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May 16, 2004

The Other MT3 Shoe Drops

While we were busy with our yard sale yesterday, the other shoe dropped. I don't believe all of the excuses, but I can appreciate the fact that changes and clarifications to the licensing were made quickly as a result of user feedback. I've read elsewhere that 6A doesn't have PR skills and should invest in that area; indeed, it's hard to communicate price increases without upsetting your customers (well, perhaps not so hard for some).

I think my take on the whole MT3 licensing situation was tame compared with some of the caustic comments and boycotts out there (many trackbacked on this page). I've only been an MT user for nine months, but I've grown quite accustomed to it. It's done well for me. I think there's a very large group of us out there that like MT but haven't donated for our use. We'll see how that shapes up for me once I reach my one-year MT anniversary and (hopefully) MT3 Gold is out there along with a host of new & updated plugins.

I'm not looking to take bread off of anyone's table, but at the same time I'm keeping the costs and flexibility of this particular hobby in check. I stand by all the comments I made in my earlier post.

Thanks to Six Apart for continuing to provide one of the best blogging platforms out there for free.

Posted by Alex Harden on May 16, 2004 1:00 PM |

Comments

I was wondering if you would be so kind as to send me a copy of the new default Comment Listing template. Found your blog through a google search for default templates.

Posted by: Maggie | May 16, 2004 3:22 PM

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad to see you giving MT3 a try. You did say "I don't believe all of the excuses" and I'd love to know more about what you're having trouble believing, as we've honestly been trying to be completely up front with everyone.

Posted by: Anil | May 17, 2004 7:06 PM

Thanks for posting, Anil.

I may be lumping "capitulations" in with "excuses" when I say that. The new, more nebulous definition of a "weblog" as not an MT "weblog entity" but as a group of MT weblogs that are accessible under the same URL is something that I think should have been determined prior to creating a more detailed licensing structure.

I'm skeptical about purchasing a license for MT for several reasons, but the main one is that I have no idea what will constitute the major version upgrade that would presumably be MT4. MT3 is definitely an evolution and facelift from 2.661 (I'm saying this as a user, not as a developer), but if MT4 brought a similar number of new features to the table I don't know that I'd consider that worth a new license. One product that turned me off due to unwarranted major version upgrades was Cakewalk Pro Audio (now Sonar). The worst side-effect of this was to get known bugs fixed, I had to upgrade to newer versions of the product. I'm not saying I think this is what will happen with MT, just that it helps to know what a vendor's idea of an upgrade is, besides the license cost.

Right now I don't know if I'll use MT's compelling features to my advantage to the point where I'd consider bucking up. I wanted to participate in the beta (and upgrade my blog when I felt it was safe enough, which was early on) as a form of donation.

Posted by: aharden | May 17, 2004 10:29 PM

Something seems buggy after posting here. The comment does not show up at first. It's weird. But the comment does take.

Posted by: Scotbuff | May 20, 2004 10:06 AM

I think it's the fact that MT rebuilds the page in the background after you've submitted the comment. I need to see if I can disable that.

Posted by: aharden | May 20, 2004 11:36 AM

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