Microsoft muscles in on open source

The Vole says the aim of the site is to promote the use of its software engineering technology in the development community.

It reckons that since its beta beginnings in May, the CodePlex site has received more than 100,000 visits and the initial 12 Microsoft projects open to developers have been added to by visitors to become more than 30.

Jon Rosenberg, director of community source programmes at Microsoft, told vnunet.com that the research portal offered benefits for open saucers as well as the Vole.

He reckons the site is a way "for the developer community to get more transparency into Microsoft technology."

"They can see the source code, they can understand much better how it works, and they can get ideas for how they will use it in their own products and services," he said.

He reckons the programme promoted by the site allows bedroom developers to make a name for themselves. "People do build reputations in the open source community and that is how you get to be a developer on a project," he said.

"Whenever a developer is looking for a job with a company they will point to their accomplishments, and these open source type projects can be a very good way for developers to become well known."

The source code and the bug fix forums on the CodePlex site can be viewed by anyone, but only registered users can submit work to the projects. Once coders have proved their mettle they will be allowed fiddle with the code willy-nilly.

"We have seen quite a bit of interest already and have had over 150 requests to put projects up there, although we are not putting them all up at once," he claimed. µ

L'INQ
www.codeplex.com