As I am sure you have noticed, I’ve been offline for the past few days. Wedding errands – including getting our marriage license, a swim meet, the Lager Rhythms CD Release Party, a lot of yardwork with my parent’s AMAZING help, and a shower thrown for me by the people that I used to work with all added up to being a lot to do with very little down time, and no computer time. Such is life.
It was nice to come back online and read about MT’s clarification on several points. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Their response to the feedback (flack?) they received over the new license is very helpful. It clears up all of my issues – I use 4 blogs to power this one site – and that counts as far as the license terms as one blog. Yeah!
Also, they have removed the confusing clause about the CPU issue. If you host with Blogomania, this is no longer a concern. “The single CPU usage statement was not intended to be in the license. It has been struck from the license, and everyone who has downloaded Movable Type 3.0 thus far can officially consider this change retroactive.”
I do still have one very minor problem that I can’t find addressed anywhere. All the posts I read tonight emphasize that it is a Developer’s Release, and that if you are sailing along using MT 2.661 happily, don’t upgrade. This release is not meant for you – it’s meant for the techno gurus of the world that want to build plugins for it and so forth. That’s all fine and dandy – but why did they pull the download page on the MT site that allowed you to download the 2.661 version? What if a newbie came along and wanted a stable consumer release instead of a beta Developer’s Release version of the software? They are stuck. It’s beta or nothing at all. It’s trivial, but it’s still bugging me.
However, I probably won’t move my blog. Heck, I still haven’t upgraded to 2.661. I know, I’m bad. I have ties to WordPress obviously, thanks to PhotoMatt. However, I just don’t have the time to devote to a migration right now. After writing my previous post, the more I thought about it, time truly is money. I would miss out on a lot of other things (which would ultimately cost me money) if I took the time to upgrade. That makes the $35 or so for the license fee look a whole lot better. (I can now use the minimum license with 5 active blogs and 5 authors, current intro price of $69.95, and I’ve purchased 2 keys in the past, so I got $45 off the price.)
It just hit me by surprise (just like everyone else), and when you’re in the midst of planning a wedding, every nickel counts. You have sticker shock about just about everything around you, so the logic of “it’s good software and worth paying for” isn’t the first thing you think about.
My apologies to Ben and Mena for the knee-jerk reaction, and my thanks to them for all of the clarification. I’ve purchased my MT 3.0 license. I’ll install it sometime after the wedding; hopefully a less beta release will be out by then.
9 replies on “Collective Deep Breath”
“but why did they pull the download page on the MT site that allowed you to download the 2.661 version?”
I believe you will see it returning in just a day or three. I’m just sayin’…
Thanks for being understanding, and I do know we messed up the communication on this one. But, in case it’s not clear, you can go through the “Get Movable Type” link and when you get to your account, both MT 3.0D and MT 2.661 will be in there for you to download.
We’ll make that clearer soon. Also, the new license lets you charge for services around MT, including installations, so there’s a lot more cool stuff you can do for other MT users as well.
*lol* Are you kidding? At this point in the process we were so far in debt, it was like, Sure! Throw another $100 on top of that! It doesn’t matter anymore!
Breathe…. breathe. 🙂
We’re still waiting for clarification, because the new pricing is still punishing for anyone who wants to run a group blog (39 users on whiterose= $69.65+ 34*$9.95=way too much not to consider switching).
Even with our existing keys and assuming that the promises of later features pan out, $300 odd bucks seems overmuch to ask us for a version that is limited so that we couldn’t add anyone else to our group blogs without another $10.
I really don’t see any option for large group blogs other than convincing 6A to make an unlimited license of some sort or leaving. I hope they clarify it, because many really innovative uses of blogging technology are based on group blogs.
We’re still waiting for clarification, because the new pricing is still punishing for anyone who wants to run a group blog (39 users on whiterose= $69.65+ 34*$9.95=way too much not to consider switching).
Even with our existing keys and assuming that the promises of later features pan out, $300 odd bucks seems overmuch to ask us for a version that is limited so that we couldn’t add anyone else to our group blogs without another $10.
I really don’t see any option for large group blogs other than convincing 6A to make an unlimited license of some sort or leaving. I hope they clarify it, because many really innovative uses of blogging technology are based on group blogs.
Is MT really worth all the effort? I don’t use anything at the moment, other than a lot of cursing at CuteFTP. Sometimes I think about getting it, but then I read about all the flack…
I agree with you, Michael – that is really a tight fee. Do you have a huge group blog that has that many authors? Or do you have a total of 39 blogs, each with it’s own individual author? Where you are essentially their host? If so, you get around the license issue by installing 39 individual “free” copies – l blog, 1 author licenses.
Of course, for the group blog issue, that’s a different case. I would contact them directly to work it out.
Or better yet – 2.661 is working for you. Just don’t upgrade. I know, it made me feel itchy just thinking about not having the latest and greatest – but really, you don’t have to upgrade. The 2.661 license still applies, you are still “ok” where you are at.
Sassy, I hated manually updating a blog. I can’t imagine not having a CMS to help me with it. Then again, I’ve used MT for years, and Greymatter and Blogger before that – so I guess it’s a matter of what I’m used to!
Anil, I saw the 2.661 copy available after I purchased my 3.0 license. I still think that with all the emphasis on this being 3.0betaD (or whatever the techno name is) that it should be easy to download 2.661 from the main site. For the non-techno that just want a public release.
Christine,
There are definitely things I want from a newer version, including the good feeling that security holes will be fixed. There are two separate group blogs with up to 20 users and more users planned, plus several individual blogs and multiple blogs for ourselves.
If it’s legal to install 39 separate copies to cover 39 separate blogs, then we’re still screwed, because not only wouldn’t that cover our group blog needs, it would also become a maintenance nightmare and most likely require more memory than our little old Mac G3/350 could support to run 39 instances of MySQL. That’s a good idea for two instances, but not 39. I just checked and BlogCritics.org has 466 users, not all of whom are active. Four and a half grand is rather a lot for per-seat licenses.
As I said, we’ve contacted 6A and we’re participating in the new survey of users, but in the end we need something different than they’re currently offering. We’ll see if they’ll change.
I’ve had a chance to give 3.0D a whirl, nice UI but so far definitely just a release for the developer’s to redesign their plugins, as there’s little in there that’s actually new.
That said, I gave WordPress a shot as well, as you have, and despite it’s more dynamic nature (I can also see entries which don’t show up until the date in their post-date tag coming in handy) it means a lot more work in migrating my blog…I use a lot of stats that MT just whips up automatically for me.