Microsoft jumped into the OpenSource blogging platform world today… Well, kind of.  They announced the release of Oxite, an ASP.NET-based OpenSource platform for blogging.

The site for Oxite admits that this isn’t meant to be much more than a very large example of what can be done with ASP.NET.  And it’s actually a probably a good way to sell more licenses of Visual Studio, since you really can’t change a whole lot about Oxite without Visual Studio to compile changes.  It also might help folks understand the MVC model in .NET a little better, although I doubt it’ll win any Ruby on Rails converts.

Oxite comes with all the typical blog features you’ve come to expect from MoveableType, Typepad, or WordPress, such as trackbacks, pings, comments, permalinks, etc., etc.  It also integrates well with Windows Live Writer, which if you haven’t used already, you really, really should.  Not to digress, but Windows Live Writer is actually pretty cool tool for bloggers.  (Yeah, I may criticize Microsoft when they’re making bad technology decisions, but I’ll give them props when they’re doing good.)

Anyway, Oxite is probably worth a look if you’re into that whole .NET world, otherwise you’ll probably want to stay away from it like the plague.

Filed under: Microsoft, OpenSource, Social Computing