Although it’s been long-expected, Six Apart finally transitioned its Movable Type blogging software to an open-source license today. In many ways this is a response to the success of WordPress, the open-source blog-publishing software that is increasingly popular, especially among bloggers who like to tweak their own code. (TechCrunch uses WordPress, for instance).
Now, Movable Type can benefit from improvements to its code contributed by its most ardent users. The competition should be good for bloggers everywhere who choose to host their own blogs (as opposed to those who use hosted services such as Six Apart’s Typepad or Automattic’s hosted version of WordPress or Google’s Blogger). Six Apart’s Anil Dash, who notes the company’s commitment to openness in general, gives the low-down on how Movable Type took the open-source route. Movable Type Open Source (MTOS) is based on Movable Type 4.0. Dash notes:
—MTOS has every feature in Movable Type 4.0 along with several new minor improvements and bug fixes.
—All plugins, themes, templates, designs, and APIs that work with MT4 work with MTOS. MTOS also works with other Six Apart open source technologies such as memcached.
—MTOS is one of the only open source blogging tools with built-in support for an unlimited number of blogs, an unlimited number of authors, and sign-in with OpenID, with no plugins needed.
—We’ll be adding additional paid benefits for people who’ve paid for commercial licenses for Movable Type, with benefits like improved technical support and custom add-ons such as plugins or themes.
—You can find out how to contribute to the MTOS project and the MT community at movabletype.org.
—Movable Type Open Source is being released under the standard GPL license.
—We welcome and encourage the distribution and reuse of all or part of MTOS in other open source projects.
You can find more details here.