Eclecticism

Funny the difference a day or so can make — and never let it be said that people (or corporations) can’t learn from their mistakes. Six Apart has posted updates and clarifications to their licensing options that make things look much more reasonable.

Briefly, the key points that I was concerned about…

The single-CPU limitation nonsense:

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.

[Admittedly, I’m very curious about this one. If it wasn’t intended to be in the license, how did it get in there in the first place? And then stay there up to the point where it was posted to the website? Didn’t anyone (their lawyers, for example) go over this stuff with a fine-toothed comb first? This is the sole point that still really has my eyebrows raised.]{.underline}

The number of weblogs or authors in an installation:

Firstly, they’ve changed a few of the licensing options a tad, and added the ability to purchase “add-on” weblogs to a license for ten dollars (for instance, if your license specified five weblogs, you can buy the rights to run a sixth).

Secondly, and far more importantly, they’ve clarified what is considered a single weblog — essentially, the wording might be better if it was called a website rather than a weblog.

The question of what a “weblog” is is somewhat muddy, but the basic answer to the first question is that, if you’re using multiple “Weblogs” in Movable Type in order to build 1 site, that only counts as 1 weblog towards the license limits.

In our licenses, we now address this with this language: “Weblog” means a single Web site viewable at a single URL (Uniform Resource Locator), consisting of one or more weblogs as generated by the Software via the “Create New Weblog” function of the Software.

To be clear, sub-weblogs that make up weblog sites shouldn’t be counted toward your weblog total.

This is excellent to hear, and should alleviate the concerns of many (if not most) of the people who, like me, found the licensing scheme overly restrictive.

That said, I’m still curious about some of the other options out there, and will continue to investigate them, but at least I don’t feel nearly as concerned about potentially moving my personal webserver to MT 3 at some later date if I decide to take that path.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following today’s firestorm, but it all boils down to this: it’s too expensive.

Here’s my situation.

My personal server (not the one running Eclecticism right now) currently runs an install of MovableType 2.6 with two public weblogs (one for my dad, and one for my friend Kirsten) and one private (a testing area for me). That is already enough to knock me out of the “free” category, as it’s limited to three weblogs and a single author. So as things stand right now, I’m looking at the Personal Edition for \$49.95 (normally \$99.95, introductory special of \$69.95, minus the \$20 I donated to pay for my copy of MT).

While I’m currently using TypePad for this weblog, I do occasionally toy with the idea of returning to hosting myself on my own server. This won’t happen before October or so, when my current TypePad payment runs out (and may not happen at all), but it’s an idea I play with. Currently, this site actually encompasses three public weblogs (Eclecticism, the linklog is a separate weblog incorporated into Eclecticism, and Wüdivisions) and one private weblog used for testing purposes. Even without moving the testing weblog over to my server, as I already have one there, adding those three to my current install jumps the number of weblogs I’d be running on my server to six. The Personal Edition license tops out at five weblogs, so that would jump me up to the Personal Edition Volume License I for \$99.95 (\$149.95, intro special of \$119.95, minus \$20).

Additionally, it’s been a long-standing plan (that I have only myself to blame for not having happened yet, as I’ve yet to spend a weekend writing up some guidelines and help documents for my family) to open what’s currently my dad’s weblog up to the entire Hanscom family. That could add anywhere from one to eight other authors (Mom, Kevin, Emily, Aunt Susan, her son Eric, Uncle Doug, Aunt Pam, and their older daughter Kayt) depending on how many of them were interested. That puts me at a total of eleven potential authors (counting myself, Dad, and Kirsten). Unfortunately, the Personal Edition licenses top out at nine authors, and the introductory Commercial License only supports five authors. Suddenly, I’m looking at the Commercial License for 20 Authors — for \$579.95 (\$699.95, intro special of \$599.95, minus \$20).

I don’t think so.

If the price weren’t bad enough, there are some other things that bother me about the licensing for MT 3. The biggest one is this clause in the Standard Personal Use License:

You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU.

Excuse me? That has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a long time (though, admittedly, while I probably should, I don’t make a habit of reading software licenses). While I’m currently using an older single-processor G3 for my webserver, should it ever die or should I for any other reason decide to switch over to using my fancy new dual processor G5 as my webserver, I could not legally install MovableType 3.0. And what about all those people who don’t run their own servers, but pay for a remotely hosted website? What are the chances of them having any idea how many processors the machine that actually runs their site uses? I’d hazard a guess that there are better chances that any reputable hosting company is actually quite likely to be using multiple-processor servers (and thus not legally allowed to run the copy of MT 3 that a user might upload to their system).

Other annoyances:

TypeKey wasn’t going to be required to use MT3 (and maybe it still isn’t), but apparently you have to sign up for a TypeKey ID in order to download MT3. While I’m not in the anti-TypeKey camp (I think it could potentially be very useful, and already have a TypeKey ID via my TypePad account), there are plenty of people who aren’t comfortable with TypeKey who aren’t going to be happy with this.

MT3 isn’t even a feature release, as Mena mentioned earlier this month. While I’m sure the work done on the backend to allow more opportunities for developers to extend the framework is quite welcome for developers, and while I was really looking forward to the comment management features I’ve gotten used to with TypePad (plus the TypeKey integration), it’s hardly the (now vaporware?) MTPro that we’d been expecting for ages.

Lastly, rebuilds are getting to be more and more of a pain in the butt. The bigger a weblog gets, and the more information piles up in the archives, the more of a pain in the butt MT’s technique of statically rendering each page becomes. While at the time I first started using MT this seemed like a benefit (creating static pages keeps the processor from having to chew on every requested page before sending it out, so can in theory be faster), I’m finding more and more that it seems to be a detriment in the long run (the more information there is to process, the slower the rebuild process becomes, until the benefits of static versus dynamic pages are outweighed by the tradeoff in time spent creating all those static pages). More and more, I’m thinking that switching the weblogs on my server to a PHP based solution (as Phil has with Among Other Things — also hosted on my server — by moving to WordPress) is likely to be the best long-term solution.

Now, please understand, I’m not upset that they’re changing the licensing, nor that they’re charging more than they have in the past. I don’t have any problem paying for the software that I use, and I don’t automatically assume that everything should be free. However, I do think that they are charging far too much, and that’s where the problem lies.

Still, Ben and Mena (and the rest of the gang at Six Apart) have done a lot of good for the weblogging community over the years, and I wish them the best of luck.

From the look of things, they’re likely to need it.

iTunes: “Prototype” by Assembly Line from the album Zoo Rave 1 (1992, 4:59).

So SixApart revealed the pricing structure for MovableType 3.0 today.

One word.

Ouch.

Dad, Kirsten — we may have to figure something else out for hanscomfamily.com and geekmuffin.com soon. Since I’m running both of you off of my server, I’m not eligible for the free version of MT 3.0, and the various licensing options are a bit rich for my blood.

Reasons the free version won’t work: No support from Six Apart, No access to paid installation service, No access to fee-based services, No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list, No commercial usage, No more than one author and three weblogs. Plus a few other apparent caveats that are pointed out in the second and third updates to Shelley Powers’ post:

Just caught this. The following are what you get, specifically, with the paid version of MT 3.0 that are conspicuously missing from the free version:

• Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
• A guaranteed path to future versions

From Paul Freeman I found out that you have to be registered with TypeKey in order to download the free version.

We were assured that TypeKey wasn’t required for Movable Type. I specifically remember this being said.

I also didn’t realize the physical limitations of the free version–one installation only, and no installation on multi-CPU machines. Most hosted environments are multiple CPU machines. Does this mean even if you are a single author/single weblog user, but hosted, you still can’t use MT?

I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve figured out which direction to head, and how best to go about it.

Update: I have a few more thoughts on this, and will want to clarify my position (I’m not that upset, nor am I going on an anti-SixApart rampage, and besides, thanks to my use of TypePad, I’m quite happy with sending money their way) — I just need to get my skinny butt in gear, so more rambling will have to wait until this evening. Until then, there’s some good points (both pro- and anti-SixApart) in this MetaFilter thread.

iTunes: “Dancesoundtrackmusic (D.S.M.)” by Front 242 from the album Mut\@ge.Mix\@ge (1995, 8:20).