This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following today’s firestorm, but it all boils down to this: it’s too expensive.

Here’s my situation.

My personal server (not the one running Eclecticism right now) currently runs an install of MovableType 2.6 with two public weblogs (one for my dad, and one for my friend Kirsten) and one private (a testing area for me). That is already enough to knock me out of the “free” category, as it’s limited to three weblogs and a single author. So as things stand right now, I’m looking at the Personal Edition for $49.95 (normally $99.95, introductory special of $69.95, minus the $20 I donated to pay for my copy of MT).

While I’m currently using TypePad for this weblog, I do occasionally toy with the idea of returning to hosting myself on my own server. This won’t happen before October or so, when my current TypePad payment runs out (and may not happen at all), but it’s an idea I play with. Currently, this site actually encompasses three public weblogs (Eclecticism, the linklog is a separate weblog incorporated into Eclecticism, and Wüdivisions) and one private weblog used for testing purposes. Even without moving the testing weblog over to my server, as I already have one there, adding those three to my current install jumps the number of weblogs I’d be running on my server to six. The Personal Edition license tops out at five weblogs, so that would jump me up to the Personal Edition Volume License I for $99.95 ($149.95, intro special of $119.95, minus $20).

Additionally, it’s been a long-standing plan (that I have only myself to blame for not having happened yet, as I’ve yet to spend a weekend writing up some guidelines and help documents for my family) to open what’s currently my dad’s weblog up to the entire Hanscom family. That could add anywhere from one to eight other authors (Mom, Kevin, Emily, Aunt Susan, her son Eric, Uncle Doug, Aunt Pam, and their older daughter Kayt) depending on how many of them were interested. That puts me at a total of eleven potential authors (counting myself, Dad, and Kirsten). Unfortunately, the Personal Edition licenses top out at nine authors, and the introductory Commercial License only supports five authors. Suddenly, I’m looking at the Commercial License for 20 Authors — for $579.95 ($699.95, intro special of $599.95, minus $20).

I don’t think so.

If the price weren’t bad enough, there are some other things that bother me about the licensing for MT 3. The biggest one is this clause in the Standard Personal Use License:

You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU.

Excuse me? That has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a long time (though, admittedly, while I probably should, I don’t make a habit of reading software licenses). While I’m currently using an older single-processor G3 for my webserver, should it ever die or should I for any other reason decide to switch over to using my fancy new dual processor G5 as my webserver, I could not legally install MovableType 3.0. And what about all those people who don’t run their own servers, but pay for a remotely hosted website? What are the chances of them having any idea how many processors the machine that actually runs their site uses? I’d hazard a guess that there are better chances that any reputable hosting company is actually quite likely to be using multiple-processor servers (and thus not legally allowed to run the copy of MT 3 that a user might upload to their system).

Other annoyances:

TypeKey wasn’t going to be required to use MT3 (and maybe it still isn’t), but apparently you have to sign up for a TypeKey ID in order to download MT3. While I’m not in the anti-TypeKey camp (I think it could potentially be very useful, and already have a TypeKey ID via my TypePad account), there are plenty of people who aren’t comfortable with TypeKey who aren’t going to be happy with this.

MT3 isn’t even a feature release, as Mena mentioned earlier this month. While I’m sure the work done on the backend to allow more opportunities for developers to extend the framework is quite welcome for developers, and while I was really looking forward to the comment management features I’ve gotten used to with TypePad (plus the TypeKey integration), it’s hardly the (now vaporware?) MTPro that we’d been expecting for ages.

Lastly, rebuilds are getting to be more and more of a pain in the butt. The bigger a weblog gets, and the more information piles up in the archives, the more of a pain in the butt MT’s technique of statically rendering each page becomes. While at the time I first started using MT this seemed like a benefit (creating static pages keeps the processor from having to chew on every requested page before sending it out, so can in theory be faster), I’m finding more and more that it seems to be a detriment in the long run (the more information there is to process, the slower the rebuild process becomes, until the benefits of static versus dynamic pages are outweighed by the tradeoff in time spent creating all those static pages). More and more, I’m thinking that switching the weblogs on my server to a PHP based solution (as Phil has with Among Other Things — also hosted on my server — by moving to WordPress) is likely to be the best long-term solution.

Now, please understand, I’m not upset that they’re changing the licensing, nor that they’re charging more than they have in the past. I don’t have any problem paying for the software that I use, and I don’t automatically assume that everything should be free. However, I do think that they are charging far too much, and that’s where the problem lies.

Still, Ben and Mena (and the rest of the gang at Six Apart) have done a lot of good for the weblogging community over the years, and I wish them the best of luck.

From the look of things, they’re likely to need it.

iTunes: “Prototype” by Assembly Line from the album Zoo Rave 1 (1992, 4:59).

[See also: MovableType 3: License updates and clarifications | Putting The Long Letter on hold for a bit… | TypePad IDs are TypeKey IDs! | Apple’s getting into weblogging | Looking for a little assistance ]

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