pMachines is giving away free copies of their ExpressionEngine web publishing program. Basically, it’s a weblog program. It’s costs $149.00 for a non-commercial license and $199.00 for a commercial license.
In the wake of the MovableType debacle they offered to give away 1000 copies. Long as you have been running a personal blog for more than 6 months you qualify.
Actually it’s a little too late now because they already gave out 1000 copies. However, they are extending the offer so you have until midnight pacific time today to contact them. They’ll pick another 250 random people to get copies. So visit their site to read the rules.
I got lucky and got a copy! So it’s official now. I’m going to switch this blog over to ExpressionEngine.
Now before any of you poo poo me for using a commercial product let me restate the facts. I mean yes I said in my last post that I would look for an open source and free blog program to replace MT but that’s just because I’m a cheap guy. Why pay for something when there are perfectly good free ones out there. I have no problem with the folks at SixApart wanting to charge for MoveableType. I’m no open source, free software zelot. Far from it! My complaint stems from the fact that had promised that MT 3.0 would be free. I quote from a December MT news post.
quote:
we’re focusing on releasing more personal features in the basic Movable Type package, and concentrating features for businesses, organizations, and large content-driven sites into Movable Type Pro (which, needless to say, has been delayed).
The next version of Movable Type will be version 3.0, a significant and free upgrade.
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Movable Type 3.0 will be a free download and upgrade.
Now obviously I summarized but from reading that you get the jist that MT 3 will be just as free, as in price and lack of limitations, to use as MT 2 has been. Some place between December and now they changed their view and they should have had the courtesy to tell everyone.
This is why I’m upset. They didn’t show any support or respect to their users and the community. I mean heck even big bad, evil Microsoft actually talks to their customers and tells them ahead of time that they’re going to change their license schemes and prices of software! Sure the prices and license schemes are still horrible and screw the customers but at least they were given warning.
So anyways I’m going to install the ExpressionEngine on my test server. I’ll spend some time learning how to use it, building templates, etc so I can make the conversion as painless as possible here.
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Sunday, May 16, 2004 
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ExpressionEngine •
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