A couple of people have written to me about the new MT licensing scheme. Some of you are angry with 6A over the new pricing, some of you are angry with me for seeming angry with 6A, and of course some of you are angry about a lot of things. First off, it’s obviously important to note the changes and clarifications that came to light a few days ago. The redefinition of “weblog” as “site” (rather than the thing that’s called a weblog within MT) removes what was probably the biggest obstacle to my continued use of MT, although the author limits are still troubling.

The bottom line, of course, is that I’m not willing to pay for blogging software. Call me a freeloader or a fuckface or the enemy of developers everywhere, whatever. I was using a homegrown CMS that my friend Spencer wrote in PHP long before MT was a gleam in anyone’s eye (and long before I’d ever heard the word “blog”). I’ve hopped around a lot since then, and I’m perfectly willing to hop once more or take a crack at writing something for myself. Of course MT has more features than other similar options - but it so happens that I use almost none of them. And whatever advantages the new MT has over the free alternatives, they just don’t interest me if MT itself is not free. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who are happy to shell out for their blogging software almost as much as I did for my operating system, but I’m not one of them.

That said, I’m perfectly aware that there’s a free version of MT for me and all of the other fuckfaces. It might even do everything I need it to, now that 6A’s definition of “weblog” has been cleared up. But if it doesn’t, I won’t be breaking out the credit card any time soon. (Although I probably will stay with the old version of MT for a while.)