Looking forward to Windows Live Writer being open sourced

The idea of Windows live writer going open sourced is very exciting for me; I think it's a great idea. Microsoft hasn't shown any love for Windows live writer in a really long time. I think the last update to Windows live writer was sometime in 2009. I don't necessarily include a GUI update, without any bug fixes, a serious update to the application.

Reports are coming in that Windows live writer is going to be going open source, and that's great, because I haven't used Windows live writer to compose any blog posts in a while.

Like most of you, I run into issues with theme compatibility, problems with posting, being able to access accounts, lack of appropriate plug-ins, and having to convert my images to JPEG format when composing my blog posts. Those are just some of the things that I think Microsoft should have fixed early on, but didn't.

The good news is that I have been using Windows Live Writer to compose my last couple of posts; through LEHSYS, and of course this blog post.

There was two main reasons for not using Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer was not detecting the WordPress theme properly and because I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Windows Live Writer was performing horribly with the latest updates to Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10. Fortunately, with the release of Windows 10, and the release of the subsequent new browser for Microsoft, Edge, Dragon NaturallySpeaking seems to be working much better; making it easier for me to share information.

Scott Hanselman gave indications back on June 10 that progress is being made towards Windows Live Writer going open sourced.

https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/608671203192995843

I'm very interested to see what Windows Live Writer will be able to do once it goes open source.

Windows Live Writer is one of those niche applications that Microsoft has just chose to abandon, but it has a huge user base and everyone agrees that it's the number one off-line blog editor. It integrates very closely with WordPress but also supports other blog types like Blogger.

One of the more powerful things about Windows Live Writer is its ability to support plug-ins. For a long time Windows Live Writer plug-ins were coming in left and right, allowing authors to do specialized things with their blog posts and make them look very professional.

If Microsoft had only seen the potential of what Windows Live Writer was, as opposed to seeing Windows Live Writer as a side effect to a failed experiment with their Windows live platform, I think a lot of people would have paid for Windows Live Writer to continue development.

I applaud Mr. Hanselman and the efforts he's taken to keep Windows Live Writer alive and to understand how important it is to people who share information over the Internet and to compose professional looking sets of information.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on this, let me know in the comments below...