Movable Type 3 is out, and in order to maintain what most of us have built with it, we have to pay. There’s really very little to say that others haven’t already said “better”:http://www.megacity.org/blog/archives/001733.php; already there are 91 annoyed Trackbacks to Mena’s post at the Six Apart site. (About to be 92.) (Update: well over a hundred and still counting.)
So much for the MT “Pro” version that would allow paying users to have extra features while the free version continued as a viable option. So much for the promise that those of us who kicked in a $20 donation would have access to said Pro version, or would get a discount on any future paid upgrades. (Correction: We do get a discount. However, if we choose the free license instead, we no longer get promoted on the “Recently Updated” list.) So much for upgrading the version that runs this site in the near future.
Update: Why we’re upset
Since some people seem to think it’s about not wanting to pay for what you use:
- 3.0 has always been promised as a free upgrade. This is especially important as there are very few new features for users (leaving aside, for the moment, the developer improvements, as they’re not visible to ye olde average user).
- Even alpha and beta testers didn’t know the upgrade would cost them money, and now they’re faced with either trying to roll back to an earlier version (if that’s even possible), paying more than they can afford to maintain their blogs, or circumventing the license.
- The limitations on the number of users leaves a lot of people (thread one, thread two) with no upgrade path. (Memo to Six Apart: a lot of us have more than 20 users.)
- Educational licensing (important to me), which has always been free, is not mentioned in the new scheme, and Six Apart has not yet responded to queries.
- You must now register with TypeKey before you are allowed to download the free version. See earlier promises, above.
Contrary to prevailing MetaFilter opinion, it’s not about not wanting to pay for what we’re using. Many of us have donated in the past, and as the support forum comments indicate, many of us would be willing to pay for the software if the pricing scheme made any sense at all.
Since I first posted, Six Apart has rearranged the download page to list the personal licenses before the commercial ones and to put the free download box above the fold. Smart moves, and the page should have been done this way in the first place, but putting a shiny face on it isn’t solving the underlying problems here.