Six Apart shoots themselves in the foot

Looking at the news this morning, I moved away from MovableType just in time.

Six Apart has switched to a for-pay business model, crippling features in the freely-downloadable version. The cheapest license (for up to 5 weblogs with 3 authors) is $69.95 – even after the $50 of donations I made, that would still cost me an additional $20. To use MT for my “Help” sites would cost me an additional $150.

Ben and Mena seem to think that the Underpants Gnomes business model works:

1. Take forever to release a new version, and when you do, not have any major new features
2. Charge your users for software that used to be free
3. . . . .
4. Profit!

Matt has no plans to charge for WordPress, which is licensed under the GPL.

11 Responses to 'Six Apart shoots themselves in the foot'

  1. The Urban Farmhouse Says:

    Rebuilding the farmhouse
    By now, Movable Type users may have heard about this. Let me say this at the start: I am not against paying for software. I donated for a license key on my other site. What’s got me pissed is the…

  2. Regressing at its finest... Says:

    MovableMoney 3.0
    There is a huge uproar in every MovableType users blog today, I tell ya’, based on this. MT has released a pricing scheme for their version 3.0. Fine…

  3. Sillybean Says:

    MT 3.0
    Movable Type 3 is out, and in order to maintain what most of us have built with it, we have to pay. There’s really very little to say that others haven’t already said better; already there are 91 annoyed Trackbacks…

  4. chip Says:

    Bill, can I take back that article I posted about sticking with Movable Type? In fact I’ve already tried to

  5. Sillybean Says:

    MT 3.0
    Movable Type 3 is out, and in order to maintain what most of us have built with it, we have to pay. There’s really very little to say that others haven’t already said better; already there are 91 annoyed Trackbacks…

  6. Macchianera Says:

    Movable suicide /2 – Il suicidio ufficiale di Movable Type
    You broke three of most common and well known Internet rules: you can’t sell a product and value it ten times yesterday’s price. You can’t sell a product while yesterday you gave it away for free. You cannot sell less…

  7. CasualUser Says:

    While I am a casual user of MT and still qualify for the free version 3.0, I perfectly understand the rage about the new licensing structure. Be informed, that 6A addressed the complaints, clarified things and changed the pricing!!

  8. mrbill Says:

    CasualUser – I’ve noted this, and given my opinion in another entry.

  9. I've Gone to America Says:

    WikiWiki
    The recent Movable Type version 3.0 brouhaha has been interesting. I’m not going to go into the rights and wrongs of it, because everybody: else with a blog has already done that. My first reaction was that I might have…

  10. G'Day Mate - Reviews! Says:

    Blog Roundup
    Here we are back with a new Blog Roundup and for the first time in memory, we actually have a single theme for the week. Every single blog that was randomly selected has been posting about the same thing this…

  11. G'Day Mate - Reviews! Says:

    Blog Roundup
    Here we are back with a new Blog Roundup and for the first time in memory, we actually have a single theme for the week. Every single blog that was randomly selected has been posting about the same thing this…