Where's the Beef?

The beta testing began Tuesday when we let the first fifty public testers into the fold. Releases, beta or final, are always an incredibly stressful time on both emotional and physical levels -- getting to this milestone was no exception.

In fact, getting to this milestone was particularly difficult, for 3.0 will be the most significant release of Movable Type since we formed the corporation and accepted funding.

During this past year, as Six Apart's visibility has increased, we've been acquainted with the scrutiny that companies 100 times our size face. We have our critics and, through the process, have gained much thicker skins. Luckily, we feel that we've operated in a manner that stays true to our intentions formed on the day we first released Movable Type 1.0. In terms of goals, we've spent our energy focused on our products and our users, and we've tried to run an operation that is both fair to our community of users and to us.

As I mentioned in this earlier post, we wish we could have released Movable Type 3.0 months ago. And, we wish we could have communicated the process that got us here more effectively. But ultimately, we're proud of the balancing act that all of the members of Six Apart have done during the past year and we don't have too many regrets about what we should and should not have done. Instead, we choose to focus on the future of the products.

So there's the stress of being the "new Six Apart" and then there's the stress of releasing a version that will probably receive a certain sort of feedback that can be summarized with one phrase:

"Where's the beef?"

Well, it's my intention to use this post to answer that question and explain more about the path that Movable Type is taking.

First, the lack of communication on our part has given rise to a great deal of speculation about the products. And the delay in release has only added to the confusion.

Movable Type 3.0 is not the fabled "Pro" version as originally described. We had always imagined Pro as being a feature packed version that would contain all the features ever requested. What we've learned in the past year is that every user wants a different set of features, and we need to create a product that is not just feature-packed, but robust, extensible and geared toward a specific audience. Movable Type 3.0 and on will not be the solution for everyone, and that's okay. For some users, TypePad makes more sense. For others, non-Six Apart tools make more sense.

Movable Type 3.0 is not intended to be a feature release (3.x releases will address the addition of features). While we have devoted a great deal of resources to making the main feature -- comment registration -- sophisticated and flexible, it's the Movable Type engine that has evolved (and will continue to evolve) significantly. In this vein, we've made speed optimizations to this release as well as made processes such as rebuilding smarter.

In terms of extensibility to the engine, the main "feature" of Movable Type 3.0 is actually more powerful than any feature we could have added: it's the extensibility that we've added in the form of the enhanced plugin architecture. The plugin/developer community is one of Movable Type's greatest strengths. Since Movable Type isn't open source, this has been the way in which our users have contributed to the product while relying on Six Apart to provide the strong foundation for their work to flourish.

With 3.0, we will not only be taking the technical strides to enable this, but will also be working to create a developer community that succeeds along with Six Apart.

In addition, MT 3.0 benefits from all of the value that a corporation brings to the product and that Ben and I never had the resources to provide ourselves: official support through structured channels; developer programs and contests; an ecosystem to allow developers and companies to be rewarded and compensated for the work they do; a coherent and fair pricing plan that still lets us have a free version of Movable Type 3.0. Not to mention that, as a company with international branches, we can offer all of this value to international users: support in Japanese for the Japanese Movable Type community, official French localization for the French community, etc. This new release also brings an improved core and a dedication to the product in the form of a dedicated product team.

In a way, you can think of the development and release of MT 3.0 as analogous to the growth of Six Apart over the past year. We've gone from 2 to 26 (yes, four since the first post) employees, and it's taken us a lot of work to get to the point where we are now: but both the company and the product are at a point where we can again devote resources to specific tasks, specific releases, and where we have a core platform that both we and external developers and partners can build upon.

3.0 has awoken Movable Type after a long slumber, and we will continue to not only improve the platform but also roll in the features that belong in a power tool. And, the developer community is only going to become stronger now that we have the structure to allow it to thrive.

The beef of Movable Type 3.0 is the platform and what the community will be empowered to accomplish.