Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, released Movable Type 4 (MT4) in beta today and announced it will create an open source version of the Movable Type Publishing Platform sometime this summer. Moving to open source will put MT4 in sync with its main competition, Wordpress, which is also open source.

Some new features include:

• Updated user interface with a dashboard overview of all your blogs
  
• Support for publishing standalone pages and managing file assets and images right within MT
• Brand-new community features like OpenID, and a built-in user registration system
• Increased speed

MT4 is available for download and is looking for user feedback prior to its official open source release. With over 50 new features from its previous MT 3.0 incarnation, Six Apart hopes to gain some of its former users who switched to other platforms in response to MT 3.0's licensing requirements and fees.

MT4 has the following requirements:

• A standard web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x or higher, Apple Safari, Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox), and an FTP utility may be required.
• Operating Systems: Linux, Solaris/Unix, BSD, Mac OS X, Windows Server
• Web Servers: Apache, Microsoft IIS, Netscape
• Databases: MySQL 4.0 or greater, PostgreSQL, SQLite

MT4 is free for personal use and ranges from $200 - $750 for commercial use depending on the number of users. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Thanks FF!