Movable Type 3 Licensing, Take 2
Published June 16, 2004
You can read all about it at the Six Apart blog, or see the email below that I received yesterday. It is great they gave us a little bit of a heads up this time. They should have done that last time. While a lot of these changes, some major, some minor, look to a bit like crowd control, I think this new licensing will make a lot of people happy. I think this is great news for blogs with many many authors.
I don't know that this will bring anyone back who was put off by the original licensing debacle for MT 3, but this will surely make those folks who waited to make their decisions, or those sitting on the fence happy campers. If people complain after these drastic changes to SixAparts licensing does not shut people up, then some people just need slapped. Remember, 6A is in this game to make money folks.
Its great that I now have an unlimited license. I think that is a nice gesture. The weblog restriction lift from the $70 Personal license is also nice as well. They also changed the Commercial license to only restrict by number of users, that is great as well.
I payed $4.95 for my personal license, because I donated in the past. Now I have an unlimited personal license because I was an early bird on MT 3. Not bad for software that is worth every penny of its $99.95 price tag.
Many questions were answered here, a number of gray areas were brought back into the black and white. This announcement from 6A was very needed. Hopefully this will mend some wounds.
Had this version of the licensing for MT 3.0 been the one announced in May people still would have bitched and moaned. It might not have been as loud, but it would have nonetheless existed. That is just how people are. They want everything for free.
Good Job Six Apart for this revision, and clarification!
You're receiving this message because our records show that you recently purchased Movable Type 3.0 under our personal paid license that allows you to have up to 5 authors and 5 weblogs.
Since the launch of Movable Type 3.0 developer's edition we have been listening to feedback from many of our users. We have heard requests for simpler and more flexible licenses and later today we will be updating our website to reflect changes that we believe answer most of these requests. Because you were an early adopter of Movable Type 3.0,
we wanted you to be one of the first to know about these changes and how they will affect you as a customer.
As a paid licensee these changes directly affect you. To thank you for supporting us early in the release of Movable Type 3.0 your license has been upgraded to an unlimited user and weblog license (normally priced at $99.95) at no cost to you. Since we've already upgraded your license in our system, you don't need to do anything for the license to take effect.
Ken Edwards is the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics, and calls Breaking Windows home. Ken works part time for Student Publications at BGSU as the Webmaster and System Administrator. He is also a freelance web developer.
- Movable Type 3 Licensing, Take 2
- Published: June 16, 2004
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Culture: Media, Sci/Tech: Internet
- Writer: Ken Edwards
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I am VERY HAPPY with WordPress now that I have it working.
VERY HAPPY.
The thing here is that we have 460+ posters that are used to the current interface. If I replace it with something else, it needs to be easier to use than MT, if possible, not in the least bit harder. Techies like you, Ms Tek, have no problems anyway, but we've got a bunch of non-techies here, too. So I would have to hack the crud out of WordPress to avoid confusing people.
It would probably be easier just to write a new posting screen and leave the data structures alone. :-)
Pivot is going to have MySQL added in the near future according to the developer and that is (will be anyway) probably the closest fit to MT without all the licensing and commercial requirements.
And since Pivot is written entirely in PHP and not running as an inefficient Perl CGI process it should be superior to MT in terms of scalability. I hope Bob (the Pivot developer) uses cached pages and doesn't try to query the database on each page load like some of these blog programs do. That's very inefficient when programs operate that way.
Then again, if Phillip just continues with his idea of hacking the internal MT posting script then there will be little need to switch to anything else.
... and I am all for sending Phillip a case or two of Mt. Dew or Dr. Pepper ;)
Mt Dew? Dr Pepper? Dude, it's Pepsi or beer or nothing! ;-)
I'm going to be out of town next week, perhaps I'll return refreshed and energized and ready to rewrite the core of MT!
Sounds like Phillip really needs a case of Drew Carey's "Buzz Beer".
After I get the next two eps of the final season of the Drew Carey Show, I'll have to do a post about it.
BTW have you looked at Slashcode? Plastic.com makes rather good use of it.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/16571)
Of course, this does nothing to help Blogcritics, which would apparently now be required to pay an unknown amount in excess of $1300 to upgrade.
Since we've already completely tossed out the default MT comment mechanism because it was mind-bogglingly slow, I just don't see that happening. I'd sooner rewrite the item-posting mechanism. COme to think of it, I just might.