Windows Live Writer Goes Open - Hurray - WLW breaks - Booo!

Well I was all set to excitedly post news about the announcement that Windows Live Writer has gone to an Open Source project release.

Hurray!

• Announcing Open Live Writer - An Open Source Fork of Windows Live Writer  - Scott Hanselman
• Open Live Writer - project page
• Open Live Writer: Windows Live Writer fork that is open source  - gHacks Tech News
• Microsoft open-sources Live Writer, beloved but abandoned blogging tool - Ars Technica
• Windows Live Writer goes open source - BetaNews

Only I got an account/password error during installation when configuring it up to the Blogger system.

Oh well, let me just launch my original WLW installation and go from there...

Nopes.

Turns out it looks like Google has timed it's depreciation of the WLW authentication method so it now will not work.

Booo!

Windows live writer wont connect to blogger - Microsoft Community

Per a comment in the thread by "Hirschy" earlier today...

The issue is well known and is being worked on as part of the Open Live Writer project, please see https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issues/5 for progress

The reason it's not working is that a few years ago Google deprecated the authentication process that Live Writer uses,  i.e. Google declared it as obsolete because it is not secure enough for the modern web, and developers should stop using it ASAP. Unfortunately Live Writer was not updated to use the new more secure OAuth 2 standard. Google removed support for it back in about May this year, then temporarily re-enabled it for Blogger / WLW, now it looks like they have pulled it for good.

It's not straightforward to fix, certainly more than a couple of lines of code. If you want to comment, please post to the GitHub issue via the link above, as that will be read by the developers. They will not generally be following the MS forums as it's no longer an MS product.

Convert Google Blogger ClientLogin to OAuth 2.0 · Issue #5 - OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter · GitHub

And as "ronmartmsft commented on the issue page:

This could not have happened at a worse time given how many bloggers rely on the holiday season for income. It seems that Google has taken the release of this product as a green light to finally deprecate the legacy auth leaving Blogger users stranded.

Track here - https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/blogger/lw_sNsyySKI/FyMxf1DBBwAJ

I must agree.

The initial excitement I had at a new WLW release...even if missing spellchecking at this stage was heavily tamped down with the breaking of the original WLW posting to Blogger.

It's not clear to me yet if other alternative blogging clients that can interface with Blogger will also hit that brick wall.

I'm composing this post in the Blogger web page UI but that won't do for regular posting.

So until this sorts out -- please be patient while the blog posting at GSD slows down.

Bummed for the moment.

--Claus Valca