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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.”