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Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch:
CodePlex is not the name for a new wing of the ever-expanding Microsoft campus headquarters. Instead, it is Microsoft’s newest code-repository site, aimed especially at shared- and open-source programmers.On May 15, Microsoft went live with the beta version of its CodePlex site. The site, which is coded in C# and is built on top of a hosted version of Microsoft Team Foundation Server platform, includes support for wiki-based team communication, to RSS feed aggregation, to forums.
Microsoft’s plan is to take the CodePlex site “more formally live” in late June or early July, said Bill Hilf, director of Microsoft’s platform strategy.
Sources said Microsoft’s current plan is to launch the final version of the site at the Open Source Business Conference in London in late June.
Hilf described CodePlex as a “community development Web site” that is an outgrowth of Microsoft’s shared-source effort.
“We are fostering .Net and community developers who are doing community stuff,” Hilf said in an interview with Microsoft Watch. “We set out to create something using our best and latest software that would let folks use any license they want” to make their code available, including the GNU General Public License, OpenBSD and Microsoft’s own shared-source licenses.
CodePlex is not meant to be a replacement for existing code-repository sites, such as Microsoft’s GotDotNet or SourceForge, Hilf said.
Whether existing Microsoft projects will move over is a matter of some discussion as Sean Michael Kerner details at InternetNews.
Jason Matusow, the Director of Microsoft’s Shared Source program, reveals on his weblog that he is moving on to new role as a Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team. Bill Hilf, the Director of Platform Technology Strategy (see this Q&A), will be taking over the Shared Source program.
Jason Matusow, Director of Microsoft’s Shared Source program, announced it at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday and has the details on his blog:
The Microsoft Business Solutions Solomon team is posting the source code to their Business Portal Lite technology which enables multiple browsers to be used as a thin-client interface connecting the Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal and the Solomon ERP system. The portal provides time, expense approval, alerts and project profitability tracking and reviewing functionality. The advantage to using the Lite solution is that you can access the Microsoft Solomon back-end through Safari, Firefox, Mozilla and other non-Windows browsers.
The Solomon group has a strong community of partners and customers right now, with more than 600 certified partners servicing more than 15,000 customers. This release enables the certified partner community to build a common set of technologies allowing them to service customers’ heterogeneous environments.
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The code is available under the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) announced last week…
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Because this source release, and community development effort are targeted at a specific set of partners – this will be a “walled garden” project. The project on GotDotNet Workspaces will primarily be for certified partners but if there are customers interested in participating they will do so as an invitee by their integration partner. The source license will provide those partners with the ability to take the code and do what they wish with it – but the core project with the MS lead will remain on the GDN site.
More by following the link and also from Mary Jo Foley and Martin LaMonica.
Yesterday Microsoft revised the terms for its Shared Source program, but said they had no plans for formal OSI approval as Open Source. Today, Mary Jo Foley has an update:
Microsoft officials repeated that they are holding off from seeking OSI approval of its new licenses for a variety of reasons. Representatives from the Redmond software vendor did meet with “a quorum” of the OSI board to obtain initial feedback on the licenses, as noted in an OSI-issued statement on Microsoft licensing.
Details by following the link. She suspects there is some negotiating going on.
