RAV TUX
June 30th, 2006, 06:50 AM
28th June 2006
By Matthew Aslett
Microsoft Corp has officially unveiled CodePlex, its new collaborative development portal for community-based development for open- and shared-source projects, while signing a new partnership with open-source database vendor MySQL AB.
Built on Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, the CodePlex site has been launched as the home to 35 projects, including 12 from inside Microsoft and 23 from outside, and will act as Microsoft's focal point for collaborative development.
"We've been doing community project with shared-source licenses, now we have an established venue for sharing code," said Jon Rosenberg, director of the shared source program. "We've also taken a number of external projects on."
Examples of those include the Commerce Starter Kit project, which is under a Mozilla License, the SharePoint Forums Web Part project, which is under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.
"The goal is to give Microsoft an established way to share source code with a development community and give the community a welcoming place where they cab post their projects without restrictions," said Rosenberg, adding that there is no requirement for projects use a shared-source license.
"We see the licenses as a means to facilitate the sharing of source code. They're a means to an end, not an end in themselves," he said. Nevertheless, Microsoft is still pleased that six of the "outside" projects have chosen to use its shared-source licenses. "We wrote those licenses to be useful and to make it easy for people to understand," said Rosenberg.
Microsoft revamped its shared source licensing in October 2005, introducing the Permissive License, Community License and Reference License, which varied in openness from BSD-like permissiveness to look-but-don't-touch restrictions.
At the time of their release, the Free Software Foundation Europe said it thought the Ms-PL and Ms-CL appeared to be compatible with the Free Software Definition.
Despite that, Rosenberg said the company has no intention of having the licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative. "We haven't found that to be an obstacle to adoption," he said, adding that the company is "not shutting the door on that completely."
As well as revamping its shared source licenses, Microsoft has also released some of its own code under open-source licenses, such as the Windows Installer XML (WiX), the Windows Template Library (WTL), and FlexWiki, for creating web sites using ASP.NET, all of which were released to SourceForge.
However, according to Rosenberg, the launch of CodePlex will see the end of SourceForge-hosted Microsoft code projects. "In 2004 we started doing experiments and we didn't have our own venue, so we did those three projects on SourceForge," he said. "After those three experiments, we have developed the licenses, venue, and processes for doing this sort of release."
Rosenberg also pointed out that CodePlex will not be home to the company's "qualified" shared-source initiatives for opening up code to governments, large enterprises, key developers, and research and academia.
"Anyone can come to CodePlex, it's completely public," he said, adding that while contributors to specific projects will be expected to sign over copyright to the project owner, project owners will not have to sign away any rights to Microsoft to have their projects hosted at CodePlex. "The projects that Microsoft does in the community will stay in the community," he said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has entered into a new partnership with open source database management software vendor MySQL, with the latter joining Microsoft's Visual Studio Industry Partner Program.
The deal will see MySQL developing a new downloadable plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 that will enable Visual Studio developers to quickly build applications for the database management system. Users will be able to create, modify, and manage MySQL database objects from within the Visual Studio IDE.
MySQL already estimates that 40% of the daily downloads for its database are for Windows, and has additionally used Microsoft's open-source WiX toolset to create the installer for MySQL on Windows.
The deal is the third significant partnership by Microsoft with an open source vendor in a year. In September 2005 it teamed up with open source Java middleware vendor JBoss Inc (since acquired by Red Hat Inc), while in February it announced a tie-up with open source customer relationship management software vendor SugarCRM.
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=59D2D3BE-2275-48CC-B874-EC866DCEFB57
By Matthew Aslett
Microsoft Corp has officially unveiled CodePlex, its new collaborative development portal for community-based development for open- and shared-source projects, while signing a new partnership with open-source database vendor MySQL AB.
Built on Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, the CodePlex site has been launched as the home to 35 projects, including 12 from inside Microsoft and 23 from outside, and will act as Microsoft's focal point for collaborative development.
"We've been doing community project with shared-source licenses, now we have an established venue for sharing code," said Jon Rosenberg, director of the shared source program. "We've also taken a number of external projects on."
Examples of those include the Commerce Starter Kit project, which is under a Mozilla License, the SharePoint Forums Web Part project, which is under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.
"The goal is to give Microsoft an established way to share source code with a development community and give the community a welcoming place where they cab post their projects without restrictions," said Rosenberg, adding that there is no requirement for projects use a shared-source license.
"We see the licenses as a means to facilitate the sharing of source code. They're a means to an end, not an end in themselves," he said. Nevertheless, Microsoft is still pleased that six of the "outside" projects have chosen to use its shared-source licenses. "We wrote those licenses to be useful and to make it easy for people to understand," said Rosenberg.
Microsoft revamped its shared source licensing in October 2005, introducing the Permissive License, Community License and Reference License, which varied in openness from BSD-like permissiveness to look-but-don't-touch restrictions.
At the time of their release, the Free Software Foundation Europe said it thought the Ms-PL and Ms-CL appeared to be compatible with the Free Software Definition.
Despite that, Rosenberg said the company has no intention of having the licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative. "We haven't found that to be an obstacle to adoption," he said, adding that the company is "not shutting the door on that completely."
As well as revamping its shared source licenses, Microsoft has also released some of its own code under open-source licenses, such as the Windows Installer XML (WiX), the Windows Template Library (WTL), and FlexWiki, for creating web sites using ASP.NET, all of which were released to SourceForge.
However, according to Rosenberg, the launch of CodePlex will see the end of SourceForge-hosted Microsoft code projects. "In 2004 we started doing experiments and we didn't have our own venue, so we did those three projects on SourceForge," he said. "After those three experiments, we have developed the licenses, venue, and processes for doing this sort of release."
Rosenberg also pointed out that CodePlex will not be home to the company's "qualified" shared-source initiatives for opening up code to governments, large enterprises, key developers, and research and academia.
"Anyone can come to CodePlex, it's completely public," he said, adding that while contributors to specific projects will be expected to sign over copyright to the project owner, project owners will not have to sign away any rights to Microsoft to have their projects hosted at CodePlex. "The projects that Microsoft does in the community will stay in the community," he said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has entered into a new partnership with open source database management software vendor MySQL, with the latter joining Microsoft's Visual Studio Industry Partner Program.
The deal will see MySQL developing a new downloadable plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 that will enable Visual Studio developers to quickly build applications for the database management system. Users will be able to create, modify, and manage MySQL database objects from within the Visual Studio IDE.
MySQL already estimates that 40% of the daily downloads for its database are for Windows, and has additionally used Microsoft's open-source WiX toolset to create the installer for MySQL on Windows.
The deal is the third significant partnership by Microsoft with an open source vendor in a year. In September 2005 it teamed up with open source Java middleware vendor JBoss Inc (since acquired by Red Hat Inc), while in February it announced a tie-up with open source customer relationship management software vendor SugarCRM.
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=59D2D3BE-2275-48CC-B874-EC866DCEFB57