I’ve spent most of the afternoon and evening reading through the literally hundreds of trackbacks to Mena Trott’s announcement of Movable Type 3.0 and its new pricing structure. It’s a pretty amazing process to watch. And if I didn’t like the folks over at SixApart so much, I’d enjoy watching this process unfold a lot more.
As I write this, there are already 547 trackbacks to Mena’s post. The vast majority of them are from MT users who are upset about the announcements—many of whom are actively pursuing alternatives, and posting URLs to other blogging platforms and instructions for migration.
This is certainly not the first time that a company has badly misjudged its customers (remember New Coke?)—but it may be the first time that a company whose customers are all online publishers has done so.
The real problem, as both Simon Phipps and Jason Kottke have pointed out—is that the personal license pricing is disastrous. And by making the personal licenses so unpalatable, they’ve alienated the very users that made them so successful.
They’ve also left a number of academic users with serious questions about how this pricing model will affect them. From the University of Minnesota UThink project to my own MT Courseware, academics who’ve vested significant time and energy into customizing MT are now pondering what their options will be. There does seem to be some encouraging news on that front, however. I’ve spoken with Anil Dash about the “significant educational discounts” that are referenced on the site, and the answers were reassuring. I’m not going to post specific numbers, because they want to work out details on a case-by-case basis—but I’d strongly encourage academics interested in upgrading to contact SixApart directly to find out what the cost for their specific installation would be.
People already running installations of MT 2.x don’t need to panic—what they have now is covered by their original license, so unless they want to upgrade there’s no reason to be concerned about the fees. Unfortunately, that wasn’t well communicated in the announcements, so a lot of folks are unnecessarily worried. (Yes, I checked this with them before writing that.)
This post from DrunkenBlog has a nice analysis of the economic issues at play in this process right now. What seems clear is that this announcement has created a significant change in how people perceive the blogging tools playing field. The folks over at pMachine have started a “Make the Switch” campaign; they’re offering free copies of their new ExpressionEngine software to the first 1000 “switchers,” and promise a competitive upgrade price to follow. Shelley Powers, Slashdot and MeFi have pointed a slew of users to WordPress and TextPattern.
On top of those “install it yourself” options, SixApart is also now facing competition on the hosting front from a much-improved new Blogger (complete with integrated comments!), and the final release of Tucows’ BlogWare.
I think we’re watching a significant moment in weblog history. Justified or not, the anger among MovableType’s users will push many of them to new tools, and has permanently changed the perception of SixApart by its customers. The users have spoken, and the landscape has shifted.
1. Jonas M Luster on May 15, 2004 2:12 AM writes...
It is reassuring to see MT work on an academic license. But as I said before, the huge issue is not so much with the pricing, but with the limits imposed.
Our (internal) RCC installation has 24 rape crisis counselors and a number of interns, investigators, legal staff, and DCF staff blogging regularly. There's no "non-profit" license, and no license in the non-commercial area that would cover this. Even the commercial license, which is way above and beyond what this place can afford, would not cover the needs this place has.
Aside from the user limits (attrition in our center makes new authors necessary every six weeks or so, deleting old authors would un-own old articles, which I don't think I want), the blog limits are even more problematic. We use weblogs per shift, weblogs per case-staff, and weblogs per one of each of the classifications. We do this, to work around MTs limitation due to flat hierarchies, and because we need to be able to block access to some of the more confidential issues on a per-caseworker basis.
But even that all aside, I believe Six Apart's biggest mistake is not the pricing structure, but Ben's assertions in December, that MT3.0 will be a "free upgrade". While there is a free version, it would mean a free downgrade, at best, for most webloggers with, say, a sibling or SO weblogging sometimes, too.
I am perfectly willing (not really capable, but I manage) to pay $100 for a product worthy of it. Which is, why I sent Ben and Mena $50 before, and which is, why I pay for the shareware I use, and donate to Freeware efforts.
Paying - yes, gladly. But not under these terms, sorry.
Permalink to Comment2. Abe on May 15, 2004 3:26 PM writes...
the saddest part about it all is that I can't find a single thing on the SixApart site explaining why in the world I would *want* to upgrade. They happily explain all the costs, but don't say anything about the features... More then anything I think people are just going to stick with their current installs...
Permalink to Comment3. Liz Lawley on May 15, 2004 3:36 PM writes...
Abe, you're right that there's not much about why someone would want to switch. Jay Allen has a good description of MT3 from a developer's perspective, which is really the target audience right now. The idea seems to be that they're moving to more of a platform approach, to enable more third party development.
I will say that I tried to post a comment on plasticbag today, after Tom enabled TypeKey registration in MT3.0, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. (And yes, I'm a registered TypeKey member.) That's not a great sign.
Permalink to Comment4. Gerard Van der Leun on May 15, 2004 9:36 PM writes...
I'm sorry but that stuff from Anil about significant academic discounts strikes me as just so much after the fact damage control.
This whole fiasco brings to mind the end of the cool world of Easy Rider: "We blew it."
Time and again in this medium we see companies, usually run by the young, who get the notion in their head that "We're too cool for school." Then they get taken to school.
Where else do we see this attitude of too-cool hubris on a larger scale right now? Say Google.
Permalink to Comment5. Abe on May 15, 2004 10:38 PM writes...
What exactly is a "developers release" anyway? Jay Allen says non-developers should stick with 2.661, but it seems you can no longer download 2.661 from Six Apart...
Permalink to Comment6. pb on May 19, 2004 1:51 AM writes...
I think the argument that SixApart needs to make a buck is a cop out. They don't need to make a buck. They need to make a lot of bucks because they took a lot of VC bucks.
There's little reason why a smaller scale provider cannot compete with SixApart and win.
Permalink to Comment7. Graham on May 30, 2004 6:55 AM writes...
You might want to give b2evolution (http://b2evolution.net) a try. It has all the features of MT and more than they could ever dream of. And it is, and always will be free.
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