MT 3.0 released

Well, the moment many MT-heads have been waiting for is here - MovableType 3.0 is here. There has been quite a lot of discussion and rumours about this for months, and unfortunately most of it has been negative. People have been complaining that features Six Apart has added to the new edition do not warrant a major version number change, as very few things have actually changed.

Now it's all in the open. Mena Trott (co-founder of Six Apart) explains what it's all about:

"It will be available to everyone, not just developers; we're calling it a Developer Release to emphasize the fact that 3.0 itself is not a feature release in the traditional sense. With this release we hope that the developer community will implement some great extensions for 3.0.

Since many of Six Apart's employees are Apple fanboys/girls, we make the analogy to the first releases of OS X: the first releases did not offer that many new features themselves, only a more stable and robust platform for developers to build upon."

Sounds fair enough - I'm all for robust platforms, but what really surprised - and yes shocked - me is the new licensing structure. While MT will still be available for free, the restriction of only one user and maximum of three weblogs seems... a bit harsh. I'm not against them asking money for it - hey, I've donated them money because I think it's only fair - but what they consider personal use is in my opinion a bit limited: maximum of three users and five weblogs - with the pricetag of $99.95. How about situations - there are numerous just in Finnish blogosphere - where you'd like to offer your friends their own blog on your server. If you don't ask money for it, it can't be exactly called commercial can it, but you'd have to pay hard money for it in 3.0.

I had been looking forward to this update for a while now, but looks like I need to think about this a bit more. Depending on how the features will be coming along, I imagine I will eventually be upgrading. But that's what it all seems to be depending on now - I imagine Six Apart will be concentrating on the infrastructure, and voluntary developers will be concentrating on the additional features people want.

I'm hoping of course that it will all turn out well. But it will be interesting to see if this kind of reliance on voluntary support will pay off.

Later: As I assumed, the licensing pricing has caused a furore.