When I started blogging it was a choice of Graymatter or Blogger and not much else. Then Movable Type (MT) came along, providing a (fairly) easy to install and use platform that revolutionized self hosted blogging. MT powered the blogging revolution that swept the United States in 2003-04. Then one day, all hell broke lose, as SixApart decided to enforce its intellectual property rights and charge for MT, and millions of MT users went looking for an alternative platform. The platform that most chose was WordPress (WP), a spin off from the earlier Cafepress/b2 blogging platform.

The rest is history. WordPress grew to become the No. 1 choice of blogging platforms, however SixApart continued to develop Movable Type, primarily as the backend to its popular hosted blogging service TypePad. The big news is that some time between now and the end of the year SixApart will be open sourcing MT, bringing it back on level with WP.

I grew up in blogging using MT, so I've still got a lot of attachment to it, but for many WP will have been their first and only blogging platform. Will MT be a choice again for the blogging masses? Rather that state my own opinion upfront I've dot pointed the fors and againsts first.

WordPress

For

• universal acceptance (hosting)
  
• free
• massive support community providing plugins, templates etc
• Written in PHP
• known interface

Against

• sucks at scaling unless you've got a server farm and a code/ server guru
• regularly hacked due to security issues
• updated far too often due to security issues
• Full functionality isn't provided (such as spam prevention) due to business interests of Automattic

Movable Type

for

• scales really well, with support for enterprise level databases
• Pricing plans provide great options: open source will be free but corporations can get great company direct support
• Nicer interface
• More secure so less updates

Against

• Written in Perl
• Not as well known nor supported
• Smaller support community, less free add-ons

I'm looking forward to switching a couple of my sites across to MT to see how they go, I'll do a follow up post then. What I would say though is that you should definitely be looking at MT as an option for your blogs, particularly if they will be doing really good traffic. Sometimes it's the smart people who are different