I've recently been reading the announcement made by Six Apart regarding the release of Movable Type 3.0 and the changes to the licensing. It seems that a lot of people are suprised at some of the points made and the thought of having to now pay for a product which was essentially free.
At first glance, I thought (instead of jumping the gun / assuming) people running versions previous to 3.0 would not have to pay, which is correct.
One thing to remember, is that Six Apart spends a lot of time working on the development of MT, especially the change to 3.0 and obviously have to make a living in real life. Since all the time is spent on MT, it needs to become a feasible business project.
If you use MT and are going to upgrade, depending on how it is implemented with Type Key, you may well have to pay to be given any access to Type Key to use on your blog. A move like this would ensure that more people would purchase a license.
The initial public release is called Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition. It's for use by everyone, but is basically the foundations on which great plugins can be made. Along with it comes other changes, to help developers to work with Six Apart to make MT 3.0 even better.
So, if you keep using a version previous to 3.0, you will not have to pay anything. If you want to use version 3.0, then you can choose the free version. You could of course make a payment, which I shall call a "donation" that will enable you to receive support and a list of other things.
In the time that MT has been produced, it has been done so at the time and cost of the developers and if you like it and want to thank Six Apart then you now know how to do so.
At some point, I'm sure I'll get round to upgrading, but I normally allow the dust to settle on new major releases before doing so.
Post ID: 378, posted by jase at 05:36 PMYou're missing the point slightly I feel - the reason people are up in arms isn't the fact that MT are charging as this is something that is inevitable and also much needed for any company to make a real go of it.
The problem lies in the way the licensing has been organised - it's pricing the average Joe Blogger out of the MT market.
I have no problem with 6A charging, but I think it should ONLY be for commercial use. Personally i'll be moving to Wordpress shortly.
(oh BTW - how could they 'reverse charge' for previous releases of MT anyway? lol)
Posted by: Ben at May 16, 2004 10:27 AMI came here from the trackback from Mena’s post. I upgraded to MT3.0 (free upgrade) and I STILL have the ability to have multiple authors/blogs…I tested it. Did anyone else test this? It won’t stop working will it?
Posted by: yawen at May 17, 2004 02:00 AMYou should be able to use more than the limit, as far as I know - the limit is only within the license terms.
Posted by: jase at May 18, 2004 09:23 PMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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