MovableType (also know as just MT) used to be the leading blogging software. It was very good, source code was available but wasn’t in an open source license.
When I wanted to setup a blog, everyone said use MovableType. I asked if there was anything that was under Open Source, and my friend told me there is WordPress, not as good but under GPL.
At that time the difference between WordPress and MovableType was huge. MovableType was this hugely popular blogging tool, while WordPress didn’t even had 10% of the features.
I decided to go with WordPress, even thought it didn’t have everything that I needed. I had a belief that the very fact that its open source, people will improve it and it will get better over time.
Today WordPress is hugely popular and considered to be the best and hardly anyone talks about MovableType anymore. This has now compelled Movable Type to go open source. Is that too late? Better late than never! Lets see how this goes, but for now I think WordPress rules and will continue to do so for a long time to come.