Happy Monday, folks! The big news this week is the launch of Melody, an open source fork of Movable Type. Several long-time MT developers are contributing to the project, and a 1.0 release is expected this year.
It’s unclear at this point how this project will differ from the existing open source version of MT. Certainly, a different leadership is going to have different priorities. The Melody folks seem to be bending over backward to show this is not a break from MT, but just a separate development branch. And, similarly, Six Apart has welcomed the new project. So I doubt we’ll see any of the commercial MT features rewritten as open source modules, at least in the near term. It’s more likely we’ll see features that are useful to independent developers (and, consequently, small to medium size businesses) instead of the enterprise-level development that seems to be 6A’s focus.
A couple of other items this week. First, Mike T. explains how to install MT over SSH. This is my preferred way to do an install/upgrade, since it eliminates a lot of the permissions issues you can run into with FTP.
Finally, Beau Smith shows us how to add edit links to entries and pages. Combined with a bit of PHP to check for a cookie, this would be an easy way for logged in users to quickly edit posts.
What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.
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> So I doubt we’ll see any of the commercial MT features rewritten as open source modules, at least in the near term.
Don’t be so sure. For Melody to be successful, it still has to compete, even in some respects against Movable Type. That being said, any feature in Melody requires someone committed enough to develop it.
One priority for me personally is profiles – that is a feature I believe strongly should be core. If Melody is going to be a “progressive” let alone modern blogging and publishing app then profiles is essential. Others have mentioned implementing custom fields.
My hope though is that Six Apart will see the value in us collaborating on a shared code base. Those decisions however are not made quickly or easily – and they must be made with shared interests in mind.
So time will tell certainly, but do expect Melody to be a serious and compelling alternative to Movable Type. Melody is not a hobby for those committed to its success – it is a serious product looking to compete.
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Byrne, thanks for the clarification. I’m starting to understand the project a bit better now.
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