Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

2 of 44 comments (clear)

  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 ripvlan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah - as several other folks have posted - WLW was pretty good. It was simple and had only the necessary bells-whistles. Followed the KISS principle - I couldn't believe MS created it. The only thing to come out of the "Windows Live" era that was any good.

    I liked it because I did most of my writing offline (disconnected) - plus it produced "real" HTML without lots of frames-in-frames.

    As for MS open sourcing it - why not? The new sheriff has committed MS to Open Source - so rather than kill off something that many liked - just upload it on SourceFor^H^H^H^H....github and enjoy the independent life.