Melody Debuts as Movable Type Forks

Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio) A command line view of IT

From the “Fork is a four-letter word” files:

Movable Type has been forked — at least the open source GPL version — into a new project called Melody.

Yes, my blog is powered by Movable Type, too. Six Apart, the vendor behind Movable Type created an open source version of Movable Type in 2008. Usually a fork of open source code happens because developers are not happy with the direction of code development and the main project.

In the case of Melody — at least so far — this looks to be a “friendly” fork. The creator of Movable Type, Benjamin Trott sees where Melody will fit in at a bleeding edge community level, whereas Movable Type will hold its position as the professional version.

“We see the Melody community focusing on the equally-valuable ideas of bleeding-edge community-driven ideas, rapid iteration, and integration with the code of other open source projects,” Trott wrote in a blog post.

“It’s great news for the entire Movable Type community, as this new project uses the same themes, the same templates, the same plugins and the same publishing engine as Movable Type. And since it shares the GPL license with MT, it’s even a great way for these new developments to work their way back into the official versions of Movable Type itself.”

While I respect Trott’s position, I have to respectfully disagree with his long term view of how Melody will affect Movable Type…

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