One of the things that changed with the software rollout, without much publicity, is that it is no longer possible to get a new ad-free basic account - all of the free accounts on offer now have ads - the sign-up page apparently won't let you do it any more.
About all that I want to say about this is that they are within their rights to do this, but the lack of publicity grates - presumably they did this to stop people grabbing basic accounts in the last few days they were available. My position on this is simple - I wouldn't have started using livejournal if I couldn't have got an ad-free account, so they would have never got my money for paid or permanent accounts. I hope that this won't change the character of livejournal too badly, but I think it's a bad move. Amongst other problems, I think that the volunteer culture that has served livejournal so well will suffer.
