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Movable Type 3.0 pricing is, bluntly, horrendous.

I don’t think software needs to be free; I shelled out for Movable Type 2.5, because I thought it was good software and I wanted to pay for it. I also don’t mind paying more for professional versions of the software. However, the new pricing is linked to the release of Movable Type 3.0, which doesn’t feel much like a major version release to me. The important new features, from a user point of view, are comment moderation. That’s not enough to justify a $75 price hike on the basic version of the software.

What’s worse is the limitations they’re putting on the various price tiers. Since there are no major new features in 3.0, they’ve elected to limit the number of authors one can have on a weblog, and the number of weblogs one can have in a given installation. I.e., a user who’s been merrily humming along with multiple blogs and multiple authors may suddenly have to pay $600 to get the functionality they paid $25 for previously.

These aren’t hypotheticals, either. Shelley would need to pay $600 bucks. So would Michael and Ginger. For no significant new features.

Me? $70, discounted by the amount of my previous donation. But I wouldn’t be able to casually fiddle around with new ideas any more. So, yeah, I’m looking at Wordpress and Textpattern.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Timothy Appnel says, “The delineation between TypePad and MT have become clear with this release — TypePad is for general users wanting to blog and Movable Type is for developers and professional organizations wanting to do more then just weblogging.”

This may be true from Six Apart’s point of view. However, it is not clearly true from the point of view of Movable Type users. I am not a developer or a professional organization; I am a general user who wants to blog. I also want to use Textile and subcategories and threaded comments and so on. Six Apart has provided me with a simple way to add plugins to my blog; they have put that capacity in the hands of semi-technical general users. They have created a user base which will not be satisfied with TypePad as a general blogging solution.

I don’t know if Timothy’s assumptions about delineations match what Six Apart thinks, but if so, it’s going to be important for Six Apart to take a look at the user base and make sure their categories match the real categories.

Disclaimer: I think Six Apart is a good company and I really like their product.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

The Scala Choir cover of "I Touch Myself" is kinda making me sentimental just at the moment. It’s really beautiful. There’s a bit more about the Choir here, with a video. There’s a classical piece, Nocturne, opus 40 by Dvorak, on the official site.

I just added the Fluxblog feed to LiveJournal as flux_blog, by the by. There’s also a syndicated journal called fluxblog, but it’s using the RSS feed which is not so current.