Uh, lots already were. In fact, many had to. But we're talking $20 for a PERL SCRIPT INSTALL, much of which builds upon other software, whether that be imagemagik or plugins. $150 for commercial usage. They had some money coming in.

What you seem to be missing is that many people can't afford to pay this. It's not a threat, they'll either be pirates or forced into it. There are people with family blogs, or extended family blogs... they've been blind-sided by this. They're looking at having to pay $200 to $600. Those people have to go somewhere, less there's a fun exploit in 6 months and they're screwed. Since they can't go to MT, and for whatever reason have no desire to go to typepad (existing domaisn, emails) and moving to another service (which, for these purposes, we can say isn't as nice) is both free and usually the matter of running an importer script...

Call me in 6-8 months and see where MT is compared to competition, it's them against everyone else and just about every single hosting provider. Designers that could afford to pay $150 on a project in many cases won't be able to afford $600, and will look elsewhere. As they look elsewhere, and users look elsewhere, developers will follow the users. The network effect, google it.

So do I get a bill or what?

Who used to host my blog before you changed it to movable type?

Am I asking the right questions?

BTW: You didn't answer my question about the Tivoli.

answer your mom's questions.

Answering my mother's questions:

No Mom, you aren't getting a bill. You woould be covered in the free version.

You used to use Blogger before we switched you to MovableType.

It's best to ask these questions on the phone so I can answer the inevitable second questions at the same time.

Regarding the Tivoli, please check that thread for the answers.