The CodePlex Foundation, an open source organization that spun out of Microsoft in 2009, has changed its name to the Outercurve Foundation partly to avoid confusion with Microsoft's CodePlex.com open source project hosting site.
The CodePlex Foundation, the open-source organization spun out of Microsoft a year ago, has changed its name to the Outercurve Foundation.
Microsoft helped launch the CodePlex Foundation in 2009 as an
organization to enable the exchange of code and understanding among
software companies and open source communities. However, Microsoft also
maintained its own CodePlex.com
open source project hosting Website with the same name as the spun-out
organization, causing a bit of confusion for some in the industry.
Thus, the rebranding, which was undertaken to reduce confusion and
differentiate the not for profit foundation from the Microsoft owned
and operated forge CodePlex.com, comes a year after the foundation's
launch.
However, in that time the foundation has developed a governance
model, hired executive and technical management and elected an
independent Board of Directors. Additionally the foundation created a
project acceptance and management process that enables it to accept and
support contributed open source projects -- six projects have been
accepted to date.
"We accomplished a great deal in our first year and have been
successful engaging with the FOSS [Free and Open Source Software]
community and corporate and independent developers," said Paula Hunter,
executive director of the Outercurve Foundation, in a statement. "The
name 'Outercurve Foundation' speaks to our ambition to be a foundation
on the leading edge of the open-source world, representing the
interests of the growing audience of developers and corporations
engaging with the traditional FOSS community."
The six projects at the newly named Outercurve Foundation are:
ASP.NET Ajax, the Orchard Project, the CoApp Project, MVC Contrib,
Network Monitor Parsers, and the ASP.NET MVP Web forms framework. The
ASP.NET Ajax Library Beta enables you to build database-driven Web
applications that execute entirely in the Web browser. The library
supports client data access, client templates, and client data-binding.
Orchard is a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at
delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET
platform. In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on
delivering a .NET-based content management system (CMS) application
that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites.
The Common Opensource Application Publishing Platform project mission
is to create community-driven Package Management System for Open Source
software, along with tools to enable developers to take advantage of
the Windows platform.
Meanwhile, the ASP.NET MVC framework provides an implementation of
the "Model - View - Controller" (MVC) design pattern for ASP.NET. Known
as MVC Contrib, the project is useful to developers looking to develop
and test UI elements. Network Monitor Parsers parse network protocol
data from binary machine code into human readable structured format.
They cover more than 350 network protocols; including RFC based public
protocols, as well as Microsoft protocols. And Web Forms MVP is a
simple Model-View-Presenter (MVP) framework for ASP.NET Web Forms to
aid in building testable and maintainable ASP.NET projects. It features
support for normal server controls, data-binding and asynchronous pages.
The foundation groups related projects using a gallery metaphor and established two galleries in its first year, the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery and the Systems Infrastructure and Integration Gallery.
The galleries house open source projects, ranging from libraries to
speed ASP.NET development to package management systems to projects
that analyze network protocol traffic in heterogeneous environments.
"Open-source development is becoming a mainstream IT strategy, but
IT departments are looking for a model to turn that strategy into
reality," said Sam Ramji, president of the Board of Directors at the
Outercurve Foundation, in a statement. "The foundation's new name will
increase recognition of its independence and reinforce its position as
a participant and influencer in the FOSS and corporate development
communities."
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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