Movable Type, one of the original software packages that started the blogging revolution is going open source. This site used Movable Type for about two years before switching over to WordPress. It seems that SixApart’s decision to open-source MT has much to do with the competition from the open-source WordPress system.
In any market, healthy competition is always a good thing, and while I’ve found WordPress to be an excellent platform for blogging that keeps getting more and more flexible, Movable Type was and is a great blogging package as well. Hopefully the quest to make blogging more effective will improve the quality of both products. Going open-source may allow both packages to enhance each other by sharing common ideas and systems. One of the problems for writing software that works with blogging systems is that everybody has their own “standard.” WordPress uses the old Movable Type API, Blogger now uses GData, and Movable Type and Typepad use either the MovableType API or the new “standard” Atom Publishing Protocol — but not always in compatible ways. Hopefully everyone can be on the same page, which would make software developer’s lives much easier and allow for better integration between packages.
