Microsoft rethinks open source CodePlex site

Microsoft's CodePlex site could be revised before the year's out to signpost genuinely open-source projects, after the company got itself in hot water. Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy, told The Register that Microsoft hoped to wrap up internal discussions over what to do about CodePlex and resolve the issue …

[Destroy All Monsters]

Philosophical discussions at Microsoft...

...are like philosophical discussion at the American Enterprise Institute. In the end, some poor bearded dudes in sandals are gonna get worked over real good.

So has anyone used CodePlex yet?

[Antoinette Lacroix]

Codeplex.com ?

I believe in MS open source when I see http://sourceforge.net/projects/microsoft/

[Anonymous Coward]

What is going on with the hyphen?

Is someone trying to make opensource a new English word perhaps :)

Try and hyphen it in for a bit, then slowly squeeze it into being an all shiny and new word opensource, and drop the case to move it into a verb, not just a noun now, but a verb with all that great dictionary definition goodness :)

I am sure the Oxford English Dictionary of new words has been alerted :)

Open source is source code that is open to be viewed, and by extension modified, the GPL is a different beast and gives rights to the distributed. The Open Source Initiative (note the absence of the hyphen on their site but note it in the article :) ), is a sort of self appointed group that goes around planting their definition OSD onto things or denying it if they like.

Are they any better than MS probably, but could they be open to gaming their position possible.

Problem is Open Source has become a buzz word in the marketing world over the last year or so, and marketing departments are picking up on it and pushing it to consumers who don't know the ins and outs, but seem to respond well to the phrase.

"Oh what software are you using?" - "it is open source" - "sounds good, yahoo!".

Hopefully the fad will pass, personally I am working on the word bespoke as the comeback kid.

Bespoke based on open source, may be the journey, it is alliterative and ends with the open source bit.

(Qite right, fixed. - Ed)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Microsoft Way...

Simply redefine "Open Source".

[Damien]

@Destroy All Monsters

Hi , I use codeplex regularly, mostly for MOSS2007 stuff but occasionally other code as well, similar in layout to sourceforge and in my opinion equally as good.

[Mark]

Simple

Code Plex can point to two repositories.

One, Open Source as per OSI definition.

One, Shared Source as per MS definition.

It isn't difficult and still gets things done.

[mittfh]

SourceForge, anyone?

I doubt many open source developers will flock to CodePlex. After all, there's already a perfectly good site for open source software in existence - SourceForge. And the Redmond giant haven't exactly got on well with open source software in the past...

And they still haven't managed to outcompete Apache in the web server stakes yet - despite both being initially released in the same year (1995), according to Netcraft's October survey, Apache still leads with over 91m sites compared to IIS with just under 63m...