MT3.0 reconsidered
In response to Six Apart’s challenge regarding how people use Moveable Type and why the licensing doesn’t work for them, I’ve rethought my previous post a bit, specifically the call for unlimited users/weblogs at the lowest price point, which was a bit unfair and not really what I want anyway.
First, though, an answer to the question at hand:
The way that I use Moveable Type is to power a primary personal, non-commercial weblog (this one) with 2 authors and a second personal, non-commercial weblog with 1 author. The second weblog (which is inactive and likely to be decomissioned) is at a completely different URL using a completely separate installation of MT. I had also been playing around with the idea for a group (non-commercial) weblog for members an online gaming group - this would probably have 4-12 active authors and probably many more defined but not active. Given the new licensing structure, I wouldn’t do this within MT but probably a free/open-source tool or another commercial tool without author limits.
As I mentioned in my previous post, for my level of usage, I’d expect to pay around US$50 for a license. Stupid Evil Bastard agrees in his excellent post on the current MT3.0 licensing issues in which he explains the rationale for that price-point.
My feeling is that the restriction on authors is much more of a problem for people than the restrictions on weblogs (especially using 6A’s new definition of weblog). For whatever reason, the fact that extrasonic would qualify for a free MT3.0 license if it weren’t for the fact that my wife and I are defined as separate authors is irksome to me. Again - I don’t expect the move to MT3.0 to be free for me, but for my MT3.0 price to go from free with one author to US$70 now (and US$100 soon) just to add a single author seems a bit outrageous. And for the personal grouplog with 4-12 authors I’d been planning? Forget about it - it’d cost me US$150 now (or US$190 soon). There’s no way that a non-commercial site for a gaming group to share links and short posts about games is worth that much to me.
May 19th, 2004 at 2:59 pm
Yeah, I’d have to agree that the restriction on authors is definitely more problematic for a lot of sites than the restriction on blogs. There are a lot of group blogs out there that suddenly became very expensive. I’d have to say that I think removing limits on authors would be an extremely smart thing to do. I can see asking for more money as people set up more blogs, but the author restrictions are way to severe.
At the least the ratio of authors needs to go up considerably. I’d consider a base personal license with 5 blogs and 20 authors more than reasonable. Then for every $10 beyond that you add 1 blog and either 5 or 10 authors. Thats what I would consider not only reasonable, but generous. I still think the base license starts at too high a cost, but I think something like this would go a long way to reducing a lot of complaints.
May 20th, 2004 at 6:00 pm
I’d hold off before doing anything rash. As best as I can see, the blogosphere has erupted and is still erupting, and six apart seems to be responding… at least somewhat.
See this thread for a good breakdown of the license as it stands right now and more details in the comments.
http://philringnalda.com/blog/2004/05/licensing_matters.php
September 1st, 2004 at 5:03 am
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