Oxite: Just MIX and Serve
The thing is called Oxite, and Microsoft released the code to its CodePlex site on Dec. 5, but made the announcement today. Oxite is labeled an alpha, and as of this posting a whopping 344 people had downloaded the software. Let's not rush to give up Movable Type or WordPress, shall we?
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's quiet CodePlex drop of Oxite lands mid-arc in the company's slow courtship of open source — following its 'Out in the Open' outreach to the community the year before. It also enters a blogging-platform market already reshaped by Movable Type's decision to open-source its own platform and the long-running WordPress-versus-Movable-Type rivalry, where incumbent mindshare is exactly what an alpha-stage entrant lacks.
First-order effects
- Developers can now pull Oxite's ASP.NET MVC code from CodePlex, giving .NET shops a Microsoft-blessed starting point for blog-style sites — though at alpha quality and with only a few hundred downloads so far.
- The release signals Microsoft treating blogging/CMS software as a developer framework play rather than a hosted product, putting it in direct code-level competition with WordPress and Movable Type for self-hosted deployments.
Second-order effects
- Established platforms face pressure not from Oxite's features today but from what it represents: if Microsoft keeps shipping open web-stack samples on CodePlex, .NET developers have less reason to leave the Microsoft ecosystem to run a blog.
- WordPress and Movable Type's open-source positioning becomes the benchmark Oxite must match — license clarity, plugin ecosystems, and community contribution models that a corporate alpha download doesn't yet offer.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the durable shift is Microsoft normalizing open-sourced reference implementations as a competitive tool — using free code to defend developer mindshare rather than selling the application itself.
- Whether Oxite matures into a real CMS or fades as a sample app remains genuinely uncertain; either outcome would say more about whether big-vendor open source can sustain community momentum than about blogging software specifically.
The trend: Large proprietary vendors increasingly release open-source code as a strategic wedge into developer communities dominated by grassroots projects — a pattern Oxite exemplifies even as its traction remains unproven.