Microsoft has finally launched a much awaited new stand
alone organization for open source contribution and development.
![codeplex-foundation-logo_3.gif]()
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CodePlex.org Mission statement
"The mission of the CodePlex Foundation is to enable the exchange of code
and understanding among software companies and open source communities."
The organization is totally independent of Microsoft and is launched under 501(c)(6)
which categorizes it as a "business league devoted to the improvement of
business conditions of one or more lines of business. It is not engaged in any
regular business typically carried on by for-profits."
The goals and vision are according to the mindset of directors and the
contributors. Among it board members are some of the very well known such as
Phil Haack Microsoft and Scott Hanselman Microsoft.
It will be run by the foundation partners and contributors but how
will it differentiate itself from other open source platforms or what
difference will it make for .Net developers / professionals or for Microsoft
itself.
Their are varying prospective, To me it will bring a balance to the development
using Microsoft technologies as .Net professional and to Microsoft itself as an
organization which is to offer its support for community as a whole rather than
having only a profit centric approach.
This step will also help to bridge a gap between open source developers and
.Net developers.
Microsoft is taking several steps to make .Net platform acceptable to all
communities and inclusion of several addins and welcoming of several third
party efforts into the development environment like Asp.Net Mvc are good
examples and CodePlex will support this effort further.
Microsoft is probably determined to grab its lost share online. It has made
several moves to improve its position in the long run by yahoo merger and the
launch of Bing
It is good news though for me as .Net developers. Only reason for open source success
like java related technologies is that they are open source. Now Microsoft has
decided to be open source as well to some extents. This means you pay for a
standard licence for Visual studio and then keep on adding libraries and tool
kits free of cost. This thing is already going on with some of the successful
java based development platforms such as Intellij. Let’s hope it is positive for
all of us in development and client domain
All philosophies welcome and you may participate in the poll Open Source development Contributions if you wish
Further links
CodePlex.org
CodePlex on twitter