In June 2008, I installed Movable Type Personal 4.12 and started blogging. (The link is swell3d.com.) It's working okay, but now I learn that there is an MT4OS open source platform I could have used instead, which is essentially the same code with a better license. Or at least, that's my understanding.

So, what if I install Movable Type Open Source 4.12? Could I just replace my current MT Personal 4.12 installation and everything would go smoothly? Are there differences between the two packages that I should know about? Is there some checklist for "Migrating to MT4OS from MT4 Personal" that someone could direct me to?

Any helpful reply will be greatly appreciated.

Install MTOS, configure it to use your existing DB and you should be up and running. simple as that.

You'll have to define what you mean by "better." But yes, it's a different license.
For the majority of practical purposes, though, it doesn't make much difference unless you purchase support or one of the commercial packages.


Other than some text strings identifying the particular version, there are no real code/function/etc. differences between the two. Personal used to include an extra third-party plugin that has now been removed. The only substantive difference is the license.

Well, there's the bit about proprietary notices. I would like to change the "POWERED BY MT4" graphic to fit better with my site design (and make it smaller too), or perhaps replace it with text instead of a graphic; but my license says I cannot "remove or alter any proprietary notices." Since changing that graphic might be altering a proprietary notice, I haven't touched it. I think with the GPL, I would be allowed to change that.

Also, I had read on some other forum that the MT Personal license only allowed one blog with three users. After reading my actual license, however, I see that it allows unlimited blogs and unlimited users. So, I am not concerned about that part. There is a lot of bad information out there, and the actual MT documentation is somewhat cursory.

There was an MT3 license at one point that was x blogs y users, but not for MT4.
You could just copy the OS version over the existing files, refresh the templates and rebuild and done.

Presumably you mean "3.1.6 Remove or alter any proprietary notices on the Software[...]"
That's not about your site design. That section is primarily going to cover someone re-skinning the application and saying it's theirs, especially in the context of say, offering a hosted blog service to others for commercial purposes. (All licensing issues should, of course, be verified with Six Apart's actual sales department. I don't work for them.)

As far as your site, Six Apart hold ownership of their logos, obviously, and while sure modifying the "powered by" widget might be in violation of that on a purely technical level, they're not going to come after you. Unless, of course, you start claiming it's your logo *grin* The MTOS distribution being GPL has nothing to do with their ownership of the logo, so this is more or less moot.


Yeah, that's completely false, and probably the result of someone propagating old information without bothering to research. On the web? Imagine!