Legally speaking a “port” would be original work because it would constitute someone reimplementing a feature in a different language. Therefore MTOS would be free to use it if they got the proper assignment from the author(s) of that port.

Oh yes, right. Apologies for that mistake, I have just rewritten the statement so it makes better sense and resolves ambiguities.

Then again the probability of us even being able to lift code directly from WordPress is quite small given that the two pieces of software are written in different languages.

It also *just* slipped my mind that Movable Type is written in Perl, so I agree, that really wouldn’t be so feasible :/

Legally speaking a “port” would be original work because it would constitute someone reimplementing a feature in a different language. Therefore MTOS would be free to use it if they got the proper assignment from the author(s) of that port. In this way both products are actually free to draw inspiration of one another. Something I hope increases with the release of MTOS.

What would be against our contribution policy would be the lifting (verbatim) of source code from WordPress and including it in Movable Type, for exactly the reasons you specify: there would be no way for Six Apart to reasonably acquire a license or assignment from all the possible contributors of that piece of code.

Then again the probability of us even being able to lift code directly from WordPress is quite small given that the two pieces of software are written in different languages.