Movable Type - or Leavable Type?

Six Apart's justifiably-lauded server-based blogging software just got an upgrade. Thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of people have been using it for free. Many of their blogs are now online daily staples for tens of thousands of other people. Maybe even millions. The software is now not free, and the price is now many hundreds of dollars. Some of those blogs might now cease to be - or the bloggers might have to move to different software and settle for a blog with less features and therefore severely upset or inconvenience their readerships. Not to mention themselves.

So let's take a look at what the web is saying.

Six Apart's announcement of the price hike, with lots of angry comments at the bottom

MetaFilter's discussion / stoking of the fire, chronologically

Slashdot's members proceed to slash Six Apart's virtual windpipe. Over and over

HostingMatters has a more removed, academic discussion... for a while

An excellent overview of the 'why does it matter?' variety by Silent Running - "Primarily - the entire episode has motivated a lot of people to, possibly for the first time, do a careful comparison of the other options available in the realm of Content Management Software/Systems. And many of those folks were dyed in the wool virtual cheerleaders and unabashed advocates of the MT system"

Foreword, one of my favourite blogs, isn't happy at all. They posted again later about Six Apart's u-turn under pressure, and there are excellent links and commentary in that post

blogoSFERICS definitely fucking isn't fucking happy (and this link may consequently die)

Now, there are two alternatives out there which spring to mind for many people, the first of which is WordPress. The other horse to enter the race is ExpressionEngine.

I guess you might be wondering "why the hell does this matter?". Well, you're reading a weblog which could just as well have been written under Movable Type. If you link from my sidebar you might be reading something which is actually written under Movable Type. And since blogging is so huge, and Movable Type such a market leader up until now, it's like... well, it's like the book industry just finding out that, from now on, a common type of paper now costs $ (insert really crippling price here).

I was thinking that sometime I'd get myself some proper server space and figure out how to install Movable Type (for it's a difficult process). But now, I'm hoping that the competition will take advantage of this newly-blown-open market to identify the weaknesses of Movable Type as experienced by people who aren't server geeks. And I'm hoping that, a few years down the line, the competition won't charge several hundred dollars for the privilege.