cygweb

I was surprised to read the announcement from Mena at Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) that the forthcoming free version of MT3 will have a more limited feature set than in the past. The limits of one author and three weblogs for free fit with my current use of the software, but there are plenty of users, many of whom helped beta-test MT3 without being informed of this change, who exceed these limits. 6A has every right to charge for their software or its use as they see fit, but the secrecy about this particular change is disappointing.

I went back through the major news items from 6A about MT3 (listed below) and none of them mention the specific change I'm referring to, nor do they mention the tiered pricing structure of the MT3 Developer Edition. The different pricing options for MT3D are listed here.

• Movable Type 3.0 (December 2003)
• Alpha Testing To Begin Soon (January 2004)
• Testing Begins & More Info about 3.0 (March 2004)
• Movable Type 3.0 Beta Testing (April 2004)

Will I continue to use this software? Time will tell. I've really grown to like it and have enjoyed helping to beta-test it. Let's see how 6A responds to this inital wave of reactions. Another item that concerns me is how "Personal" and "Commercial" uses of MT will be further defined; does my use of Google ads mean that I'm running a commercial site?

Update: "Push button publisher"? I prefer the term "weblogging hobbyist". Tim makes some good points, but I don't think I'll be moving over to TypePad anytime soon.

Update: I must have misread something. I thought they weren't releasing the free version of MT3 yet, but it's currently available for download. I'm reading around that the author/weblog limits of the free version are on the honor system. I'll definitely be checking it out.