Movable Type 4 Beta: We're On A Mission
If you're reading this blog, you probably know a lot about Movable Type. It's the power bloggers' tool, made by people who just wanted to make a good, flexible blogging application. Over half a decade, it's grown into a platform that even enterprises …
Context & Ripple Effects
Movable Type enters its fourth version carrying baggage from its own history: a confirmed record that its earlier licensing reversal nearly killed MT 3.0 and handed momentum to rival WordPress. The recovery path since has been distribution and reach — including a 2005 Reuters-covered Yahoo arrangement offering Movable Type to bloggers — but Six Apart still trails the open-source incumbent it helped create.
Today's beta is therefore more than a feature release. Alongside the launch, coverage reports the platform will be open sourced, and Six Apart frames MT 4 as becoming a social media platform rather than a blog tool — a direct answer to why WordPress won the last round.
First-order effects
- Power bloggers and enterprise users who stayed with Movable Type get a rebuilt platform whose license terms no longer penalize adoption — removing the exact grievance from the MT 3.0 era that drove users to WordPress.
Second-order effects
- WordPress now faces a free, open-source competitor attacking from the 'social media platform' direction rather than pure blogging, forcing the comparison onto community features instead of price or licensing — the framing of today's Publishing 2.0 showdown piece makes that contest explicit.
Third-order effects
- If the open-source bet holds, blogging software consolidates around two open models competing on platform breadth, with closed licensing effectively exiting the category — the structural lesson being that a vendor's pricing misstep can hand rivals a durable, decade-long lead.
The trend: Blogging platforms are converging into open-source social media suites, with licensing decisions — not features — deciding which tool wins developer mindshare.