Earlier today Six Apart released Movable Type 3.0 along with information on the pricing of it. There's been a fair amount written about it already that says a lot of what I feel about the subject. Bryant sums it up nicely over at Population: One:

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. [Population: One]

For me to maintain my current setup would cost me $120 - credit for donations I gave to SixApart a year ago (about $45). That's insane. I have three blogs with four authors. So to go from the free version of three blogs that's $40/author for me. $40/author for software that has some new features, but nothing major enough that I'd want to spend $120. I was expecting much much more from this release. For example, they could have incorporated options for things like threaded comments into Movable Type itself. What I see is Movable Type with a slicker interface and the ability to require comments to use registration. Maybe there is more under the hood, but the changes just don't look that staggering to me.

I also don't agree with Timothy Appnel, who 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. [Timothy Appnel]

The problem is that Six Apart has forgotten one of their biggest customer bases. The people who fall into that category of personal bloggers who want more than TypePad or who run their own web site and want to do everything from that. That's the category I fall into. I'm not a developer. I'm not a professional organization. And I have many friends who fall into this same category. And pretty much all of use feel that this pricing really blows.

I also don't have a problem with Six Apart charging for Movable Type. I still think it's a pretty slick piece of software (and donated around $45 or $50 in the past because of it). I want them to be able to keep updating it and adding new features. So how should Six Apart have done things? I can think of a few ways. The big thing I'd do is charge people for credits that get applied to your install. Each credit can be used to add a blog or an author to your installation. You start off with four free credits (which gives you the setup there is now), and then they charge between $5 and $10 for each additional credit (maybe offer volume purchase deals or something). I think they would find people much more willing to pay money then. In my case it would mean $30 or $40. I'd have no problem at all paying that (though I'd still want credit for my past donation).

So I'm going to play around with MT3.0 on my machine a bit and see if Six Apart rethinks things a bit. It may end up being what sends me off to look at other blogging programs. I wonder if they realized how much this was going to annoy people.