Microsoft Open Source Strategy: CodePlex keeps Growing
Yesterday Microsoft announced that the number of projects hosted on CodePlex breached the 10,000 mark, just after CodePlex celebrated its third anniversary.
Even if numbers are not impressive compared with Google code – becoming home to over 80.000 projects in half the time – it is definitely a measure of how seriously Microsoft is taking its open source strategy.
Having been consulting to Microsoft on open source strategies and implementations, I happened to talk about open source at Microsoft when it was both unprecedented and unpopular. At that stage many said Microsoft would have not raised any interest among open source developers, but Codeplex’s growth prove they were wrong, and not only that.
Looking at CodePlex licensing usage statistics, it turns out that 36% of projects are released under the now famous MS-PL Microsoft license, but more notably 20% of them are released under the GPLv2 (and about 7% under the LGPL). A sign that Microsoft is managing to reach out to different developers audiences.
Microsoft’s patent affection is still an open issue though, but Microsoft removing hurdles from Mono just did another step in the right direction.
We need more good news like this, and we need Microsoft to be consistent with its open source strategy.
Codeplex the measure of Microsoft open source street cred | Open Source | ZDNet.com 2:12 pm on July 8, 2009 Permalink
[…] example, as my friend Roberto Galopppini noted yesterday, Google has become home to 80,000 projects in half the time CodePlex has been open. Numbers don’t just live in abstract isolation. They […]
People Over Process » Links for July 7th through July 8th 7:00 pm on July 8, 2009 Permalink
[…] Microsoft Open Source Strategy: CodePlex keeps Growing […]
People Over Process » Numbers, Volume 19 9:58 pm on July 13, 2009 Permalink
[…] Open Source at Microsoft […]
tecosystems » Microsoft Frees CodePlex: Now What? The Q&A 8:50 pm on September 11, 2009 Permalink
[…] CodePlex has had some success, crossing the 10,000 project mark back in July. As Roberto Galoppini points out, however, that’s an eighth of what Google Code amassed in half the time. So while it’s […]