Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Windows Live Writer – Now Open Source!

Ever since 2005, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer to create these blog entries. It has been my mainstay. An easy-to-use application that has allowed me to create and edit my blog on WordPress with ease. But ten years in computing terms is a long time, and ever since 2012 there has been a question mark hanging in the air – would Microsoft continue supporting Windows Live Writer, or would it be dropped, like so many other good and useful software applications have been (Picture It!, Microsoft Digital Image Pro, and Microsoft Money) I’m looking at you).

For a while now, Scott Hanselman and others within Microsoft have been trying to get a version of Windows Live Writer released as Open Source, and today’s the day.

An open source fork of Windows Live Writer is now available as Open Live Writer. Congratulations to Scott and the OLW team for reaching this milestone.

This blog entry has been created and published to my blog using it. I intend to support this effort by switching to Open Live Writer from now on. It is clear that Microsoft will be pulling the plug on Windows Live Writer at some point in the not too distant future.

The King is dead – Long live the King!

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2 responses to “Windows Live Writer – Now Open Source!”

  1. coffeemike Avatar
    coffeemike

    HAH! I saw that this morning and thought of you, but hadn’t stopped to email you about it yet. Glad you saw the news. Hopefully they’re able to modernize the key bits that need it and keep it alive. I do miss the tool.

    Also, if you haven’t seen, WordPress have released the Windows version of their new desktop app (http://desktop.wordpress.com). It’s a new interface, same as on WordPress.com, based on their new JavaScript framework. Might also be worth a look, though I wouldn’t suggest jumping off OLW just yet.

    Reply
  2. Ludwig Avatar
    Ludwig

    Wonderful news! As all who know me are aware, I have been a booster of this tool for a long time, even have a blog about it. This is still the best blogging tool bar none.

    I had just downloaded and installed the WordPress app. I have good reasons for being leery of anything called an app, and this one reinforced my apprehensions. I was scrolling down in the reader in this app found your post and tried to leave a comment. It worked fine but did not post, I got an error message that my comment could not be posted. Well back to the Firefox browser.

    I wish the new team all the best. Maybe soon I will have things to share at LiveWriterBasics.wordpress.com

    Reply

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