The fact that Movable Type is not Free Software has been a constant refrain among its critics, and this is perhaps the reason why. The Trotts' company, Six Apart, announced yesterday a pay version of MT, Movable Type Pro. The release says pricing and features won't be released unti the summer, but a few of the planned features include workflow management, mobile communication interfaces, and an integrated traffic and statistics system.
The site suggests MT Pro is professional grade "nano-publishing," which makes me wonder if this is for doing small news sites or KM in small businesses, rather for individual blogs. I can't imagine there would be enough demand for a pay version of MT, unless they really start crippling the non-pay version. Blogger Pro is certainly more robust and feature-rich than Blogger (but that's not saying much) driving people to upgrade, if only out of desperation. I tend to think that on the consumer end, hosted and pre-installed Blog Management Systems or BMs (pun intended) are a better business proposition than charging consumers for a bunch of scripts they have to fool around with and cuss at. Maybe they'll make the software available at no charge and charge for decent documentation
They also released MT 2.6, an updated version of the no-cost product, yesterday. I suppose they'll continue to upgrade this version as well.