SixApart Japan has apparently lost all of my licenses in their move to their new online license management site. The old TypePad/TypeKey system was a bit dated, but at least my information was always there. I've had to rummage through e-mail archives to find evidence of my purchases. It took days of back and forth with SA who finally gave me one of my Commercial licenses, while still claiming they could find none of my information.
Like many of you, I took advantage of one of the free commercial ProNet licenses that SixApart gave to the community (5 users/unlimited blogs). SixApart Japan has apparently never heard of this arrangement and is telling me to "ask ProNet" for my license. How are we supposed to keep these licenses under this new system if the new SA doesn't recognize them? I have a bunch of sites running on my ProNet licensed copy of MovableType, but I can't get the latest upgrade because my license has disappeared.
Note: This entry was originally called "ProNet licenses being abandoned by SixApart?
Reported on Movable Type 4.3
Hi Bill,
We've been notified via email about the license migration from the old system (typepad) to the new system that Six Apart Japan prepared for us.
I've been able to migrate all the licenses I've had from MT Pro to MT Enterprise and MT Community.
Have you got such an email notification?
These emails have been sent out during the first two weeks of July 2011 and the subject was:
"[Six Apart] Transferring your Movable Type license to our new software"
Messages came in from:
"Six Apart "
Hope it helps!
Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru
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Web Development
Movable Type Consulting
Six Apart Partner
http://www.pro-it-service.com/
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Movable Type Demo
http://www.movabletypedemo.org/
Bill:
Six Apart needed to migrate to a new license management system because the sales, license management, and technical support system that was used for Movable Type was quite antiquated. The previous monolithic system that Six Apart had used for Movable Type was split into three separate systems.
My company, After6 Services LLC, operated the technical support portion of the monolithic system on Six Apart's behalf from November 2010 until it was decommissioned in July 2011. We handle most Movable Type Pro Support today, but gradually migrated customers over to a much better help desk over which we had greater control.
This transition was difficult because Six Apart switched from a MySQL database to using the TypeKey, then later the TypePad backend for user management. As a result, the email addresses stored in the MySQL database of Movable Type sales records was often out-of-date even if the customer was still using the license. This was a major reason why customers didn't get emails with their new License Keys.
If you come to After6 Services at our new technical support system, http://support.after6services.com/ and provide some identifying information for your licenses, I can look you up in the database and see if I can provide you with the License Keys associated with your licenses. Then you could enter those License Keys in Six Apart's new license management system and download current copies of MT again.
Best regards,
Dave Aiello
After6 Services LLC
Thanks guys!
No, I never received any notice of the license migration. That's probably why Six Apart Japan could not find ANY record of ANY of my licenses. They begrudgingly gave me one Commercial license key for the Commercial license I could produce an e-mail receipt for.
Six Apart Japan don't seem to have any clue about the ProNet licenses. I think they're fed up with me asking because their last mail ignored my pleas for help and simply offered me the pricing for MT5 upgrade licenses. :(
I realized that the old SA licensing site was a mishmash of technologies, but I really didn't know how much. Thanks for the background info. That doesn't sound like a fun transition.
I think I'll contact Dave at After6 Services to see if we can find any information. Six Apart Japan appears to have given up on me. :(
Hello Bill,
This is Jun Kaneko of Six Apart Japan. I confirmed the situation, and probably could figure the part of the issue. As Dave explained above, Six Apart Japan had to migrated all customer data from the legacy system which was owned by Six Apart US (now SayMedia). We received a list of purchased licenses, and sent a new license code to each of the email address. But probably some of the licenses which were assigned manually or given as free of charge ( thus didn't have the purchasing record ) were not on the list. For those cases, we have to find other evidence, and that annoyed you by emailing back-and-forth. My apology for that. I will talk to our customer support to restore your free ProNet license by issuing a new download code. Sorry again, but these things tend to happen during the big migration, so please feel free to contact me if you have a question !
Jun Kaneko
Jun:
Thank you very much for your intervention. Your customer service team apparently got your message and sent me a new key for my ProNet license. I do appreciate it.
Also thanks to Mihai and Dave for jumping in here and keeping this topic alive. I really appreciate the support. I was a bit frustrated there for a while. Good to see the old MT community spirit.