Movable Type.org

What is MTOS?

MTOS is our abbreviation for the open source version of Movable Type. It's a full-featured version of Movable Type which you can download, use, modify, share, and explore completely free of charge.

What do you mean by open source? What license does MTOS use?

The Open Source movement is a decades-long effort to give people more freedom in the way they use computers. The OSI is perhaps the best group to explain the philosophy of open source, if you want to learn more.

MTOS is being released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, which is familiar to nearly everyone who is familiar with open source.

What does this mean for the traditionally-licensed commercial versions of Movable Type?

There's no change for any of the commercial versions of Movable Type or any of the products built on top of MT -- this is just another option.

Why are you releasing an open source version of Movable Type?

Our mission at Six Apart is to get people blogging, and having an open source version of Movable Type gives people another option to make that happen.

Six Apart has always released open source code from its earliest days, even before it was incorporated as a company, and there's always been a free version of Movable Type for personal use that you can get without paying. We've always accepted bug fixes, code patches, improvements and suggestions to the Movable Type code from the community. (In fact, that's how we've hired some of our engineers, who started contributing code independently.) We've always allowed users to modify the Movable Type code to suit their needs. And the overwhelming majority of the dozens of plugins our team has released for Movable Type over the years have been under various Open Source licenses, usually BSD or Artistic licenses, though some were under the GPL as well.

We realized that the openness of Movable Type was not broadly understood and also that many people were craving an open source version of MT, so we decided that we would first invest heavily in the platform with MT4 and use that as the foundation of an open source version.

We're also excited that the announcement of MTOS has inspired a lot of teams to start working on distributing, bundling, or integrating MT with their own open source projects.

What's new since MT 4.0 was released?

In addition to a number of smaller bug fixes, we're well into development on a new release of MT, codenamed "Boomer." Boomer updates are already visible in some parts of the MTOS code repository, and we'll list the improvements and fixes there when the beta for that product begins shortly.

In addition to code fixes, we've added a ton of community resources for the release of MTOS:

• A public instance of the FogBugz bug tracking system, the first-ever deployment of FogBugz for a large-scale open source project. (Special thanks to Joel and our friends at Fog Creek for working with us on this!)
• A brand new Movable Type Wiki, that's already brimming with tons of useful links and notes on everything from getting MT running to suggestions of new community-contributed features
• A brand new Movable Type Community Forum, powered by MT4 and the Movable Type Community Solution. It's easier to search, easier to post, easier to tag threads, and easier to follow topics you're interested in using feeds.

What about paid users? Do we get any bonuses for paying now that there's an Open Source version?

MTOS will be community-supported, while paying users will always have exclusive access to our professional support team. In addition, commercial add-ons such at MTES and MTCS are only available for paid commercial licensees.

We'll also be increasing the benefits for paid users in the future, though we haven't announced specifics yet. You can expect even better support and exclusive add-ons or feature packs to augment the functionality of the free versions of Movable Type.

How do I get the code?

The public subversion repository at code.sixapart.com includes all of the code for MTOS, as well as dozens of open source plugins written at Six Apart as well. If you just want a download link, the standard download link for Movable Type will give you what you're looking for.

Where can I find the original homepage announcing the Movable Type Open Source Project?

For archival purposes, the page that originally hosted the FAQ regarding MTOS when it was initially announced has been moved to a new location.