MT 3.0
This is the kind of thing that always happens when I go away for a few days; this time I came back to find a storm of web traffic discussing the long-awaited release of Movable Type 3.0. As I switched to WordPress last month, I can sit back and read the war of words without worrying about whether I should upgrade or not. An article by Mena (one of the developers), has receivedâat the time of writing thisâ661 trackbacks. I scanned the list and I think it would be safe to say that the majority of respondents are not happy bunnies.
Indeed, the initial announcement produced so much bad press that they have now modified the pricing structure. My own opinion is that they have every right to make a living from all the hard work they have put in, but that it has been very clumsily done. Many people thought that previous announcements strongly suggested that MT 3.0 would be free. There is indeed a free version, but while it isn’t physically crippled in any way, the licence prevents you from having more than one author on the blog or more than 3 websites. My guess is that as MT has traditionally been software for ‘Power Bloggers’, this would prevent most users from benefiting from the free version. Add that to the fact that there don’t seem to be any significant new features in the new version, andâmore seriouslyâthat there are a number of fairly major bugs, and you can see why people are getting so exercised about it.
If you want a balanced view of the debate, Brad Choate offers a well-considered pro- viewpoint, while Mark Pilgrim gives an equally fair counterpoint.
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I currently have four MT weblogs, and two authors, and I set up an MT weblog for my former college JCR which has 10 or so authors, so I guess I would be liable for a pretty large fee should I choose to upgrade to 3.0...
From seeing what you've managed to do with WP - more than most blog authors have managed with the supposedly more powerful MT - I would have no qualms switching over myself and indeed may well do shortly. The WP hacks you mentioned in a previous article, combined with a vanilla WP 1.2, is more than I need.
There's going to be quite an influx of users from MT to WP, I predict, in the weeks and months to come, something that can only benefit the WP development community. From reading many opinions about the MT 3.0 issue in the last few days, a lot of people seem to think of WP as a "lite" blogging engine, but it's clear that actually it's not only powerful, but is going to be getting even more powerful at an incredible rate.----- Yeah, I'd say communications were fairly botched. I can't say the number of times I've seen people swear that MT3 was suppose to be a significant feature release, while most of the stuff I read had it as a maintenance release. I can sit back for most of it as well, since I use ExpressEngine for my site and for a number of clients sites as well, but I've alo used and recommended MT to a number of clients (nonprofit organizations), so feel I have some stake in it.
It does seem WordPress has received some benefit, but I can't help rooting for 6A anyway. I think they worked hard creating and maintaining a fantastic product for years without significant investment by the community that they supported and who claimed to support them. If the rumored 0.38 cents donated per downloaded copy is accurate, then they deserve soo much more than that in financial support, and hopefully they will get it.
by allgood2 @ 17/05/2004 3:06 am • Permalink •
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Ollie: Yes, WP is a lot of fun to hack. It seems to have come along in leaps and bounds in quite a short time.
allgood2: I do wish them well too. I did donate ($20 or so, if I remember rightly), but I'm sure that they didn't get a lot of money in. I think that they should certainly hire someone with a bit of expertise in PR, though
by bsag @ 17/05/2004 7:05 pm • Permalink •
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