Cameron's Thoughts

This site is powered by a very nice piece of software called Movable Type. Big news has been that the next major release of the software, version 3.0 is in the testing stages and going to be released soon. Well, that time is now.
Six Apart, the company that produces the software has released a developers version of the software that anyone can use right now. But the big news that has caused a lot of controversy has been the announcement of a new licensing scheme. This is a huge change. Movable Type in the past has been completely free for noncommercial use. And there will still be a free version now, but it is very restrictive. It only allows for a single author and up to three blogs. For many, this is too restrictive for how they are currently using the software. Not only that, but the lowest cost version of the software to purchase has a price tag of $99.99, on sale for 69.95 currently. This will allow up to five authors and five blogs, still for noncommerical use. That's quite a hefty price. I understand that the company needs to make money, but for the price to go from free to $100 and still be restrictive compared to what the free version offers is a hard change to transition to.
Plus, add on to that, version 3.0 will not really add any features expect for their TypeKey comment feature, something that I really had no intrest in anyway. Once again, I have no problem with the fact that this new version wasn't going to add any features. The big thing was that the foundation of the application was going to be completely rewritten to allow for better plug-ins and more powerful features in the future.
I believe that a fully-featured version of Movable Type would be something worth paying for. Throw in every feature they can think of, and slap a price tag on it. But, 3.0 is basically just like 2.6, but it costs money. So, for the time being, I am planning no software upgrades and will stick with what I've got.