Microsoft Releases CodePlex with 30 Projects

Microsoft has officially announced the release of CodePlex, the companys collaborative software development portal that debuted as a beta in May.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft announced CodePlex 1.0 at the Open Source Business Conference in London on June 27, highlighting the development portal as a means of sharing source code.

Already more than 30 collaborative development projects, including open-source projects, reside at the CodePlex portal, company officials said.

"Were announcing at OSBC that CodePlex is live and at [Version] 1.0, and were launching with 30 projects on it," said Jon Rosenberg, director of Community Source Programs at Microsoft. Rosenberg said more than half of the CodePlex projects come from developers not employed at Microsoft.

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"CodePlex provides a forum to bring together developers from around the world and gives them tools, source code and an advanced platform for designing and building software," Rosenberg said in a statement. "CodePlex is just one of the ways in which Microsoft is fostering collaborative community innovation. Through the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft has engaged with over 2 million developers on 120 different programs."

Indeed, Rosenberg said he believes CodePlex will be "a great resource" for the community and for Microsoft as well.

"Its a way to take advantage of some of the transparency that community source offers," he said.

Moreover, Rosenberg said more than 100,000 visitors have hit the CodePlex site since the beta phase began in May. The CodePlex effort grew from a dozen projects to more than 30 practically overnight, Microsoft officials said.

Microsoft officials said CodePlex was built on Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server. The portal features source control, issue tracking, discussion forums and RSS feeds in and out of each project so that members can stay up to date on the development issues most important to them.

In addition, Rosenberg said Microsoft has "internally developed processes within Microsoft for people whove developed source that they want to share and build a community around."

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These Microsoft processes are primarily targeting "community source" technology rather than open source, although the CodePlex portal itself features open-source technology as well as shared source and community source, Rosenberg said.

The Shared Source Initiative and open-source projects available on CodePlex today include projects such as the "Atlas" Control Toolkit, IronPython 1.01 Beta 1 and Power Toys for Visual Studio, which Rosenberg said are among his favorite projects on CodePlex right now.

In addition, Rosenberg said CodePlex also will be the home of "a large project for education" in the future. He said the project will be one that can help students in the classroom.

More information about the CodePlex portal and its projects is available at www.codeplex.com.

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