Paula's Blog

How to engage with the CodePlex Foundation

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:14:00 GMT

A lot of developers have asked “why would I engage with the CodePlex Foundation”, and I thought it would be good to flesh out some of the reasons you might consider it, and also why it may not make sense for you. The first thing to be aware of with regard to the Foundation is that we have a number of open source projects that have been assigned to us (currently 7, and growing). These projects are “collected” in what we refer to as Galleries. Just as a museum has collections of art grouped within a theme, so too does the Foundation. The Galleries are “sponsored” by companies that provide the foundation funding to invest in building out the collection within a specific gallery.

There are three ways you might consider participating with the Foundation:

Category: Open source

Category: Software development

Category: Intellectual property

Project Harmony meeting at Linuxcon Boston

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:14:00 GMT

I attended a meeting of the Harmony project in Boston today. Preliminary reaction follows...

Category: Intellectual property

Category: Licensing

An interview with Eric Hexter, MVC Contrib Project Leader

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:26:00 GMT

MVC Contrib is the first project donated to the CodePlex Foundation by an independent group of developers. The following interview about the project is with Eric Hexter, co-leader of the project. Read it here or follow the link to a podcast of this interview.

Category: Open source

Category: ASP.Net

Making open source software accessible and understandable to non-software companies

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:37:00 GMT

Speaking with Stephen O’Grady of RedMonk the other day, it became clear that we are still far away from a perfect understanding of the value of open source, particularly for non-software companies which often consume open source but do not always contribute back to the community.

Category: Open source

Category: Software development

Category: Intellectual property

Category: Corporate

New Technical Director, Stephen Walli joins team

Tue, 18 May 2010 13:06:00 GMT

I am pleased to welcome Stephen Walli to the CodePlex team. If you are an open source veteran, you have likely met him. Stephen and I met at OSBC this year, and he already had a very good understanding of our mission and some constructive suggestions for us.

Stephen will take an active role with the gallery managers to ensure that we are helping them achieve their goals. In addition, Stephen will engage with the project leaders to determine what programs or services they need from us to sustain their projects throughout their lifecycle. It is also time to start capturing and sharing best practices, we will have more to say about that in upcoming weeks.

I am sure Stephen will welcome your input, in the mean time, Welcome Stephen!

Welcome Web Forms MVP!

Tue, 04 May 2010 14:14:00 GMT

We have just added a new project to the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery. The Web Forms MVP project supports test-driven development for ASP.NET applications. If you are a web developer, or are involved in technical decisions regarding your web platform, you may want to pay attention to this project.

How did this project come about? The origin of this project resides “down under” in Australia. Seems two colleagues, Damian Edwards and Tatham Oddie were the original brains of this project, which has gone through a number of revisions. This project has matured to a point where it is now bundled with DotNetNuke 5.3+, integrated with EPiServer, and is powering large production web sites. Damian recently took a job with Microsoft, and Tatham agreed to take on the role of project coordinator. If you are interested in contributing to this project, by all means contact Tatham.

A little more detail about Web Forms MVP: It is a simple-to-implement Model View Presenter framework for ASP.Net Web Forms, and balances productivity and control for developers charged with developing and maintaining ASP.NET applications by providing support for features such as data binding, normal server controls and asynchronous pages. Of course, all of this and more is detailed at the project web site.

For more information about the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery, please contact gallery manager, Dimitry Robsman.

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Category: Open source

Category: ASP.Net

Category: Content management systems

Category: Software development

CodePlex Foundation at OSBC 2010: Charting the Next Wave in the Open Source Revolution (with video)

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:18:00 GMT

The OSBC 2010 Conference in San Francisco this year convinced me that we are at the cusp of a new wave of open source awareness and adoption. This next monumental wave is building now; but it’s not happening in bug bashes or web groups or university classrooms. It’s happening in business meetings, among savvy CIOs and CTOs and CEOs who may not know JavaScript from espresso latte – but are clearly sold on the business case for multi-source development, including but not limited to open source.

A few words of wisdom from industry luminaries are provided in this video, and I continue my thoughts below.

The CodePlex Foundation is well situated for this next stage, and it’s exciting for those of us who are working toward a vision of open source and multi-source development that combines practical business sense with community responsibility and creative collaboration. We firmly believe that open source stands to benefit businesses in all sectors by offering a toolbox brimming with practical, shared IP that reduces the opportunity cost of in-house software development – and allows companies to devote more time and resources toward products and services that are original and add genuine value.

So a new wave is coming. But first off, let’s acknowledge that IT developers are already sold on open source, and have been for a while.

Jeff Hammond of Forrester Research noted at an OSBC panel discussion that I moderated that when it comes to open source, “developers in enterprise IT have figured it out.” According to a survey Jeff conducted in 2009, only one in five developers has not used open source in commercial deployments. So four out of five developers are coding with open source. And that’s just about everybody, among developers at least. The corporate side is a different story, but growing corporate acceptance is the next wave I see coming.

Successful business executives are bold and uncompromising when it comes to the vision they want to achieve over the long term, but pragmatic when it comes to running their companies day to day. Integration of open source into the development model is a pragmatic way to make bold visions happen. Pragmatic decision makers realize that where software code comes from is irrelevant as long as the code does the job and license agreements are respected and followed. As Black Duck Software President and CEO Tim Yeaton said at OSBC, it boils down to the fact that “companies are looking to find the shortest path to a solution.” If companies are compliant with license agreements and contribute back to the open source ecosystem when they should, parsing the origins of code, whether it be open source, third party, or homegrown, is more of a metaphysical exercise than one of practical consideration.

Of course, “contributing back” are two words that don’t generally find their way into the P and L statements of most enterprises (beyond charitable contributions, anyway). While it is disappointing, it may not be surprising that only 20 percent of companies are giving back development to the open source community, according to Jeff Hammond’s research, even though 80 percent are using it in some way.

Others may beg to differ, but I don’t believe that this discrepancy is due to any sort of organized conspiracy on the part of companies to gouge the open source software community and exploit the energy and ideas of generous, well-meaning developers around the globe and leave nothing in return. After all, businesses are motivated by self-interest, and it’s in their practical self-interest to make sure that the open source exosystem remains healthy and vigorous. As Sonoa VP and CodePlex Foundation Board Member Sam Ramji pointed out OSBC, IT shops “may not want to show up every single day and participate in bug bashes. But if they’ve changed something, they don’t want to experience the cost of reintegrating that patch in every new version of HTTP'D.”

Rather, the discrepancy between the use of open source in the commercial enterprise (widespread) and their level of contributing back (minimal) is because good developers are more often creative visionaries motivated by the desire to build things that work well than people who enjoy sitting in board rooms making the business case for open source. Although it is changing, many C-level executives remain in the dark about what code is being used where, or even about what open source is to begin with.

If you are an executive who has to make business decisions, not paying attention to open source – or even worse, putting your head in the sand about it – isn’t likely to save you any sleep in the long run. Companies who view open source strictly as an IT issue and don’t acknowledge potential business and legal ramifications could end up expending much more time and energy on OSS business and legal concerns than those who do, diminishing the value proposition considerably.

Since compliance is essential from the perspective of fiduciary responsibility and common sense, good governance processes are key when it comes to integrating open source in the development process. Damien Eastwood, former VP of Legal at Sun Microsystems, put it this way at OSBC: “The easier you make it, the easier it is for the engineers [to] actually embrace [governance] and that’s key, because I guarantee you they’re using it. It’s cheap, it’s free, it’s good enough and they want to get their projects done.”

How has your own company been when it comes to open source acceptance? At our panel discussion, Jeff Hammond described the five stages of open source acceptance, which is included in video embedded in this page. Read the transcript, listen to the audio, watch the video. Regardless of the medium that reaches you, we want you to be thinking about the ways in which open source is affecting your company, project, or initiative now – or how it could in the future. Join the conversation.

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Category: Open source

Category: Software development

Category: Intellectual property

Category: Licensing

Category: Corporate

Category: Business

Impressions on the Open Source Think Tank @ Napa

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:09:00 GMT

I attended my first think tank this past week, and it was a great place for me to meet some new people, but also to test out some basic principals about the CodePlex Foundation. One of our founding assumptions was that there is under participation in open source projects. We have asserted that there is still confusion about how to contribute, and in some cases it is just more trouble than it is worth. Additionally, when you look at two key constituencies that certainly are benefiting from the consumption of open source, software companies and corporate IT departments, it isn’t clear how much they contribute back or if they feel obliged to do so.

I asked some simple questions of the attendees: Do we need more contribution from software companies and corporate IT departments? The twittered responses included:

“ we think corp IT needs to contribute more to OSS, but we understand why they don't - still significant barriers”
“corporate IT does not need to contribute open source under the corporate banner”
“software companies should contribute , it will surely help. Contribution model has to be defined tho”
“ oss projects need contributions beyond code”
“ corporate IT - its a give and take & more than enlightened self interest. Its retention for your best talent”
“ no proper incentives to contribute code”

Several representatives from Corporate IT gave me another perspective - they contribute, but they don’t want any brand exposure when doing so. The answers confirmed what I was able to glean from participants in 1x1 dialog, there is most definitely room for improvement.

Random notes…

The State of California business case was very interesting. Kudos to the state for tapping into some great minds to brainstorm on their open source initiative, I look forward to watching them progress with some of the constructive ideas that came forward. FWIW, P.K. Agarwal has a great sense of humor!

The mobile breakout really pointed out the challenges we are facing across multiple platforms. Seems as if RIM, Android, and iPhone are running neck and neck in the corporate world, geography playing a big factor. Lots of pent up demand for HTML5.

A lot of people commented on the ratio of men to women in open source. My observation was that less than 10% of the attendees were women, and few of them engineers. This ratio doesn’t seem to track with the broader high tech marketplace. Lots of speculation on why, but I left with a more important question, can we change this?

Lots of runners on the plane home to Boston planning on running the 114th Boston Marathon. I feel bad for the European qualifiers that could not make it in time. Hope the BAA gives them a chance next year. Great new excuse for bailing on a marathon - blame a volcano.

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Category: Open source

Category: Software development

Category: Corporate

Welcome CoApp

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:38:00 GMT

I am pleased to welcome Garrett Serack and the Common Opensource Application Publishing Platform (CoApp) into the SIIG Gallery.