Movable Type announced that its software is now open source. With a number of killer features built in and a thriving developer community, the organization may be well positioned to woo users from WordPress.

Since Movable Type’s launch, there has always been a free version available with fewer features than the commercialized product. According to the Movable Type’s blog, “back in late 2002 and early 2003, [cofounders] Ben and Mena had both been adamant about one particular point from the very beginning of the negotiations: That there would always be a free version of Movable Type with the source code freely available.”

A couple of features that stand out with the 4.0 version of Movable Type:

- Built in reports on blog activity

- Quick filters on every screen to administrate content on the backend easier

- Autosaving WYSIWYG editor

- OpenID support built in

- Ratings framework for understanding what content users like most

Check out the full feature list.

Many of these features are available for WordPress as plugins, but that creates its own maintenance when upgrading between versions and can expose security risks.

Security and maintenance aside though, plugins add valuable functionality to both platforms, and each organization enjoys a strong following of developers. As with FireFox, plugins for these blogging platforms create a situation where users can customize their applications with almost unlimited potential.

Here’s a snapshot of the Movable Type dashboard:

WordPress has always been my platform of choice, but now there may be another option. Let the competition begin! It can only yield good things for the rest of us as these two strong contenders fight for your endorsement.

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 6:29 pm under Blogosphere, Open source, Software.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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