A group of Movable Type experts have forked MTOS (Movable Type Open Source) and started the project Melody under the hood of The Open Melody Software Group.
As a long time MT user(*) and professional I really welcome the initiative. Movable Type is my CMS platform of choice and represents a significant chunk of my services revenue. Having a renewed community impulse around an open source version can really improve both the free and the commercial products.
This said I think Brice Dunwoodie makes some good points about the MTOS fork, notably how far the fork will split from the core Movable Type. Considering the strong relationship between the OMSG founders and the MT community (Six Apart included), I'm not too worried.
(*) You're a long time MT user if you know why Melody. The joke's on Nelson. ;-)
I read the first presentations of Melody (including Ben Trott). I wonder : is it really a fork ? It's more what I call a transition before séparation à l'amiable.
I notice that Byrne Reese (chairman of the Melody Board) was the former MT's Product Manager. He has been recently laid off from SixApart. And by the way, Reese and Jay Allen (other 6apart manager) are now partners.
It's clearly a fork to me. If Melody is successful, i.e. the community produces new features (rather than only plugins) then MTOS will serve as an injection point for Six Apart to incorporate features from Melody back to MT.