Last time I blogged on Blogger’s gear: Free software sequel this wasn’t available. So this will be the addition to that sequel. Serendipity is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain an online diary, weblog or even a complete homepage. Serendipity’s BSD licensing ensures that programmers around the world can learn from it and improve it. Though I don’t see any problem with WordPress GPL, user still has flexibly of alteration and modifications. The GPL requires the software to always be free, including derivative works, by requiring the software to always be licensed under the GPL. The BSD license only requires acknowledging the original authors, and imposes few restrictions on how the source code may be used. As a result, BSD code can become proprietary software. That means in exercise of open sourcing BSD is a threat, anytime this can be someone’s intellectual property. Serendipity or s9y features are a lot similar to Drupal and somewhat WordPress (but not entirely).Key features are:

• WYSIWYG and HTML editing (wysiwyg you can find in Wordpress or Drupal with a plugin, and upcoming WordPress will have that feature. And WYSIWYG sometimes causes more problem like- breaking layout in IE etc.)
• Built-in, powerful media database (I don’t see any difference all PHP based CMS use the same database structure)
• Multiple authors, configurable permission/user group system. (WordPress and other blogging CMS already have it and much more robust)
• Threaded comments, nested categories, post to multiple categories (Old news)
• Multiple languages (internationalization)-Not important, if needed can be added via plugins in WordPress.
• Online plugin and template repository for easy plug-and-play installation (only 40 Template design I found, come on WordPress, Movable type, Drupal has more than few thousands.)
• Cool plugins: category-based sub-blogs, podcasting, RSS planet/aggregator, static pages (Do I have to even say this was done by MT and WP way back)
• Robust spam blocking (I found this one interesting, but lots of smap do get slipped off, Akismat is best)
• One-click upgrading from any version (This one is new, So long in WP and MT it takes few more click)
• Can be embedded into your existing web pages (Nothing special, since most of the blog CMS do support this)
• Multiple Database support (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MySQLi)
• Shared installations can power multiple blogs from just one codebase
• Native import from earlier blog applications (WordPress, Textpattern, Moveable Type, bblog, …)- don’t know how can they call WP, MT earlier blog application, they do upgrade every now and then.

This CMS is not bad, but they are not honest with explaining. They said you don’t need server modification access, but in-fact you need and if your server is running mod-rewrite, it won’t work. They said they are better then WordPress since they are providing BSD license and easy plugins integration. Better then MT because it’s in PHP instead of Perl. I found these arguments totally pathetic. WordPress or MT never had to mention that they are better by comparing, since users already find out. I really doubt the integrity and credibility of s9y developers and promoters.