There have been rumors for a while that Microsoft might open source its Windows Live Writer blogging tool.

On December 9, Microsoft offficials announced a fork of that tool is being open sourced under the MIT license.

Microsoft Principal Program Manager Scott Hanselman, one of the advocates of saving Live Writer, announced that a group of Microsoft volunteers are contributing the fork of Windows Live Writer to the .NET Foundation.

The newly open-sourced implementation of the tool is called Open Live Writer. Today's release is labeled as version 0.5 and available for download.

Microsoft hasn't updated Windows Live Writer since 2012, when it ceased using the "Windows Live" brand. Live Writer was part of the Windows Live Essentials suite, along with Movie Maker, Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery and SkyDrive.

Hanselman said that the team behind Open Live Writer worked with Blogger Team within Google on the project. As Blogger is moving to OAuth2, Open Live Writer also will be updated to support OAuth2.

A list of what's being added to and removed from Live Writer with Open Live Writer is available in Hanselman's blog post announcing the effort.