Comments on: Let’s try and walk in Six Apart’s shoes for a moment

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 19 May 2004 19:27:04 +0000

I paid for the lowest personal license, because I'm enough of a geek that I wanted to play with it right NOW, and because I like MT, and I have no problem supporting Six Apart by paying for something I use. I'm not thrilled with the pricing tiers, but I also understand that this is their first attempt at real pricing, and since they gave credits for donations, it was worth paying for. But....I've switched the one collaborative blog I have to WordPress, at least for now. Really liked your thoughts.

By: Brad Grier

Brad Grier — Tue, 18 May 2004 23:29:42 +0000

Nope...I run a hobby site...not interested in editor/author limitations, nor registering with another organization. Will look into Wordpress (as mentioned in the DiveIntoMark article - http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freedom-0 ...or stick with the current version of MT. Bard

By: Codetwister

Codetwister — Tue, 18 May 2004 15:17:27 +0000

To the general public - you all should be ashamed of yourselves. All free software costs the authors *something* to make, yet you huff and puff about how you're getting screwed because they would like to see some sort of compensation for their work. You want it for free? Boot up Visual Studio and write it for yourself, if you can! If you are unable to write replacement software for yourself, you are in no position to complain about software pricing, since you lack the skills to make what you want for yourself. The only free software in the world is the `ware you code on your own. All software authors provide you, the user public, with a service. It costs them time. It costs them endless hours of stress. It costs them money, And it takes them away from their families to create software that You, Joe User, doesn't want to pay for. Looks like Joe User needs a reality check. To all the people who have lashed out in a negative way about this topic, you are saying in unison that you are all cheap, and consider the developers time to be worthless. You showed just how self-centered you can get. Some of you feel betrayed, mutter things like "2 1/2 years of being a faithful user, and this is what I get" or "You guys suck, charging for software that has been free for 2 years"...No dammit. YOU suck, you cheap bastards. Do you really consider yourselves to be that important to the world that you deserve everything for free? Is your gasoline Free? Are your daily meals Free? How about the car you drive to work in? Your Broadband Connection? The blue jean you pull on in the morning? Oh I see...You pay for those things...Go figure, so do the developers of Movable Type! Quit being so cheap and ante up. Codetwister

By: hate_mt

hate_mt — Tue, 18 May 2004 11:11:53 +0000

i’m quit using MT
they’re suck, there’re still many GNU blog and has many more features than MT3.0D

suck especially to force us to register with the typekey
and guess what after registered:
An error occurred:
DBD::mysql::st execute failed

MT3 LMAO and suck!

By: brian

brian — Mon, 17 May 2004 18:41:06 +0000

This is an excellent account of what one man is doing. He used to run 11 MT sites, and upgrading to MT3 was gonna cost him $535. So he moved to Wordpress, and his 11 sites are still running, for free. =) http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freedom-0

By: John

John — Sun, 16 May 2004 08:10:50 +0000

I think Six Apart handled this whole thing really really badly. Does it make them look good that they've removed the whole "one CPU" thing saying it was just a mistake? Does it make them look good that they didn't even bother to define what a blog was before coming up with these weird licence counts? Does it make them look good that the licence I just clicked agreement with has the word "sever" instead of "server"? What have I signed up to do, run it on a meat cleaver? People have found it really confusing. Even with the clarifications, I'm still confused. The first thing I did? Went looking for a download of the Full-Install 2.661, just in case. I found a TAR copy online, but couldn't find a ZIP copy. I gave up looking, and went to download a free version of MT 3.0D. After signing up for TypeKey, whatever the hell that is, I found that if I clicked on "My Account", MT was still offering downloads of 2.661 as I was a registered user of it. There's no mention of that on their website but I bet it's a frequently-asked question. I'm still baffled as hell but at least I've got copies of it I can use in case of emergencies.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 16 May 2004 05:58:10 +0000

I don’t think people’s reactions were in anyway stupid or unreasonable. When you restrict the number of authors you can invite to your blog that is an issue if you are asking 100$ for that software. No software I pay for limit me in such way, especially not the ones that around 100$. Furthermore, what’s MT have in it that makes it worth 100$? Some say, people were using it for 2 years without paying so they should pay. That’s fine for them, but what about those who just started blogging? What about the stupid CPU restriction (later removed)? That doesn’t sound like goodwill. Imagine Microsoft selling its Word based on the number of documents you create using it. I am a software developer, I totally support companies like SixApart, but please be reasonable, don’t put arbitrary limitations and then ask a lot of money with it.

By: Mike Wills

Mike Wills — Sun, 16 May 2004 03:04:18 +0000

I realize they are in the game to make money, but us poor guys who are doing this just for the fun of it can’t justify upgrading at that cost. The most I could see myself spending is maybe $50. I would hate to switch because most other blogging software out there don’t seem to handle multiple blogs like MT does. I am still up in the air. If they removed that CPU restriction on the free version. I would consider it since the other blogs I host aren’t really being used anyway.

By: miss representation

miss representation — Sat, 15 May 2004 08:10:20 +0000

um, point to Anil. I think the consensus (having read probably 70% of the trackbacks) is that most of the people who have “been kind enough to accept free software for the past two and a half years” actually have been paying all along. Once I had a live blog, I made my ‘donation’ (the language of which puts his sarcasm in an interesting light) and got my key. The Tin Ear Committee at 6A is amazing. Can we expect this kind of condescesion once our dollars are no longer considered donations? I hope so. Maybe it wil even be part of the license: “1 CPU maximum, but no limit to us insulting your intelligence.”

By: Ralph Hempel

Ralph Hempel — Sat, 15 May 2004 02:56:42 +0000

The idea of a personal and professional license seems to make sense, but just ask Joel Spolsky about the disproportionate amount of support those personal licenses take. Six Apart may be better off simply forgoing the personal license alltogether and focusing on the professional one. Or charge a small annual fee for personal use and offer support ONLY through a special online forum, thus leveraging the goodwill of some developers and the community itself. I am not an MT user, but as a software author myself, I've been following this fairly closely and feel their agony over which how much to charge. Hey, that elastic demand curve stuff from Economics 101 is real!

By: Dianna

Dianna — Sat, 15 May 2004 01:46:24 +0000

Agreed with everyone else – good, level headed comments and thought regarding Six Apart’s change. Asking for $$ is nothing to apologize for. Look at how many people use their software and appreciate it. It’s not wrong to want to be paid for something you’ve worked so hard on. But yes, I agree with your ideas on the restriction of authors, etc. A lot of us have guest authors who contribute to the melting pot of ideas on the web, not for profit, just for opinion and education and creativity and it would be a shame to end that. I bet a reasonable solution will be reached.

By: Anil

Anil — Sat, 15 May 2004 01:40:01 +0000

Thanks a lot for your level-headed comments and for some well-thought-out suggestions. Thanks to you and other people who’ve actually taken the time to try to think through what they would do in the same situation, the mood at Six Apart’s offices today is pretty good.

We’ll be updating with some more info really soon. Hopefully people who’ve been kind enough to accept free software for the past two and a half years will be patient enough to give us two and a half days to respond.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 15 May 2004 01:13:50 +0000

Nice comments. I read you blog everyday and thought the comments yesterday were over the top. I think most of the trackbacks on Mena's blog are insane. Your comments today are level headed and make more sense. Nice blog. 8>)

By: Scott Duffy

Scott Duffy — Fri, 14 May 2004 22:59:26 +0000

I don’t use Movable Type, so this change doesn’t affect me, but here are my 2 cents:
1) There is still a free version of MT3. There are also alternative software out there, so what is the big deal?
2) The tiered pricing model for personal use is silly. They should have thought to create a $19.95 Personal Edition, and a $199 Professional Edition or something like that.
3) Perhaps MT should have done a better job of preparing expectations. So if they had been warning people for weeks that pricing was coming, and gave them ballpark figures as to what to expect, the anger I am reading over this would not have happened.

Other than that, I support any company’s right to set whatever price they wish for software. It might not make sense, but who am I to say “How dare you?” They have that right in our capitalistic society.