So much have been written about the release of Movable Type 3.0, and the new licensing model, I thought I'd just chime in and offer my point of view, by request, actually.

First of all, I'm really disappointed in a lot of people. Those people being the cheap bastards that won't pay for Movable Type, regardless of cost and despite the fact that it's great, extensible, customizable software, and despite that they use it every single day.

Those kinds of cheap bastards should, however, not be confused with the kind that prefers Free Software (as in free speech, not free beer), which is a perfectly legitimate, non-greedy stance.

A lot of people felt that their copy of Movable Type 2.x somehow, overnight, became useless crap that neeeded to be replaced when MT 3.0 was released. Jason Kottke knows better:

My copy of MT (v2.63, for which I donated $45) isn't any less flexible or powerful than it was yesterday. It works just fine for my current needs, it will continue to work well into the foreseeable future, and I remain a satified customer of Six Apart. Jason Kottke

Also, Dave Winer, shockingly, has a few intelligent words to say as well:

If you use their software, you owe them some money. If you don't like the price, don't use it. Amazingly they're not asking for money if you use the new software in a limited form, or continue to use the old software. Users who can't get behind that are people we don't need to work with. Everything costs money. When you drive to the gas station, try whining at the attendant, and see how much gas you get. Do it enough and they'll call the cops. Dave Winer

Nick Bradbury, maker of HomeSite, knows what it's like, and has a suggestion for the greedy types:

Having been where the Six Apart crew are now, can I make a suggestion to those who are flaming them? Even if you live in some bizarro universe that equates earning a living with belonging to a satanic cult, if you're really not willing to pay for MovableType, at least have the courtesy to thank them for the free ride up to this point. Nick Bradbury

Six Apart aren't greedy; charging money for products and services is what makes the economy go around, they too have bills to pay. Besides that, Six Apart also has a lot of trust in their users. A fantastic amount of trust, actually. The author and weblog restrictions, depending on what license you choose, are in fact not enforced. That means that you can download the totally free version and use it for a hundred weblogs at a hundred websites, or you can use it on as many as you've paid for. That's up to you.

Six Apart trusts you to do the right thing. How many other companies can you say that about? The industry standard is to put in a ridiculous amount of safeguards against potential abuse of products, to the point where it actually hurts the consumer more than it stops the pirates. It's become a rather common thing now that people have to download a no-cd crack in order to be able to play their legitimate copy of a game, due to various copy protection methods. Because most software companies don't trust their customers, they really really distrust them, even.

The folks who make Movable Type have always treated their users with respect. Let's return the favor and give them a chance to process all the feedback that's crammed into their inboxes right now before raising our fists to the sky. Derek Powazek

Overall, beside the cheap bastards, MT 3.0 has been met with a bit of disappointment, and, in my opinion, John Gruber nails the reasons for that perfectly:

Working on the engine first, and then adding features later, is a perfectly acceptable strategy for Six Apart. But they shouldn't have attempted to sell upgrades until they were ready to ship a feature release.

You can certainly argue that the world would be a better place -- or at least filled with better software -- if people were willing to pay for non-feature release software. But they're not. John Gruber

I haven't gotten Movable Type 3.0 yet, and I'm probably going to wait a bit until I do, to read more about the reactions to it, etc and so forth. Right now, my archives are rebuilt rather quickly, because the website is on a semi-dedicated server (not really dedicated, but almost). Since I'm considering moving to DreamHost, or perhaps some other hosting provider, rebuild times will become an issue for me when I do.

Unless the rebuild times has been significantly improved with MT 3.0, I'm probably going to have to switch to some other software, WordPress most likely (TextPattern is also an alternative, most other software are not). If I do switch to some software other than Movable Type, however, that software will absolutely need some kind of comment spam prevention system, such as MT-Blacklist. Preferably, it should also support TypeKey enabled comments.

Like Jason Kottke, I remain a satisfied paying customer of Six Apart.

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