The honeymoon is over

Acrimony all over the blogosphere today as Six Apart surprisingly announced their new licensing for MovableType 3.0. Now, if you have heavy requirements, the software comes with a hefty pricetag. Yeah, that's fair enough for commercial sites. It's enterprise-quality software at a very competitive price, and I'm sure companies will gladly pay it. But what of the huge numbers of noncommercial users?

There's still a free version, but look at some of the restrictions that now apply to it:

• No more than three blogs
• No more than one author
• Can only be installed on one CPU

Okay, so the argument is that these restrictions affect a minority of noncommercial users, but since I have two MT installs (and two authors), they do happen to affect me. I would have to pay $69.95 (discount price) to upgrade to MT3 and that's if I consolidated my two MT installs. And the changes also affect Carl, and Susie, and Alex. Put your name down in the comments if I missed you.

None of us makes a penny from our blogs, by the way. So our options are now as follows:

• Pay for Movable Type
• Don't upgrade; stay with MT2 and get left behind
• Upgrade, but knowingly use the software in violation of its license
• Find an alternative content management system

I'm pretty sure that everyone I mentioned above would do any of the last three options before we did the first one. We're not freeloaders; we just have more important things to spend that much money on, since there are alternative courses of action.

I've been using Movable Type since version 1, and I'm happy that Six Apart has become as successful as it is now. But this new licensing is a horrible misstep on their part that has succeeded in alienating practically everybody, especially their biggest adherents. Six Apart have priced themselves out of the noncommercial market. I simply cannot afford this software any more -- not even the cheapest license. I've been locked out.

At least I hope it's a mistake on their part. The alternative is that they have calculatedly chosen to chase the money and screw over noncommercial users. They're a business. Chasing the money is fine. But such ludicrously tight restrictions on noncommercial use will do nothing but turn the very users who have supported the company for years into MT-deserting, grudge-bearing angry people. With a voice. I think they've underestimated the power of this fully armed and operational blogosphere.

Six Apart can still get this back, but they'll have to be quick or this ill will will be permanent. Stay tuned.