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Microsoft Open Sources and Forks Windows Live Writer Into Open Live Writer

Posted by samzenpus on from the opening-it-up dept.

SmartAboutThings writes: Windows Live Writer is a blogging tool that Microsoft originally released back in 2006, and it still remains popular today, which has prompted Microsoft to promise that it will make it open source earlier this year. Now the company has officially open-sourced and forked Windows Live Writer into Open Live Writer, having put its repositories on GitHub already.

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. as usual, a day late and a dollar short. by nimbius · · Score: 2, Informative

    Open Live Writer is an open source application enabling users to author, edit, and publish blog posts.

    which would mean something if the world hadn't been using wordpress for 12 years. Microsoft had the opportunity to open source things like IIS, frontpage, and a wealth of other web-centric tools and technologies to compete with Apache and Nginx. But instead they paid off hosting providers to put parked websites on IIS to goose their numbers in Netcraft. open-sourcing an editor is boggling, unless for some reason that editor happened to use already open-source code.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:as usual, a day late and a dollar short. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 5, Informative

      I actually use Windows Live Writer. It's a nice interface to write in, attach photos to a blog post, set categories, and upload the whole thing while scheduling when it will go live. I began using it years ago when WordPress' built-in editor was horrible. WordPress has improved since then, but I still like WLW. Recently, I had begun to worry that WLW was going to be tossed aside and not developed anymore. Open sourcing it gives me hope that people can continue to improve the product and keep it as a viable, locally installed alternative editor to WordPress' built-in editor.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    2. Re:as usual, a day late and a dollar short. by DrStrangluv · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you work with multiple blogs on several servers, WLW allowed you to do all your writing/editing from one place.

  2. To answer your question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

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