Microsoft to Open Source Windows Live Writer
Microsoft appears ready to push their popular Windows Live Writer WYSIWYG blogging tool into the open source world.
It looks like a journey that began almost a year ago is closing in on its destination.
Last June over at WindowsObserver I wrote about the beginnings of an effort, headed by Microsoft's Scott Hanselman, to try and take Windows Live Writer (WLW) open source.
The popular blogging software, which is based on Onfolio Writer, was part of Microsoft's acquisition of Onfolio in March 2006.
Microsoft first released WLW in November 2007 and it was included as part of the Windows Live Essentials in December 2008.
WLW, which is now part of Windows Essentials 2012, was last updated in April 2014 and the WYSIWYG software is a popular tool for bloggers around the world.
Hanselman first mentioned he was heading into a meeting to talk about open sourcing the software so it would continue to exists last June. That tweet turned into a campaign by supporters of the software and currently has nearly 7,900 retweets of support.
Today we have learned that the light is at the end of the tunnel from Hanselman on Twitter:
@pzerger @rodtrent we are going to open-source live writer, so don't worry
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) June 10, 2015
This is news that will be well received for many as there is yet to be any tool that can come close to the capabilities of WLW when it comes to offline composition of blog posts.
P.S. There is still a petition asking Microsoft to support Live Writer as an open source project and it currently has almost 1,000 signatures.
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
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