How I am using Movable Type

Ahh Peeves of the Moment. I remember them, although I'll be honest and say that I didn't remember that YOU featured them.

(All this sounds familiar... hhmmmm)

Barely. And technically (when it comes to software licensing, isn't "technically" the only thing that matters), it sounds a customer with your blogging habits and no TyePad blogs would have to pay an extra $10: $80 now and $110 when the introductory promo ends.

Though very cheap if looked at properly -- as a cost per month on top of a customer's net access and web hosting -- as a lump sum it's more expensive than nearly all mainstream software consumers buy at retail. It's $20 more than a brand-new premium game, $30 more than quality antivirus software, more than Print Shop Deluxe.

That's the $70 introductory offier. At the "regular price" of $100, you're priced higher than Paint Shop Pro, higher than a deluxe antivirus/firewall/antispam suite, and up there with OS and office suite upgrades.

Broken down as a monthly fee it probably wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but as a lump sum you're talking the price of two premium games or the OS and Office upgrades that infuriate them for something with little more real functionality for the average non-power-user than they now get from a free Blogger account.

Based on the uses I'm looking into, the commercial licensing pricing is much more out of whack, though.

I (one author) run a free photography magazine in my spare time. Because each issue might conceivably have a totally different look (different templates), and because I required multiple levels of categories (which didn't and don't exist), I decided to break up the magazine into one 'weblog' per issue. However, it all sits on one domain name (www.ak47.tv).

So at this stage - there is no pricing model that would fit for me. I would be happy to pay a flat fee (I have donated for both my weblog and for the magazine) to use the software any way I need to, to 'construct' the site. So a non-crippled version for a flat fee per 'site' would be the ideal model for me.

But I'm very happy with 2.661 for now. And I think MT rocks.

Which Personal Edition license, exactly? There are three.

I counted ten (adding the "three or four others" in). You're almost as bad as me with my 14. *grins*

Just a minor point, but for the passing reader it might also be reasonable to point out that the fact that you are an employee of Six Apart (makers of MT) might also be a factor in why you will be adopting the paid version.

I too use MT (currently v 2.0). I may move to v3, but I must admit that the lack of substantive new features and the high entry level (and crippled licence for the free version) are disuading me at this stage.

Sorry, I thought that was obvious. Yeah, I do work for Six Apart. But I was contributing to MT before I worked here, and I do think, based on the fact that I've paid for tons of apps from small companies, like NewsGator and FeedDemon and TextPad and probably half a dozen others, that I would pay for MT as well even if I didn't work for Six Apart.

I suspect the reason you haven't posted to Peeves of the Moment is not because you have no Peeves but because you have no Moments. :)

Anil, not everyone in the world lives in USA. There are parts of the world - India, for example - where $70 is NOT pocket change.

Thanks, Ravi. I've been to India, so I know that's true. I don't think anybody argued it's pocket change, I think the point is more that good software saves you enough time and effort that it's worth *more* than pocket change. Certainly more than the 38 cents that we were averaging per download of the tool.

Professional applications do cost more than that, even in India. I checked.

You're not charging $70 for a professional tool. You're charging $70 for a limited time for a consumer software title. You're charging twice that or more for "professional" use.

Oh leave the poor guy alone.

Anil,

There's a huge leap from .38/download to $70 for what is basically a limited-use product. It's not the $70 I mind : I'd give it to y'all in a heart beat. Please understand it is the terms of use that is the real problem.

To say that MT 2.65 is the same as MT 3.0 when I cannot have as many blogs as I want with the new product is incorrect for not saying misleading. Again, I'll give you the money, just don't set an unnatural limit on the amount of blogs or authors I can have with the product.

This is really a watershed moment for the blogosphere : Stay with proprietary software or go open-source. I'm not jumping ship just yet. I mean, I don't need to give 6A $14/month at TypePad for blogs I can and should run on MT and I have because it is my way of contributing to your success. I rationalized this "personal investment" by believing that, if I get the goodies I want, then all the more happier I would be having everything hosted in one place. With the new MT licensing I am not sure this is an investment in the future of my blogging anymore. And you know how gung-ho I was about TypePad what with my creating The TypePadistas Directory. So this is not coming from somebody that has not been rocked by SixApart and their products.

I've taken a look at some of the competition and I'm still not sure I want to switch. But I will have to consider moving my blogs to another platform if I want to expand it to the 10X10 wishlist that I have for the next 12 months. This is not something I had forseen at least for another year. Now it's like I'm starting all over again and that's why I'm pissed off. I really never thought that I would have to switch from MT to another platform unless I was going to creating something like DailyKos, which I did not really forsee for another 2-3 years.

I can't even go forward with the retrofitting for potatoland.org and the Open Java Project due to this licensing issue. And I am one of the beta-testers and I've had to put that on hold as well.

The bottom-line is that emotional does not equate with irrational. Time is money and the emotional outcries come from having to make an unforseen decision over a publishing platform that, quite frankly, does have learning curve and yet is so dreamy. So to have to learn a new system is going to be frustrating to many. And the spirit of potlach has been, in a way, betrayed.

I read about 600 of the trackbacks at 6Log and over and over again people referred to the limitations on the new license. I did not keep a spreadsheet because, well, it's not my job. Still, it was quite illuminating. You have metrics there --and I really believe you should calculate the word-of-mouth impact by a factor of at least 500 if not 1000 current and potential users; given you have people on the top 100 bolting from MT.

As a case study, this whole thing is just absolutely fascinating. Then again, I've seen this already happen at, of all places, Rhizome.org. I have a whole piece about that debacle that I'll post real soon.

Be well and hang tough. People like me do not criticize for nothing. I actually care. If 6A can do business the populist way, the rules of doing business over (and outside) the net will forever be changed. It's important, no IMPERATIVE, that you succeed.

Best,
Liza Sabater
http://culturektichen.com

Anil,

Just thought I'd let you know that, even though I've visited your site many times before, I finally subscribed after reading this article. Sounds like you've found an employer that makes you feel like most of use would like to feel about our employers. Well done.

As for the whole MT3 thing, the point I've made to others on several occasions is that bloggers (and user of any software) need to calculate the value of their own time before claiming the licence fee of a product is too high. In my day job my clients pay (to my employer) $170 per hour. I'm damn sure I couldn't write MT in less than half an hour! The time spent downloading and installing WP or any other product would easily blow out the average bloggers "costs" compared to buying a new MT licence. But the "free time" myth perpetuates.

I'm not an MT user, I write my own code for my site because it's a good way to learn/practice, so I don't have the emotional attachment that MT's users have expressed in the last week (most companies would kill for this level of feeling from their clients!) but I can say as someone who works for a software company, I feel for you guys and the beating you've taken recently. It seems undeserved IMHO.