I'm not entirely happy with MT4 but it is not vomitous either. It brings a number of improvements but also has rough edges. I've had to spend a lot of time debugging sometimes broken functionality.
Maybe the thing that irritates me the most is Sixapart's, the software maker's, utter failure to address the higher education market. Here's a text of a letter I sent to the product manager this morning:
All through this beta process, I had been anticipating *upgrading* my higher ed. classroom license to build and extend a blogging knowledge network I had run under various guises, starting in 2004 and most recently with some donated plugins from Tim Appnel. This year, we're adding automated social network analysis, an exciting feature.
Well, 6A quietly DISCONTINUED the higher ed classroom product I had been using when they went to MT4. I now have to complete a whole formulary stating that I want a higher ed license for the classroom and wanting to know if others are interested.
http://www.movabletype.com/download/contact-us-education.html
Wasn't sure how exactly to address [the question on the form of] who else might be interested, given the apoplexy I was experiencing as I filled it out.
My simple message is this: If you want wider adoption, lower the barriers to adoption. If you are offering a product, sell it like a product with clear value for money. That means for $X you get Y. Just let people make their decision and move on.
Personally, given the hours I have had to spend debugging key components of the software (CAPTCHA with incorrect error message, any kind of install on RHEL5) and the time I expect to spend in further development (custom search template for tag aggregation), I suspect I am a pure MTOS customer.
This custom licensing nonsense has just got my goat.
Bud
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