WordPress 3 RC shows open source polish

WordPress is one of the great open source success stories with both its software and the WordPress.com site itself. Google ranks WordPress.com the 12th most visited site on Earth with 120 million unique visitors.

WordPress version 3 is now in the final phases of development with a release candidate now out for early testers on self-hosted WordPress installations. Those that use Wordpress.com however don't have to wait. WordPress is leveraging it's massive 120 million unique visitor base to actually help test the latest version of WordPress 3.

That's open source at its finest. An open source blogging software platform, developed in the open and tested by millions upon millions of users.

Unlike say Google's Blogger platform which isn't an open source project, WordPress has both the freely available software and its own site for hosting WordPress blogs. If Google is wondering why Blogger isn't as popular as WordPress, I'd venture the explanation that going open source is the answer.

So what's new in WordPress 3?