There has been a quiet uproar (here, here, and here, for starters…) in the blogging community since the announcement of licensing changes in the new Moveable Type (v3).

Basically, the licensing changes now require payment if you’re using it for more than three blogs. The former licensing issues – free for individual, cost for commerical use – remain (greatly simplified explanation, OK?).

First a disclaimer:

• I currently don’t use MT, although I have a cut of 2.63 installed on a local box, just so I could see what all the fuss is about.
• The buzz is valid – it’s slick. I’ll probably move to MT eventually, unless I roll my own (I’ve built my own version; but that was for fun over a year ago…)

The talk in the blogsphere seems to fall fairly neatly into two categories:

• The Trott’s are abandoning the community that helped make MT so successful
• It’s a company, it has to make money to endure. Quit crabbin’….

I fall in the latter category. MT is a great product, and one can still use it for personal use (1-3 blogs) without any cost. That seems pretty generous still. (See license details)

Responding to point one, all I can say is that this release is actually designed as a developer’s release, to allow more hooks and so on.

Some folks have also pointed out that some non-profit organizations (and for-profits, I’m sure) have been using MT as a CMS (Content Management System); with this new licensing, this will no longer be possible.

Comments: The reason they’ve used MT as a CMS is because it offers so much regardless of the price, and – at “free” – it was a real steal. Even at the new costs (depending on what you need), it’s a steal compared to other CMS products. Yes, for some companies this will be a deal breaker, but the choice will still come down to using MT (cheap and effective) or not being able to do as much content, because any CMS is too expensive. The latter is, of course, troubling, but let’s do a reality check. What you got (unlimited MT use) for the price you paid (nada) in the past is just not a realistic model. Did ya really expect this to continue indefinitely?

There seems to be too much of an emphasis in free as in beer vs. free as in freedom.

Well, the price of beer just went up (for some users).

The same open codebase is available for those who want to add MT modules.

I just don’t understand the uproar.

It’s still free for most users; the API is still open.

There are tiered licenses avaiable, it’s not zero or a million bucks.

TypePad is out there for users who want basic stuff, with unlimited blogs.

And maybe Six Apart will be able to stay in business and continue to offer and evolve this great product.