Movable Type 3 has been out for a day now. And a lot of people have had time to weigh in with their opinions. Six Apart has been beaten black and blue for this new pricing scheme. It irritates me how many people are crying fowl about this.

Six Apart is not the Evil Empire, they are not the RIAA, they aren't even Microsoft! They are a software developer who cares about customers, they even listen to their customers. This is more then can be said for most software developers.

Lets look at a few facts:

1. MT 3 has a free version that is unsupported (just like before)
2. TypePad offers unlimited blogs and authors (and you don't have to pay for hosting on top of that)
3. MT 3 is NOT a feature release, although does include improvements
4. Six Apart has drastically changed the licensing restrictions (that was the most gripped about problem with MT)

Did I mention it is free?

Six Apart is just like most other software developers. They are in the business of making money. So get off their back for charging for Movable Type!

I couldn't agree more with Timothy Appnel's "Movable Type 3.0 and Eating" article. He makes a few great points, and is worth reading. It would be nice to see more articles defending instead of defying Six Apart.

But why do people want code (i.e. MT) free of charge? Easy. They have absolutely no clue as to how much work it actually took to make that code usable, much less elegant.

I was one of the few who donated after I started using Movable Type on multiple sites. You did know you can donate right? It is referred to "donationware" for a reason (Don't say this too loud, but donating to a freeware or open source based project actually helps the project move forward, or maybe thats just how I think).