MT backtracks—but still misses the point

I read today's entry in Six Log: Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition, where they, sort of, backtrack and define things such as what they consider a weblog.

The problem is this: MT 3.0 does not offer anything that 2.661 doesn't already have EXCEPT comment registration. Back-end recoding doesn't offer US anything. So they debugged the code. Big deal. 2.661 worked well enough for us.

Not only that, there is no guarantee that the plugins already installed will work in the new version. (The one we use the most, for example (and donated to support) is MT-Blacklist. That one won't work.

If MT were offereing 3.0 as a truly new version, including a couple of new built-in features besides comment registration, we'd buy it and live with the author/weblog restrictions.

We don't want, don't need comment registration. We want photoblog support and sub-categories. We'd pay for that. We'd pay for decent tech support. We won't pay $70 for software that does less than the software we paid $20 for.

It's not about thinking Ben and Mena are greedy. It isn't about whining that it ought to be free. It's about refusing to pay for software that doesn't do what we need it to do. It's about being really pissed off that we faithfully waited and waited for MT Pro, or an update to 2.661, and were willing to pay for this, but got slapped in the face with a non-upgrade that costs too much for what it is. It's about being pissed that repeated emails sent to Six Apart went unanswered. It's about wishing Six Apart had at least one grown-up guiding things there.

And it's mainly about not trusting the company any more. Broken promises, lack of communication, and claims of growing pains don't cut it -- there are too many competitors in this space to put up with Six Apart's bullshit.

We're moving on. Looks like we'll be spending our money on pMachine for the simpler sites, and pMachine ExpressionEngine for the more complex sites. Check out their offer for a free copy of Expression Engine -- we submitted our request last night and got it for free.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/15/04 at 07:03 PM
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