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Movable Type 4.0 Goes Open Source, Adds 50 New Features

movabletype.org — WordPress gets all the press for open source blogging, but Movable Type, the daddy of all serious blogging apps, is open source now -- is there finally a new king of the blogging hill?

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plasticmind 1 year 131 days ago, made popular 1 year 130 days ago

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thejerm, on 10/11/2007, -8/+32more like the return of the king
- LegendOfLink, on 10/11/2007, -7/+24Maybe more like a Duke or Lord.
  
  Wordpress was open source from day one. What did it take Six Apart, 6 years and 4 versions?
  
  Not only that, but MT will need some time to develop the value that the WP community brings to the real King.
- 3mpire, on 10/11/2007, -3/+37But WP only became the "king" after MT decided that they were going to get paid. So if anything WP's popularity is entirely due to MT driving their own user base into WP's willing arms.
- Unavoidable, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15Too bad in the time MT decided to get paid, WP has built up a sizable user-base advantage, with all that extra user generated content... MT's got a huge uphill battle now.
- themoose, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7Anybody got a demo up?
- user777, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Just when I finished installing my entire website with thousands of entries on MT with all the plugins and dynamic publishing, they decided to make everything new again. Sighs....
  
  I hope they have the dynamic publishing right 'cause they way it is right now, all the cool plugins broke as soon as you go dynamic.
  
  I'm glad WP is pushing MT on this one, as WP has done everything right, except for the user interface, which is the reason i'm using MT.
  
  If you want to make a profit without going open-source, u better have a kick ass development team with little market competition, otherwise, u'll lose in no time.
- Nightfall, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Return of the King? I am not so sure about that. I have used both MT and Wordpress, and I really can't say that one is so much better than the other. I am currently using Wordpress and I really like it. Of course, MT did the job for me as well. I never had a system crash or problem with either one. I would have to put them both on equal footing with benefits and drawbacks to each one. One is not king over the other.
- Rekzai, on 10/11/2007, -11/+5Wordpress > _____
- rpgmaker, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13They're building an open source version and a closed source version (the definitive version). No thanks, I don't need that kind of business in a CMS, I have Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla and they're completely FLOSS.
- mdmadph, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Uh... since when the hell was Movable Type ever _not_ open source?
  
  It hasn't always been free, no, but "free" and "open source" definitely don't mean the same things.
- h2d2, on 10/11/2007, -5/+8Let's dispell some myths here:
  
  1. Movabletype has always been FREE. Multi-authors and expedited technical support costs money.
  
  2. You can get a multi-author license and support for FREE by joining their Professional Developers mailing list.
  
  3. Movabletype has always been a more feature-rich, stable and secure web-app than WP.
  
  4. There's still a lot of people (like myself) who were their in the time before time, when there was no WP and have always used Movabletype. I have tired different versions of WP over the years but never felt compelled to move.
- Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2> "I never had a system crash. . .with either one."
  
  Holy Christ, I would hope not... Both being programmed in an interpreted language, that would take some serious effort.
desabrochar, on 10/11/2007, -10/+9For me at least, MT never lost his crown.
- rpgmaker, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Of course they did, why do you think they're making this moves now?
- aboyd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@rpgmaker,
  
  He prefaces his comment with "FOR ME AT LEAST" -- as in, his personal feelings. Are you honestly trying to say that he personally doesn't like Movable Type as much as he claims? Or are you just having a bad reading comprehension day?
3mpire, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13it's kind of an implicit admission that their decision to charge a licensing fee for their application was a mistake, isn't it?
- darksheer, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2I'd even take the "kind of" out of that statement.
  
  Had they never made such an ignorant decision, they might never have "lost the crown" as it were.
- rickmb, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Not only that, the fact that they now have a "commercial" and an open source version means they still don't get it.
  
  Any company that promotes open source and commercial are two different things most likely doesn't give a flying f*** about open source, the coders that contribute to it and the people that use it.
- aboyd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5@rickmb,
  
  I don't quite agree. MySQL has both licenses. ActiveState (the Windows Perl company) does similar. Many other products are dual-licensed. I think many good products can succeed this way. However, I'm not so sure about this particular implementation. Will they go the RealPlayer route, and bury the open-source version under 100 pages admonishing the user to buy the product? Or will they openly & honestly deliver a product that people can rally around and easily download? Time will tell.
- generalloy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1rickmb, if the product is GPL that's an excellent thing. Since there are people who don't want to license things under the GPL, a dual licensed product can make money for the company providing the GPL'd product, which helps out the community and the company. Trolltech does this with QT, for example, and the other reply noted other examples.
  
  Mozilla is also trilicensed...GPL, LGPL, MPL.
joshua5, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7someone call James A C Joyce
http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2004/2/2/171117/8823
- Noctem, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4hahaha, classic. I remember this from when k5 was still relevant.
- timdorr, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9What's funny is he suggests moving to LiveJournal, which is now owned by SixApart, makers of MT :)
hcarlens, on 10/11/2007, -6/+6Hopefully the new king will be more digg-resistant, because whenever a wordpress page is dugg, it is usually down after a few hundred diggs.
- enzoten, on 10/11/2007, -14/+4I have never had a MovableType blog suffer from the digg effect. (Try me: http://www.anythingbutipod.com) This is because MT blogs usually create static pages as apposed to WP dynamic PHP pages.
- vannoy, on 10/11/2007, -6/+23You do understand that 99.9% of the time it's the fault of the hosting service and not WordPress itself that causes that right?
- Ashex, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12@vannoy
  
  that's partially true. The mysql service crashes due to the massive amount of queries it gets when a page is dugg. by default, when you load a wordpress page, it queries the database to generate that page.
- kupa, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10WP (powered) Stuff gets dugg often, does it not? I'd say its a combo of poor hosts + idiot bloggers. If you are gonna add a "digg this" button, you better be damned sure you've got a good cache system setup.
- landmonster, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4What vannoy said. It's mostly because the blogs are on crappy shared hosting that can't take the traffic. Nothing to do with WP.
  
  I used to use MT but moved to WP when they started charging. I'd never go back.
- user777, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5the sum of the matter is, all the WP people are poor, hence poor hosting service, free publishing system. j/k
- lava, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2"You do understand that 99.9% of the time it's the fault of the hosting service and not WordPress itself that causes that right?"
  
  That's like saying it's not the gun that does the killing, it's the person that does the killing...
  
  ...but the gun helps.
- mjsteinbaugh, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5WordPress can survive Digg's traffic when WP-Cache is enabled on a decent web host.
- spyrochaete, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Sorry to hijack the comment, but...
  
  "If you are gonna add a 'digg this' button"
  
  Don't you just hate those? What kind of egotistical ***** deems every single blog entry worthy of being dugg?
Trendecide, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7By reading what's there, despite the open source release they plan to continue to charge for the application (read "how much will it cost to upgrade to MT4?"). WP will forever remain king so long as MT even attempts to charge for their software. MT could add 1000+ new features and I don't think it'd make a bit of difference, particularly while they continue to charge for their software. WP has such a strong following I'm not sure MT has a shot at this point anyhow.

Ah well... don't use either anyhow. :P
- Nocturnal, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I think that's only for "business class" users. It says personal license is free. I could be wrong though.
- user777, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2they better have it free for personal use, otherwise ... that ain't gonna cut it. i envy those WP users, always seem so happy with themselves. wonder what's on the other side of the woods?
- plasticmind, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Just a quick clarification... Six Apart isn't charging for MT, they're actually just charging for the "Enterprise Pack" which is MT plus some heavy duty Enterprise components like LDAP, Oracle support, granular group controls for workflow, etc. MT Vanilla doesn't cost a thing.
blueeyedmonster, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11Many of you clearly have never looked into MT. The personal license for MT has been free for at least the last 8 months (and frankly for as long as I can remember, and I've been designing MT sites for ages), see here: http://www.movabletype.com/pricing.html

They charge for businesses and for support, and the cost for that is pretty minimal for what it does.
- joaob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Since when has Free = OpenSource?
  
  I don't see anyone challenging that it has been free.
  
  I clearly read the title that says "Movable Type 4.0" Goes Open Source
- blueeyedmonster, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1When I commented on this thread there had been several comments before mine saying this sort of thing:
  
  "By reading what's there, despite the open source release they plan to continue to charge for the application (read "how much will it cost to upgrade to MT4?")."
  
  "it's kind of an implicit admission that their decision to charge a licensing fee for their application was a mistake, isn't it?"
Nocturnal, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I recall initially before trying to figure out what I was going to use. I knew that MT was the cream of the crop but had wondered what had happened to them. Good to know they're back. I'm going to try and use it on a few of my sites.
FZero, on 10/11/2007, -4/+3They lost the lead to Wordpress exactly because they were NOT open-source. They're doing a mea-culpa and going back to a community-friendly model. The question is: will it blen... I mean, will it work?
- hifiDesign, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2See Blueeyedmonster's comment a few threads above. Not only does MT work, it works pretty damn well when you know what you're doing (and I'm only halfway there and didn't have that much trouble). It's been free without support for *I think* the past two years at least. I'm backing up my current install and I'll let you guys know if it floats. I was about to switch to Expression Engine but if this update is significant enough (and doesn't break a whole lot), I'll be staying in the MT camp.
civperc, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4moveable type can't and won't take over wordpress, both are good, but one is vastly better.
- user777, on 10/11/2007, -8/+4man, wp user interface makes me wanna puke... excuse me i mean, it reminds me of the 90s
- spyrochaete, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2@user777
  I don't have any problem with WP's admin console, except that when plugins add an option you never know which submenu it will be listed under.
  
  Do you have any specific criticism about WP or are you just trolling?
picaman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Personally, I miss the days of Greymatter.
Egoist, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I'm surprised at the WordPress following here. If you've ever had to delve into the codebase, I don't think any of you would be so chipper about it.

Textpattern is a well-written, stable blog platform that can withstand a Digg swarm. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to trying out MT and curious to see how well it works.
- rtfx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I haven't looked at the code, but I wasn't impressed with Wordpress simply because it gets successfully targeted for vandalism. After getting my blog database corrupted because I was a few days slow to update(my fault, but it's not a very important or long-lived blog) I decided to look for something that seemed solid but unpopular and went to Pivot. It doesn't need SQL. It's only had two vulnerabilities in ~5 years. The theme is easy to customize with some HTML/CSS knowledge, and the default features are more than sufficient for me, so I DON'T have to deal with any plugin system or hack up the code to get it where I want.
- ucg1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Wordpress was crap when I looked at it for my site. There were showstopper bugs that weren't fixed for months after they had been reported. I wasn't impressed. I went with Drupal instead, and though it could use some help in the interface department, it is very solid.
- spyrochaete, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Wordpress had a couple of CSS bugs but I believe they've been fixed.
Hashim, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2MT is releasing it as open source because there's no money in the consumer market. So why spend all your energy building a product that will make less than Typepad and Vox? instead they are making the smart move of selling enterprise services.
trenchcoat, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2And Serendipity continues to get no love.

http://s9y.org
- spyrochaete, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1I've never heard of Serendipity. How does it stack up against the big boys?
- trenchcoat, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Just my personal opinion but I like it better than WP. It feels more stable to me but I'm just a blogger. I know very little about code.
stephdau, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Haven't seen a Perl offering in a while for this breed of apps. Probably cleaner than slashcode too. ;)
factoryjoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Here's a useful review of what's in this release: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/movable_type_40.php
radioraheem, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Speaking from a hosting standpoint, I can't stand supporting MT. It's a resource hog. I really hope the new version addresses that, but if the past is any indication it'll probably just be worse (more features = bloat).
- Egoist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Yeah, after reading the comments at factoryjoe's link, it doesn't sound like a real winner. For instance:
  
  "The last time I used MT I used it on lightpd with FastCGI enabled. It seemed to grab memory at a fairly consistent rate and never give it back. To keep within bounds, I had to use a cheap-and-dirty script to restart lighttpd every so often."
  
  That's unacceptable in any serious web application.
- aboyd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3@Egoist,
  
  That's not the experience I've had with it. I deployed MT as the CMS for http://www.agitar.com/ -- a corporate site for a unit-testing product. It has held up well, even when we do a big push in the press or a marketing campaign. It has a nice GUI for non-developers to use on the backend, sensible organization, etc. I put it in place almost 4 years ago, and the server is only rebooted during scheduled maintenance. It often goes months without a reboot.
OKeric, on 05/12/2008, -3/+1I just set this up on my test site to see what its all about. http://cooleric.com
besonen, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2the source doesn't look that free to me:

http://www.movabletype.org/license_beta.html
- wunch, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1They're releasing a GPL'd version of MT 4.0 later in the summer:
  http://www.movabletype.org/opensource/
billyfalconer, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Any comments about the Plone blog?
readme, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6I dumped MT for Wordpress and never looked back. MT is a mess. You can open source that code all you want, that does not make it any more useful or any less spaghetti. It's a horrible Perl/PHP hybrid that's bloated, slow, and hopelessly outdated. The publishing process is painful with rebuilding pages and becomes more and more painful as your blog grows. The dynamic rebuild process is incompatible with countless plugins. The plugin interface itself is deeply flawed in that most plugins require modifications to shared libraries and/or MovableType core files. To top it all off it's a spam magnet.

I really hate to slam on MT so bad be really, they deserved to have the carpet pulled out from under them by Wordpress.
- MonkeyOverlord, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Have you ever looked at the code for WordPress? It's not exactly any better. I've written some stuff for it before, so I have some experience here. One of my plugins was on that overrides the password protected entry system to allow you to send people passwords that are only good for a certain number of tries. Needless to say, getting it to work was... not fun in the beginning because adding UIs to plugins in WordPress sucks.
  
  What we need is a clean, Python-based blogging suite. Being written in Python, it would be far easier to code because Python is far more readable than Perl will ever be, and no offense to PHP fanboys, PHP doesn't have a damn thing on Python in terms of being a mature language for responsible software developers.
- arvind2111, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"The plugin interface itself is deeply flawed in that most plugins require modifications to shared libraries and/or MovableType core files."
  
  This is categorically false. I have created a number of plugins for Movable Type (some could be considered applications in their own right) and have not yet needed to make a modification to either a shared code library or one of Movable Type's core files. In fact, the latest version of MT leap frogs any competition - especially Wordpress - in terms of the API hooks it offers for plugin authors with things such as extensible tagging, rating and archiving frameworks, a registry (which unlike its Windows' counterpart is a thing of beauty) and backend templates powered by the same templating language as its frontend, meaning any plugins you install can be used directly within the application. I've written about this in more detail here: http://www.movalog.com/archives/mt-news/athena_developers_perspective
winnopeg, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1"is there finally a new king of the blogging hill?"

No.
webtroy, on 10/11/2007, -7/+3anyone who has a clue Knows That Movable Type is KING of blog software.

not only is it fast and efficient, its secure and very easy to use. and you dont have to be a PHP wiz to mod the hell out of it.

wordpress is overrated, and I hate their templating system.
- darkhero, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Yea it is easy. I am writing a digg mod for it right now.
sdenike, on 10/11/2007, -4/+5MT is horrible, WP is by far better.
aboyd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I would note that since the 4.0 product will be GPL, it will be available for free not only for personal use, but lots more. Commercial use, government use, educational institutions, all will be allowed so long as you follow the GPL.
V1ncent, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I'll stick with b2evolution, open source and supports as many blogs as you like
Squidly, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm a longtime MT user, and other than comment/trackback spam, the only complaint I've had is the slow rebuild times.

Sooooo sloooowwww. Please don't make me rebuild everything. PLEASE. :(

The first time you make a change to a template in WP and see it instantly switch... ah man you wish it
could be like that in MT.
- fooljay, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Yes, that's called: "dynamic publishing" and Movable Type has had it since 3.0D which came out like two and a half years ago. It is indeed extremely satisfying to see changes take effect immediately. On the other hand, sites with massive traffic absolutely require static page generation (i.e. rebuilding) in order to not present to visitors that lovely "Wordpress could not connect to database" error page.
  
  Having both is absolutely a feature and an absolute requirement in satisfying both types of usage patterns.
inlove, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3WP has a dedicated community of thousands of developers who contribute plugins and blog templates free of charge. There is no feature that can be imagined but can not be added to WP with the help of those addons. This, and WP is in constant development (look at the recent updates hitting Digg front page) and is making major leaps with every new release.

MT, I am afraid, is going to have a REAL hard time catching up to WP.
rockslayer, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I was able to give birth to a blog in less than 15 minutes with this opensource.
http://www.makstak.com/yo/

need to set up nice image galleries with MT4 now.
marketguerilla, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Looks cool, but it would take even more to get me to take the effort of making the switch from WordPress.
proitservice, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Would you like to discover what's new with thie Movable Type v4.0 release?

There is a full featured Movable Type Athena project online demo that you can go and check out anytime

http://www.movabletype4.org/

Enjoy a wonderful plublishing platform taking shape!
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Movable Type 4.0 Goes Open Source, Adds 50 New Features

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