Bloggers Openly Welcome Open Live Writer

It's been obvious for a long time that Microsoft has been completely neglecting one of the most popular applications they've ever seen for bloggers; Windows Live Writer. Lot of information and rumor has been spread for a long time about Windows Live Writer going open source.

The moment that devout Windows Live Writer users have been waiting for has come true. Windows Live Writer has been released as open source. Some more good news is that there's plenty of volunteer programmers that have stepped forward to donate portions of code to make Windows Live Writer better.

Going forward, with the open source version, it's now going to be called Open Live Writer. as with most software that goes open source, some changes in code will happen. And with this release of Open Live Writer, some features of the application have been removed because of the integration with Microsoft.

The Good

• Open Live Writer still has a lot of the base features and functionality people are looking for.
• Open Live Writer is going to have volunteer programmers to be able to look at the code, make changes and additions to the application.
• The code of Open Live Writer is going to be open to inspection to everyone.
• Open Live Writer is going to have a new plug-ins architecture put in place. With luck, you'll be able to add plug-ins directly into Open Live Writer from within the application once everything is in place.
• Since Open Live Writer is open source, I would expect to see versions of the software with Linux and Apple platforms as well.
• Open Live Writer now has a new presence on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
• Users now have input on the direction with Open Live Writer. Users can see a roadmap of the planned development for the application.

The Not So Good

• Open Live Writer doesn't have all the features and functions that the previous version had. Functions that were dependent upon Microsoft have been removed; like photo album and spell checking.
• Open Live Writer doesn't have a plug-ins website/options yet.
• There's no workable option yet for Blogger; but there are things in motion with Google to get this working.

If you're looking for more information on the Open Live Writer efforts, you can visit the Open Live Writer website; OpenLiveWriter.org. If you're interested in helping to code for Open Live Writer, you can find the repository on GitHub.

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