What's with this Melody, Anyway?
If you've been awake and online at any point in the last 48 hours or so, you have no doubt heard about Melody, the fork of the Open Source version of Movable Type, driven by a number of prominent members in the Movable Type community. If you haven't, then you surely will. The news is just about everywhere, at least for now.
What is perhaps most interesting is what is yet to be said - that there is little happening other than the news of the fork itself. While lots of places seemingly have lots to say (here, here, here, here), there has mostly been no response.
Where is the Love?
The Open Melody web site - which looks beautiful - has a feedback page. But you can't actually leave feedback there. To do that, you need to check out the blog pages. Even there, you won't find a lot of discussion. A congratulation, a note about not being able to log in, a question about why the project was forked (without an answer at the moment) and some discussion about badges.
Looking at the participants - Arvind, Byrne, Dan, Jesse, Mark, Su and Tim - only five comments have been left (3 on Byrne's entry, 2 on Mark's). Most are curious why the project was forked in the first place, since MT already had a community-backed Open Source version.
As I wasn't in on the planning, I can't answer that question, so I'll leave it to someone else to do so. It's just interesting that there is so little activity. Not to slight those involved, as it's good to see something going on, as I use Movable Type a great deal, and anything that gets people talking is good. It would just be nice to see more conversation and fewer monologues.
What Now?
Though I wasn't in on it, I am fully behind the idea of a completely open source (or Open Source, perhaps) publishing system. So much so, that I have created a copy in my Github account.
I have also installed and am using this code. Right here. In production. To my knowledge, this is the first live, ready-for-the-world site powered by Melody. Go ahead. Look at the source code. You'll see it right there at the top:
For the record, that includes the Melody site and those of the contributors listed above.
I'm not pointing this out to be contrary or difficult - their sites are bound to get way more hits than this one, and there are certainly reasons why they would rather run on other versions of MT (MTE, 4.21, 4.23, 4.25, 4.26), so it's understandable that they should run on something more stable than the alpha-version of the Melody code and take their time upgrading to something more stable.
Luckily, this gives me the opportunity to upgrade while they weren't looking, and it means that I'll be happy to help if you would like to do the same.
Update: Unfortunately, the publishing and commenting problems I encountered were too much to overcome at the moment, so I'm back to producing the site on Movable Type (v4.261, in case you are wondering). As soon as I get the chance, I'll look at the other issues and start working with Melody again.
Leave a comment