It was announced this morning that what used to be Windows Live Writer has been forked, modified, and open sourced under a MIT license as Open Live Writer. Prior to Facebook, i used to post a lot more stuff here on my blog, and when i did, i did most of that posting using WLW. Microsoft stopped actively developing it after the Windows Live Writer 2012 release and most of that team was moved to working on making apps for Windows 8. I still used WLW after that, but slowly over time the plug-ins i used stopped being supported, and it became a little bit harder to use. And Facebook made it easy to post little things, and life always has a way of finding other things to do. I always mean to post more stuff here, and i probably have 10 or more unfinished drafts either as WLW .wpost files, or saved as drafts in WordPress.
So when there became a push inside Microsoft to see if Windows Live Writer could be open sourced, since Microsoft had no plans on reviving it, I volunteered to help. I don’t have a ton of free time (kids!), but i still wanted to see what i could do to help. I didn’t do a lot, and most of what I did commit was deleting massive swaths of obsolete code (one of my favorite things to do! :)) It was really interesting to be on Skype video conference things with internet / Microsoft celebrities like Scott Hanselman and Jon Galloway and Martin Woodward. Fun fact: Scott Hanselman is king of meta. He’s 3d printing a 3d printer with a 3d printer, while using Open Live Writer to blog about Open Live Writer. It’s hilarious to hear the 3d printer’s “i’m finished!” song while he’s on a call, and then shows you what fantastic thing just finished printing.
Open Live Writer is open source on github, and people are 3d printing 3d printers. Welcome to the future!
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