Day: 17 May 2026

I am sitting in Madrid thinking a little bit about my last post about Movable Type. Yes, I am on another business trip. This time, the hotel is close to the airport and was a quick taxi ride away. I should be asleep in 30 minutes, but I have been thinking about software that is apparently free.

As I noted earlier, I don’t have much of a problem with the concept of Movable Type morphing into a proper paid-for, licensed piece of software. They say it will not be crippleware and that trust will very much be part of it. Six Apart allows you to determine how many ‘blogs’ make your site (it’s not a hard-coded limit) and allows you to determine how many users are really active in using the software. There is a great deal of trust there, which I am not sure is sustainable. Nonetheless, I think this is a good approach.

When I look around, I look at what else I use regularly (and I will stick with personal software rather than work-based software). My version of Windows XP at home was pre-installed and properly licensed. I use HomeSite if I ever need an HTML editor. It’s fully paid for. Paint Shop Pro is my image editor. It was a full free version which they chose to give away on some magazine cover or other, so it is, therefore, properly licensed despite being unpaid for. I tend to use Windows Media Player (which is free), but I have paid for Real Player Plus to get some of the additional features.

So far, so good. I’ve noted before that I have licensed Opera as a browser even though I do not use it a great deal. But the most-used piece of Software on my machine is Mozilla. I use it for web-browsing and for mail. It handles all my mail accounts. I think it’s superb. I have never contributed to it since the very beginning when I acquired a licensed version of Netscape 0.9/1.0 (and even then, the company I worked for bought it for me). I can’t write code, so I can’t contribute in that way, so I really ought to pay something for it. I think it’s only right. As with Movable Type, there are people who work for the company that makes it. If I want them to be around, I should support them.

And that’s why today I will make a donation to Mozilla.

So Six Apart have finally announced Movable Type 3. I have to confess that, from what I have read, I will be disappointed. It doesn’t appear to be loaded with a great deal of new features, which is sad. I hope this is the foundation for some new development. To be honest, if there were some way of handling photo galleries from within the tool, then I think I would be very happy. I will, however, not pass further judgment on it until I have installed it, and I am going to wait until it is released properly (rather than the developer’s edition) before I install. In that way, I hope some of the plug-ins that I would like to install will have been tested, and then I can upgrade and add functionality all at once.

The views of other users also sadden me. There has been a long history of collaboration online. I remember when I first joined the connected world, having some basic legal questions answered via Usenet. How great it seemed back then. In the end, of course, nobody was going to dish out free legal advice forever, and properly paid-for advice will always have a place. In the end, good things will – in the main – be worth paying for.

I believe the good folks of Six Apart deserve some recognition for the work they have put into building a publishing tool that’s as easy to use as Movable Type. It was never open source software. It’s always been the work of Ben and Mena (and now Six Apart). I find it sad that the large number of negative comments does not reflect the fact that the continued development of such a fantastic tool requires a full-time commitment from people and, somehow, these people have to be paid for it. Even Mozilla has a staff!

I honestly believe that we can be sad at the lack of additional, out-of-the-box functionality, but we should not be sad that Six Apart is turning into a business that needs finances to support it. Of course, our expectations as users will now change too. Six Apart is really going to have to show that this is a professional product backed up by proper support. Once, users would forgive the lack of customer service (we weren’t paying anything), but no longer. And in my experience, it is the mishandling of customer service/support that always lets people down.

Movable Type must continue to lead, and if it is to keep my trust. I will pay for this version, and I hope my commitment to the product is rewarded. If, in the future, Movable Type does not live up to users’ expectations (brought on by the way it was streets ahead of other systems at first), then the company suffer. Yes, as Jason Kottke notes, the pricing structure is wrong at the moment – but that’s no reason to leave. Yes, there are alternatives which really are free (as Mark Pilgrim notes and goes on to prove by– apparently – switching seamlessly), but for now I am sticking with Movable Type because they haven’t let me down. They’ve shown that they have addressed the need to turn it into a product that needs people to develop and support.

But please, sort out the pricing structure.