Just had a post up at TechCrunch on Movable Type 4.0 and the fact that it will be open sourced.
I’m conscious of just running posts at duncanriley.com that link to stuff at TechCrunch given I’m writing there, but bugger it, this is a post worth writing about and linking to.
I talked to Anil Dash for about 45 minutes today (my time of course, AWST +8 GMT). Even in the darkest moments of my relationship with Mena and SixApart Anil was always the consummate gentleman. It was a delight talking to him, he admitted that SixApart had make mistakes in the past without naming them, and said that open sourcing MT was about going back to MT’s roots. If I was nasty I could say that it’s all too late, but Web 2.0 me isn’t quite as negative: it’s never too late to embrace your community, and although I’ve now spent years working under WordPress I’ll be giving the new version of MT a serious shot. I only just received the MT 4.0 source files, literally 5 minutes before the TechCrunch post so I couldn’t include a test, but it’s next on my agenda.
It looks cool and I really hope that it is as well. More soon, although first thought: I wonder if they have included a WP to MT tool?
I was going to say that as well. Then again open sourced projects never die, regardless whether there is a community or not. The code just gets reused in some other projects and live on. Why say the nasty words when nothing bad can come out of it?
Thanks for reporting this.
There is indeed a WordPress -> MT importing tool. I’d love to read what you think of v4.0
Very smart move to make it open source, they should start to see alot more bloggers using there platform as a result. And with more people using the platform alot more plug ins will be available to use.
Read a very powerful post over at Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0. regarding this very topic.
Have place the link below. The eventual debate stimulated a lot of Insightful conjecture. So much so, that Anil Dash, felt obliged to join the conversation. What fascinated/fascinates me rightly or wrongly is the perceived co-option of OPEN SOURCE, by software companies, that have seemingly lost market share, in an attempt to somehow kick start sluggish economic momentum, lost to strategic cockups…..
http://publishing2.com/2007/06/05/wordpress-vs-movable-type-open-source-blogging-software-showdown/