Frequently Asked Questions .
Melody is an open source content management, blogging and publishing platform, derived from the popular blogging tool Movable Type. At its onset, Melody is distinct from Movable Type by having put in place a set of processes that assist the greater Movable Type and Melody communities to contribute features, changes and fixes more freely and quickly back to the core product. This allows independent developers to pursue the features and preferences that matter to them most.
The promise of Melody is to serve its community by working to build a product according to the principles and philosophies that have helped make WordPress, Apache, Linux, Firefox and other open source applications so successful. Those principles include creating and fostering open communication channels with its user base, by building transparency into its roadmap, and by permitting users to more freely contribute back to the core product.
Melody is a product first and foremost for those who find value in belonging to, supporting and contributing to a community of helpful, passionate and devoted users. Melody is also for people who want a secure, proven and high quality publishing environment for their personal web site, their favorite project or their business.
At the heart of any successful community and any product that in turn relies on its community for its success is trust. The Open Melody Software Group was founded and incorporated to hold in trust the contributions made by the Melody developer and designer community. The core mission of the Open Melody Software Group is to ensure that the contributions made by its community are to be used exclusively for the public benefit of the Internet and its fellow community members.
Paperwork to incorporate the Open Melody Software Group as a non-profit organization has been filed with the State of California. In addition, the process to have the Open Melody Software Group officially recognized as a 501©(3) has already begun.
The community created Melody out a shared passion for Movable Type and a shared desire to see it flourish as a platform. We felt that the best and quickest way to achieve that goal was to create a product in which the community was inherently entrusted with a greater degree of control over its direction, communication channels and roadmap, and rewarded with more transparency and a greater sense of belonging.
In keeping with the ideals of open source, Melody is also being created under the premise that every thing we do will be done to service the greatest number of users possible, Melody and Movable Type users alike. That means working with Six Apart to ensure that changes can flow fluidly between our platforms that allow us both to better pursue the direct needs of our constituencies.
If you have read any of the other questions and answers in this FAQ, it should be clear that Melody's founders believe that Melody will differentiate itself most from Movable Type through a more well supported, engaged and excited community. Let's however, look beyond "community" for a second and focus on what many people are more interested in: features.
While at its onset Melody will have a great deal in common with Movable Type from a feature perspective, we believe that by listening to and empowering our community we will unlock the true potential of open source and begin to advance the platform at a more rapid pace. To that end we intend on decoupling features that add complexity to the product yet only a minority of users use, and increasing the level of investment in those areas that will help people become more efficient and successful in designing and building web sites using Melody, like theme building and distribution.
Our goal however is not to necessarily take Melody in a different direction from Movable Type. Rather, our goal is to better serve the platform as a whole by making it more modular and more extensible. If successful the changes we introduce to Melody, if adopted by Movable Type will help foster the development of a greater number of plugins and themes compatible with both platforms, and create a more broadly supported platform by a) advancing the core product's APIs and b) integrating with well respected and supported components like jQuery and CPAN.
There are already many projects within the community underway that are candidates for inclusion in the first release of Melody. They include an improved logging framework for administrators and developers, the integration of jQuery through out published blogs, improved user management interfaces, configurable theme options and much, much more. However none of these features have been set in stone as we wanted to first hear from the community before making definitive decisions regarding the feature set for the first version of Melody.
Yes, yes and yes. One of Melody's core goals is to maintain to the greatest extent possible compatibility with Movable Type's core APIs. This includes but is not limited to its Atom and XML-RPC interfaces, its core developer APIs and its templating language.
Absolutely. Movable Type will almost always be preferred by those who require an enterprise grade product with an SLA and paid support system backed by a commercial company. Six Apart is unsurpassed in that respect.
Furthermore, Movable Type Enterprise remains ideal for those specifically in need of LDAP, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server support.
Finally, and for the time being Movable Type Pro is still the best solution for those in need of a custom fields solution, and community features like profiles and community blog posts.
Can I use Melody in conjunction with Six Apart's Commercial and Community Packs available through Movable Type Pro?
[top]Technically there is no reason you can't. However we discourage Movable Type customers from this practice as it will almost certainly invalidate the support package you acquired when you purchased Movable Type Pro.
An alpha-quality version of what will later become Melody 1.0 is currently available from Github, our social source code control system of choice (see the download page. Prior to the first official and supported release of the product, the version of Melody found at Github is intended mainly for developers and those wishing to begin making contributions to the core platform. We do not recommend this version be used in production. It is alpha/beta software. Yadda yadda yadda.
It is currently our goal to have the first release of Melody in the Fall of 2009, after the community has had time to weigh in on what features they want to see implemented.
Rest assured if you are someone even vaguely interested in contributing and helping out with this project, there is a way for you to do so.
1. Use Melody and provide feedback.
The first thing anyone can do to show their support is by installing and using Melody. Then, let your voice be heard. Share with us and the rest of the community your feedback about how we can help make Melody better for you and for everyone.
2. Share what you learn or help a fellow Melody user.
One of the most important things any of us can do is offer our time to help others. By doing so we will foster through our example a community we will all be proud to be apart of.
In addition, we must all consider the greater good by sharing with each other what we learn along the way. You can do that by blogging about how you are using Melody and what you see others doing with the platform.
3. Blog, tweet and share with others your excitement in the project.
Share your excitement! Show off what Melody can do and share your experience with others. Help us to grow the community by inviting and encouraging those in your network to try out Melody.
4. Hack.
Eric Raymond wrote in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, "every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." If you are a developer and want to contribute to the platform, then the best thing you can do is start using the product and when you find something you think could be made better - do it. If you need help along the way we have operators standing by: join our mailing list to ask whatever questions you might have and read our developer and contribution guidelines.
5. Donate.
Everybody involved in the Melody project is freely giving their own time, knowledge, and experience to make Melody the great product it is. Unfortunately time is not money regardless of what the axiom says. We still have hosting costs, and legal and administrative fees to cover, so even a small donation will help ensure that we're here for the long haul.
