David Ancell / Tuesday May 18, 2004
In case you haven’t heard, Moveable Type is going commercial. They have completely revised their licensing starting with version 3. There is still going to be a free version available, but it limits the number of blogs you can have, and it limits the number of users to one.
Will I upgrade? I do not know. The software does almost anything I want now. I regret that I never got around to sending a donation, and that may be a reason for me to buy it. This is truly excellent software, and the authors do deserve more support that they have received from me in the past. However, the user limits on licensing may cause a future problem.
At one time, Spiritual Pyromania was powered by Moveable Type. I switched it to something that I wrote because I wanted to integrate it with the web site’s password-protected area more closely. This prevented my members who worked on the blog from having to remember two passwords.
If I were to be able to get enough interest, revive the blog, and decide that I needed to use blog software, I would not buy Moveable Type under its current limit of five users for the $100 license. The Frassati Society has no money and will not make any money from our website. I can’t even use PayPal donations because there is no place to send them.
The web site runs off my web account from a directory mapped to a different URL. I would not want to run into a situation where I had to buy a license for the number of users I had. I can just imagine myself telling a member “Sorry, I can’t let you blog because I don’t have enough licenses.” or “I have to buy a license for you before I can let you on.” Given the time I had getting people to post to that blog, I am not about to refuse someone who can make a valuable contribution.
Of course, it may not be an issue. I shut that blog down in February, and I will not likely revive it unless a few members request that I do so and promise to support it. If I do, however, I won’t be able to use version 3 of Moveable Type. So, as much as I would like to support the authors (who, by one report, are fellow Catholics – correct me if I’m wrong), this is a potential impediment to my doing so. I’d have felt better if I had donated earlier.
I have disallowed comments on this post because I don’t want to hear any garbage from people who have a problem paying for software in general. People who work need to get paid for it. I am not criticizing them for charging for Moveable Type. They are well within their rights to do so.
The authors have also asked for feedback here.
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