Six Apart needs to learn a few things about secrets and surprises from Blogger. If you have a good surprise like the new Blogger release, it's good to spring it out unexpected. That kind of thing creates excitement. However, if you have a bad surprise like they had today, it's best to prepare your users for it.
All they've done is create resentment amoung those who supposed to give them large sums of money. This announcement of the lackluster features and pricing scheme is like someone telling you about a death. Not only have you lost them, but you also have to pay for their funeral.
Maybe I'm missing what people are panicking about? It says they will have a free 3.0 version still.
Yes, but if you have more than one author and more than three blogs you have to pay. Also, it has been handled very poorly. An example of this is the large group of beta testers. They were not told that it would be a paid upgrade and are now stuck between either keeping a beta version, or paying if they go over the free limits.
Everyone expected MT to always be free as that is what they said. They said that MT 3 would be a "free upgrade." I can find the quote. And there was always talk of MT Pro, which would have cool new features, being released for a price. Yet now, something that people expected to get for free because of Six Apart's awful communication, they cannot get. IIf you have a blog with a few authors on it or have multiple blogs that you use for different aspects of a website then you'll have to pay a lot of money, unexpected.