Dreamwidth Studios LLC has announced the beginning of their Open Beta process.  Up until last night, the journalling service had been operating with a Closed Beta, open only to users with internally-generated invite codes and OpenID users.  Today, the service is open to paid users, starting at $3 for one month of paid account time, which will convert to a free acccount after expiration.  Seed accounts are also available on a limited basis (the next batch wil go on sale May 7 through May 8) for $200.  These are equivalent to Permanent accounts on Livejournal, with the widest variety of features and limits available to users.  Paid and Premium Paid accounts offer varying levels of service at different rates.  Free accounts offer the most basic services and are available with an invite code from a Paid user (or a Closed Beta user who has been given invite codes as thanks).

What is Dreamwidth?  A journalling service based on the Livejournal open source code, with modifications based on user input.  Instead of a Friends list, users have a Reading list, and an Access list; you can follow that BNF without letting her read about your cats, or you can let that friend you like read all about your job woes while you skip her addiction to every single meme ever invented for the Web.  As on LJ, there are custom filters and tags, the ability to edit comments for paid users, communities, and syndicated feeds, with additional crossposting ability to other blogging sites.

From the site:
We're committed to remaining ad-free as long as this site exists, so we rely on you for the money to keep the site up and running. We do this by selling paid accounts. When you purchase a Paid Account, you gain additional account features. The account features that are more expensive for us to run are only available to paid accounts.

The main advertised benefit to DW is the lack of ads, which means a lack of advertisers to keep happy.  The various 'Gates at Livejournal occurred, at least according to common belief, due to management worries about bad press and advertisers pulling their money.  With paid accounts funding the site, the owners are beholden to the users first and always.  Fandom at large has been keeping an eye on the site as a possible migration site, as it promises to be more robust than other LJ clones such as Journalfen, Insanejournal and (the late) Greatestjournal.

Full disclosure: I have a permanent account on Livejournal, purchased in 2005.  LJ will remain my primary fandom home for the forseeable future.  That said, Dreamwidth looks interesting, and as I have one invite code to spare for a potential new user, I will make it available to the person who replies to this article with the best comment in 50-100 words on why s/he would like to check out DW.  (Final decision left in the hands of Firefox News management.  Contest ends at 9 PM Central Daylight Time on Sunday, May 3, 2009.  Please leave your email address in the "Your Email" field with the comment; emails will not be published -- please see our Privacy Policy.  Spammers will be mocked.)