Don't get me wrong here. I don't mind bit paying for MT and have donated $$ in the past, and even paid them to install it on my system for the first time.

However, the issue at stake here is the absolutely shitty communication strategy (or lack thereof) that 6A has in place.

Along with many others, I've now gone through the Alpha and Beta testing cycles over the past couple of months. Now, with all of the database changes that were made, if I were to want to go back to a clean, "free" install, that supports all of the blogs/content areas that I have, I would need to do a clean install of the finished product, which will require restructurin several months of work or pay a hefty license fee to do the *exact* same thing I was/am doing for free.

I have no problem paying for software, I do have a problem with the expectation that I should pay a fee for a version release that offers me little added value.

If Six Apart had bothered to mention the possibility of a new pricing structure (sharks in the waters ahead, so to speak) at the beginning of the beta cycle, then I'd have stayed my ass out of the ocean. I simply would not have upgraded. But they didn't, and I did. Now I have three choices:

a) destroy several months of work
b) pay them their money
c) stick with a potentially buggy beta version

What a pain in the ass, really, what a pain...

Real big pain! I know ... that's why I beta'd on a non-production, for beta only site ...

... now I need only rm -rf the path and drop a database.