MovableBlog: MT Pro 2.3?

$45-$60?? That's WAY too much. As it is now they encourage a $20 donation ... If they expect people to donate $20, why CHARGE $60? There's plenty of free software out there that does this sort of thing.

As it stands, I've donated $65 to Movable Type so if the estimated fee for the Pro version is on target, I'm set for it whenever it's released because I'd willingly pay $65 for a good, reliable product like Movable Type. If they added some of the things in my MT wish list (i.e., threaded comments, internal spellcheck, etc.), I'd pay even $75 or $100 for it.

Having donated $50, I agree that the $60-ish range is very reasonable. This is serious software with immense value, and it's demonstrated that Ben and Mena are committed to developing MT. You get what you pay for, people.

"There's plenty of free software out there that does this sort of thing."

Really? Please provide a list. Don't forget that MT has a community of users and developers that support it, and Ben and Mena know how to listen to that community, and are putting out a quality product.

Personally I'd like to see the cost for personal use around $30 - $50. Some of that might depend on the support that may or may not be offered.

> Really? Please provide a list.

My personal favourite is PostNuke. It's free, users and developers supports it and it's a community based weblog.

I used to used it to run my weblog, now I'm on MT, not because postnuke is not good, but just because my visitors are not really for such complexities. MT is simple, yet powerful enough to run a nice humble weblog. If you try out postnuke, you can really feel the difference on how each content management system handles the job.

other than postnuke,

other similar blog freeware:

greymatter

b2log

Pivot

Nucleuscms

The list of software above, all runs on mySQL except for greymatter.

IMOHO, choosing a blog software is a matter of prefernce. I am using MT as its uses CSS for its layout and its easy for me to configure to my liking.

Theres something about the maximum amount that shys me away. $50 I can do but I feel like I'm spending so much more when those extra $10 are involved.

Do you think the features would have any effect on the plug-in developers? I mean, the pro version may implement something like spellcheck but what happens when someone makes a free spellcheck plug-in? Would MT pretend the substitute doesn't exist? prohibit idea/concept-copying?

Things could potentially get ugly. ( I doubt it but I'm just raising the thought )

>Would MT pretend the substitute doesn't
>exist? prohibit idea/concept-copying?

If this was a possibility, we wouldn't have even released the plugin feature in the free version in the first place.

I'm not going to justify the cost of the pay version. I think it's ridiculous to say something costs too much when you don't even have an idea of what the feature set includes. If there are free alternatives that do the same as MT or Pro MT, use them -- we're not forcing anyone to use the application.

That said, one of the main reasons why we are releasing a pay version is so that the cost is distributed between all users. Some users like Mariann have donated more than the suggested donation and others have donated nothing. Mariann, as it stands won't have to pay for the pay version -- a version that she has helped developed by supporting us.

potatoe: Pivot doesn't require Mysql either. It requires just plain php, since all files are stored in XML format.