Blog Platform: Movable Type is open source
As of December 12, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose.
Just want the details and downloads? Skip to the bottom. But you might like the story of how we got here.
Like many of us on the team, some of you have been waiting for this moment for years. For a business, an open source license affects boring things like how a product is created, updated, and distributed. But the open source movement has always been about something more important: Freedom. With a name like “Movable Type”, we’ve always been keenly aware of the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and the creation of independent media that an individual can control.
Our goal has always been to create the best blogging platform in the world and to put that power in the hands of as many people as possible. And we want to honor a tradition of openness that Movable Type has embodied for over six years:
- From TrackBack to Atom to OpenID, we’ve always invented and popularized key technologies that were delivered with open source implementations, freely-available specs, and no patents.
- Movable Type has always had all of its source code freely available for review, from its first release.
- MT’s license has always permitted users to modify the code for any reason.
- Every major release of Movable Type, from version 1.0, has included contributions or patches created by outside developers in the community.
- Many members of today’s MT team began as contributors to the MT code or creators of MT plugins.
- There was a public code repository with nightly builds of Movable Type as far back as four years ago, though it lacked dedicated resources.
- There’s always been a free (as in beer) version of Movable Type.
- We’ve always wanted people who pay for a Movable Type license to do so because they believe in what we’re doing — whether that’s standing behind our work with professional support, or the new era of benefits like plugins and themes for paid users.
