Mena, a co-founder of the company that makes MovableType, caused a lot of reaction for the online community with a change in their licensing scheme. I’m actually amazed that any software could cause such a reaction (as I mentioned in the comments to another post). She then asked everyone to mention how they are using MovableType.

I personally use MT to manage three separate web sites (this one, a private family one, and a political one local to my city), so I could get away with upgrading and still using their free version.

However, since MovableType is a bitch to install if you are not a geek, I have offered to host many of my friends blogs so they wouldn’t have to go through that effort… while none of my friends are doing commercial things with it (few of them aren’t very active), I would have to pay a few hundred dollars.

First of all, let me state that I have donated money for MT in the past, and will continue to do so, as I feel it is a good product. But I do have to feel like I am getting the right value for what I pay… and here is my problem.

Now, I might upgrade my personal site to MT3, but leave a MT2.6 site available for my friends to continue to use. Or I could install a number of MT3 instances, but I don’t like doing things like that, as that is just trying to work a technical loop-hole.

What I would like is a flat rate for noncommercial use… If not, I will have to stop talking friends into trying their hand at personal web expression. I would pay around $50 for the tool… but any more, and I would need to get a lot more value for what MT3 currently is.

But like I mentioned before, perhaps a “blog” isn’t what I want my site to be anymore… maybe a full CMS(Content Management System) is more in order. Dunno … still need to stew about this.