MT3: ACTIVE blogs and authors
This morning, Mena posted some revisions and question/answers about Movable Type 3.0: Developers Edition. They clarify a lot of the questions that have been floating through the blogosphere for the last 2 days.
disclaimer: this post contains my personal opinions and thoughts, and these thoughts and opinions may or may not be the same as my employers.
One of which is help in selecting a license. The guidelines suggest looking at active weblog and authors when making the determination. For example, I said in my post
On love-productions, I have 17 blogs and ~45 authors
I just went back and re-counted, and its 16 blogs and 38 authors (told ya I was sleepy when I posted!). But let’s look at this more closely...
Active weblogs grouped by site
- kadyellebee kdlb-links lovesongs
- Collectics
- Snap!
- soap-babble
- theredkitchen
- BLOGinality
- blogplates (update sidebar)
[3 test blogs and 4 old non-Active blogs no longer count in that list.]
The information in kdlb-links, collectics, and lovesongs are really only there to power the sidebars for kadyellebee.com. Collectics (which I originally put up with kadyellebee) may be a bit borderline because its archived so nicely on its own page, even though its primary goal is to be on my sidebar. Bloginality hasn’t been updated for several years, but it has active commenting still so that seems active to me. Erring on the higher side gives me 7 active blogs.
Active Authors
- kristine
- bonni (on trk)
In the last 90 days, these are the people who have logged in. If I went back six months, I’d up the total to 3, which includes Anne on trk.
So now I’ll go run the License Help (which I think is a really nice way to present the options, btw!):
Step 1: Are you going to use Movable Type for commercial purposes?
No
Step 2: How many authors will be using Movable Type?
Five or fewer
Step 3: How many weblogs will you need to maintain?
Ten or fewer
Voila! Movable Type 3.0 Personal Edition Volume License I
Provides up to 10 authors and 10 weblogs. For personal use only. Support via help tickets. $119.95
After that, I went back and reread a section of Mena’s post that explains that the Volume Licensing is being revised, and the License Help wizard will be updated ASAP. (I figured I’d leave the process here since I had it all nicely written up!) Volume Licenses based on number of blogs and authors are now changing to a single Personal License + Personal Edition Add-on: extra sets of authors and weblogs for $10 a set.
So that means that someone with my setup would actually need a Personal License with 2 Add-ons for $69.95 + 10 + 10 = $89.95.
Even though I am a huge power user, using Movable Type for a ton of my site, over a period of 4+ years with so much data, ideas, and subsection, the purchase price for MT3’s license in my circumstances is only $89.95 (less donations). I would gladly pay that for a piece of software that I use with such wonderful success. Its a perfect fit for my needs.
and those who know me well could assure you that I said many similar things about Movable Type and Six Apart before I was employed by them.
Comments
I donated enough to have five keys. My upgrade cost me %15.
I’m happy with MT and will continue to use it. But I suspect having to do all that math will drive away many people, even if they ever see the revised licensing. Most folks will want to feel that they can do whatever they want without doing the arithmetic.
Regardless of whatever consumer research they did (and I did that for a living for many years) it still feels like a decision made in a vacuum.
Hope I’m wrong.
Posted by: Richard | May 15, 2004 03:58 PM
I’m still looking at other options (just like I was doing weeks before the release of the developer edition), but I do appreciate that Mena has clearly defined weblog. That definition makes it clear that I’d be fine with the cheapest personal license because many of my current blogs are bits and pieces of my main blogs.
I’d still prefer a license that allowed for unlimited blogs even at a higher cost, but that’s probably just because I don’t like feeling limited even though I’d probably never have more blogs than I have right now.
Posted by: Brandy | May 15, 2004 04:07 PM
Richard said:
I would have a feeling that the new wizard that is coming out will probably do the math for the users, so that there’s no adding needed.
Or do you mean inside of the MT interface to count up your current blogs when picking a license? 3.0 has counts on the sidebar once you are logged in, but 2.661 didn’t seem to, so I counted.
Posted by: kristine | May 15, 2004 04:17 PM
It may sound cynical but based on my own feelings about customers as a retailer (I own a bookshop) and as long time shareware user my impression is that people who use software in a non-commercial manner want to feel that they can do whatever they want without thinking or using wizards.
I can’t help but feel that the best course would’ve been to have a light license, say $30, for noncommercial users who could do what they wish. And then a typical set of tiers for bulk licenses for commercial users like everybody from Oracle to the makers of some of the popular shareware packages that have proven to be popular in the corporate world.
But I’m not privy to the reasoning that went on within SixApart. Perhaps they feel they will be better off without the average home user as a significant portion of their user base. I hope they weren’t thinking that some people would opt for TypePad. If I weren’t comfortable with SixApart’s new terms I would opt for almost any package instead of going for a hosted solution. (I want everything on my servers.)
I’m sure the folks at SA are thinking furiously and hard about the response of their user base. I hope that whatever their final solution they arrive at it before they find they’ve alienated more users then they probably expected.
On a very minor blog of mine where I compared WordPress and TextPattern (before the release of MT 3.0D) I’ve been amazed by the hits from Google by MT webloggers who are spending their Saturday looking at MT alternatives.
So very sad.
Posted by: Richard | May 15, 2004 04:34 PM
Excellent post, Kristine. Hopefully it helps clear up some of the misunderstandings. I can see how a lot of people were crazy the first day of the release. I know that I have about 25 different weblogs set up and close to 45 authors. However, after a reassessment of ACTIVE authors and actual weblog (as in by URL), it’s actually closer to 4 weblogs and 2-4 authors. And that’s totally not saying I wouldn’t pay the $600 ceiling price, because, honestly, MoveableType is a HUGE asset to me.
PS- I *still* adore your little icons.
Posted by: Jenna | May 16, 2004 07:37 PM
Richard said:
I suspect Monday will be business as usual. It’s probably not uncommon for people to go into an uproar when a piece of software that used to be free is suddenly not so free anymore.
Posted by: Jenna | May 16, 2004 07:43 PM
After reading your post it does seem that upgrading wouldn’t cost me as much since I’ve bought around three keys in the past. Of course, I haven’t upgraded my MT in like ten months, so who knows if I’ll ever upgrade?
Posted by: Kymberlie R. McGuire | May 16, 2004 10:28 PM
I bought the upgrade because - minus keys - it was only $35. That didn’t include the key I have for PictureYourself, which is completely separate (and I want it to stay that way.) However, I probably will leave that one running as it currently is since it is so customized, upgrading seems silly. The 2.661 license applies (or really probably 2.5 or something like that - I don’t think I’ve ever upgraded!) so it’s all goooood.
By the way - someday, I need to start posting on TRK again. I have about 5 recipes waiting right now. When I do, I’ll gladly pay the "fee" to be an author too if needed.
You know, these icons ARE fun!
Posted by: Christine![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://kadyellebee.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 18, 2004 09:09 AM