Boblet Learned things and Japan diary, by Oli Studholme

MovableType 3; hrmmm

By Oli
At 3:44 PM · Sunday, 16 May · 2004
To Weblogging

Six Apart has announced Movable Type 3 “Developer Edition” and “Movable Type Free”. The changes over MT2.661 seem to be the inclusion of TypeKey and more options for comments (structural stuff), with functional improvements coming later.

It also has a new licensing scheme that has been getting a lot of bad press. While there is still a free version, they’re now charging license fees for personal use if you have more than 3 weblogs and 1 author. This is a huge change from the ‘unlimited weblogs/authors for non-commercial use’ license of previous versions. While it’s good that they’re finally set to make decent money from commercial use (by providing commercial style licensing and real support), I think they’ve just killed personal use.

I think they would have done a lot better by offering an unlimited use free version with the following caveats:

• No official user support (while still providing the support forum allowing users to help each other)
• No promotional links on the MovableType.org website

and a single price unlimited ‘Personal Use’ version with these features (at about $60-$100). While I’m sure this seems like a free lunch, it would have several positive side-effects for Movable Type:

• A continuing strong volunteer support community (it is very hard to get people to support your product for free (!))
• A continuing strong plug-in/developer community (which strengthens the commercial product massively)
• Continuing support from a very loyal fan base (who will be inclined to use MT in commercial ventures)

The way in which the new license has been handled is (I think) unbelievably amateur. It’s already had one revision (within 2 days!) due to the flood of negative comments. This addresses some issues, but it won’t stop the damage. Two things still conspicuously absent from the free version are:

• Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
• A guaranteed path to future versions

And while they’ve promised commitment to a free version, this isn’t quantified or mentioned in their license.

I’m amazed they place so little value on the volunteer supporters and plugin writers. I’m amazed that they didn’t know their userbase better. I’m really amazed they didn’t see this coming. With so many unlimited and free competing products, I wonder how many personal users will actually stay with them. While this isn’t necessarily bad for Six Apart (ie if they want to move to all-commercial), it kills ‘TypeKey the standard’, which will need a decent userbase to warrant use or inclusion in other products. It kills their ‘darling of the weblog world’ status. It’ll definitely prompt a lot of people to change, including people willing to provide support, troubleshoot and write plugins for free. Will this hurt them badly? Hrmmm…

MT3’s Revised License:

What I would have written: