Friday, May 14, 2004
Moveable Type Furor!
As I hope you already know, today we launched the Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition, what you may not know is that with this release we are also making major improvements in our licensing and support policies.
Over the past couple years, since our first release of Movable Type, we've tried to balance offering a product for free while being able to continue to innovate and develop. When our user base was in the hundreds and our users tended to be of the developer or designer breed and required less support, it was quite easy to release new versions at a fairly quick pace. As our user base grew and the tool became even more popular, it has become difficult to develop and offer support while relying on voluntarily donations.
Wow Ben and Mena caused quite the uproar today when announcing the the Developer’s Edition of Moveable Type aka Moveable Type 3.0. What’s causing the furor: pricing. Personal I extend my sympathies to Six Apart.
I don’t really use Moveable Type, its still on one of my business sites, and a few clients sites, but personally I switched to pMachine, and now ExpressEngine by pMachine. This move had nothing to do with MT as a content management system (CMS), and blogging tool, but with its backend, which is perl. I wanted PHP and MySQL. I wanted to be able to intergrate other features and functions into my site using PHP and MySQL, and I didn’t want to learn anymore perl than I currently know (very little).
But I’ve been very impressed by ExpressEngine and the people over at pmachine, and don’t regret my switch. But I comment on this furor, because I think a number of people will be hasty. Obviously a week from now will be a better time to gauge how much of the reaction was pure shock versus how much is a true embedded belief that Moveable Type has betrayed the community.
I find it ironic that really for some this is an argument about the nature of the web, and some core belief that a number of people have that everything should be free. I find the comments not unlike those who argue back and forth on SlashDot that music should be free, but artist should be compensated.
I read somewhere that Six Apart the makers of Moveable Type received something like 50 cents for every copy of MT downloaded. Now obviously, every copy downloaded doesn’t translate into actual use, but wow, what a woeful situation for people have spent a lot of time, energy, effort, and yes, MONEY, developing a tool that makes life easier for others.
Sure people argue, I was planning on donating, but the truth is that they SO OFTEN DON’T. If everyone who used moveable type for their 20 blog, 100 writer venture actually paid their fair share in fees, then perhaps they could complain more earnestly. But the fact is, people justify non-payment by saying mine is a non-commercial venture, even though I’m soliciting donations, or using Google Ad-Sense to pick-up money here and there, and have obviously grown way out of the realm of individual use.
Now do I feel the Moveable Type 3.0 fees are fair, well thats a different argument. I think having $600 for a 15 weblog, 20 author limit is fairly steep, but not outrageous by any means. There are a far worse systems then MT charging far more. Hell, some commercial CMS systems, with less features can cost over $1000, and still impose number of author, or number of hit limitations.
So as I see it, the issue is multi-facet:
- Even basically honest people often lie to themselves, and its pretty easy to console your conscious by repeating the refrain, I’ll donate $20 when I upgrade, or I’ll pay for a commercial license when they release the next version. But this doesn’t take away the issue that often basically honest folks are misusing the generousity of others with little regard.
- The internet is composed of a barrels full of cheap hypocrites who believe everything they use should be free, but that they have the right to earn a good living off of others. This people plague the open source community, and pipe up in frantic sucsession in discussions regarding online movies and music, and have lots of time and energy to bastardize anyone who doesn’t fit their points of view
- Ben and Mena may have made a pricing boo-boo, not by introducing pricing, but by trying to determine what separates personal use from commercial use.
All things considered, my only concern with the fallout is Six Aparts decision to attempt to quantify what is personal versus what is commercial. While, I don’t trust that the majority of the people would opt to do the right thing and select a commercial license when appropriate, I do believe that the opportunity to allow people to do the right thing should be given. I’m a softie.
The thing is, there are people with high-end personal usage needs. Their are families that have started Mom and Pop weblogs, that then add kids, and grandparents, and assorted aunts and uncles, and they quickly tally up the 10 maximum weblogs. There are also fan-based sites that easily hit this number. Now personally speaking some of these fan sites do qualify as commercial ventures, but many of them don’t.
The other issue I have is on the commercial end, if I’m paying the max for a product, I want unlimited use. Not unlimited installations, just unlimited use of my current installation.
That said, I would encourage Six Apart to listen but not necessarily change their stance on what the base price is. I feel that the arguments of people who state they would pay $50 or $69 but not $100 are just spoiled kids whining. I would assume a fair number have never even donated the recommended $20 for MT, and really don’t want to pay anything.
But personally, I’d revamp the pricing. Sure, sure, people will call me a hypocrite, but I think the following is a good pricing scheme, that would possible still cause the same uproar, but be more sustainable overtime:
Personal Edition (PE): 3 Authors, 5 Weblog (FREE);
PE Volume 1: 10 Authors, 10 weblogs ($150);
PE Volume 2: 20 Authors, 20 weblogs ($199);
Commercial Edition (CE): 5 Authors, 5 Weblogs ($299);
CE Volume 1: 20 Authors, 20 Weblogs ($699);
CE Unlimited: unlimited authors, unlimited weblogs ($1000)
Why? Well because, there should always be an unlimited option in these things. Not because most people will max out, but because people will pay for the opportunity to not have to think or worry about if they are hitting their limits. Think of Apple’s Mac OS X Panther Server unlimited licenses. Do you have any idea of the number of organizations (nonprofit and corporate) who order just because they may at some time hit the 10 client limit, and don’t want to have to deal with.
Clarity has its benefits, and in many cases benefits both the user and the vendor. If I have a client that may or may not hit the 10-client limit with OS X Server, but they aren’t growing, then I recommend the 10-client pack. But if the client already has 20 staff, even though its rare that more than 10 would access the server simultaneously, but they are growing either rapidly or slowly, I recommend unlimited, and tell them not to think about. Don’t worry when your hiring new staff if you’ll have to upgrade your licenses. Don’t worry if you get donate five new computers, if you have to upgrade your license. Don’t worry if you have a rush of volunteers, if you have to upgrade your license.
This isn’t a throw money at it approach, it’s an acknowledgement that managing somethings takes more energy, effort, and consideration than what they are worth. A large site that already has 20 authors and 20 weblogs, would find it easier to pay for an unlimited license than to deal with reigning in the sites growth, or managing authors daily, etc.
This pricing scheme also acknowledges that there will be personal users that hit commercial use levels, but will never consider themselves commercial because they don’t make money, or its a family project, or a school project, etc., etc.
I don’t use Moveable Type, but fully acknowledge that MT makes the blogging world a great space to be in. I hate to see a backlash combine with childish hijinks cause it to lose its special place in the blogsphere. Though, on the personal side, I’d love to see more bloggers using and discussing ExpressEngine, just not at the expense of MT.
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Permalink: http://www.wide-eyed.org/main/article/moveable_type_furor/
Comments
- On 05/14/2004, Carthik.Net says:
I moved to WordPress a few months ago, and it was the best thing that happened to my blog. I wrote a How To move from Movable Type to WordPress over at my blog, which might be of interest to you.
WordPress lets me do everything MT did, and the support and user community positively rock!