Frameworks
Open Source and .NET
Should Microsoft be doing more to make open source development a first-class citizen in the .NET space?
Back in June of last year, we featured Jeff Atwood in these pages, profiling him and his popular Coding Horror developer blog (www.codinghorror.com) in the old Cool Developer Tricks section of RDN. Since then, Atwood has moved on from his position as a senior technical evangelist at Vertigo Software to devote more of his time to blogging and pursuing an open source project of his own, called
Stackoverflow.com
.
Late last month in my Desmond File blog, I wrote about a $5,000 grant Atwood awarded to Dario Solera of the ScrewTurn Wiki project, which is developing an open source ASP.NET-based wiki engine. Atwood's goal was to recognize outstanding effort in the field of .NET open source development. He also hoped to shine a light on the important role open source development can have in the .NET ecosystem. Atwood, for one, feels Microsoft isn't doing enough to embrace open source developers under .NET.
Not everyone agrees. Aaron Fulkerson is the CEO of open source wiki platform maker MindTouch. In a response to a blog post I published on Atwood's program, he mirrored some of Atwood's opinions, saying that Microsoft risks "becoming irrelevant because it is on open source that innovative development is taking place." He points to the widespread use of open source tools in university computer science programs. "We come up through the university [system] building on open source technology; of course, we're going to continue using these tools and platforms into our professional career."
But Fulkerson sees Microsoft working proactively with open source developers, including his own firm. "I think there's a change underway with respect to Microsoft's perception of open source and open source .NET projects," Fulkerson writes, pointing to Microsoft's Port25 site and numerous open source-related projects. "I'll agree that Microsoft still has a long way to go to improve [its] involvement and support of open source developers on .NET, but it's clear there are senior people who are aware of the importance of open source."
Bill Walker, the ad manager for .NET-aligned open source software firm DotNetNuke, urges Microsoft to do more. "Case studies could be sponsored, articles could be included in Microsoft magazines, etc. We have people ... who still believe DotNetNuke and other .NET open source software is for the hobbyist set only," Walker writes.
Of course, Microsoft is doing a lot already. There's the IronRuby and IronPython language projects, the PHP partnership with Zend Technologies, the growing CodePlex repository and of course the Mono and Moonlight projects. Microsoft even held an internal Open Source Day event on its campus at the end of March, aiming to educate employees about Microsoft's open source engagements.
So the question begs: Should Microsoft be doing more to make open source development a first-class citizen in the .NET space? E-mail me at
mdesmond@reddevnews.com
.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine and former editor in chief of Redmond Developer News. He has served
as senior editor of news at PC World and executive editor at Multimedia
World magazine, and has written for dozens of publications and Web sites.
Desmond has also written four computing books, including Microsoft
Office 2003 in 10 Simple Steps or Less.