Last week I joined the advisory board of the newly created CodePlex Foundation, which was forged in the bowels of Microsoft. Sounds scary doesn’t it?

The foundation, a 501.c6 non-profit, endeavors to increase participation in open source community projects. The intent is to provide a framework for commercial (proprietary) software companies to more easily contribute to open source projects. Specifically, the CodePlex Foundation wishes to help resolve concerns commonly shared among commercial software companies about contributions downstream; such as implied patents, copyright, licensing, etc.

How will the CodePlex Foundation compare to other open source foundations?

Excerpted from the CodePlex Foundation:

Other foundations are targeted at particular projects, platforms, or applications, such as Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation, or Gnome and the Gnome Foundation. We wanted a foundation that addresses a full spectrum of software projects, and does so with the licensing and intellectual property needs of commercial software companies in mind. Having said that, we expect the Codeplex Foundation to be complimentary to, and not competitive with, other open source foundations. One measure of our success will be if other foundations experience an increase in participation from commercial software developers because of us.

[Emphasis added]

Put away your tin foil hat. In my opinion, The motivation is simple.

The more developers building on .NET and Microsoft technologies the better it is for Microsoft. .NET technologies are behind Java and PHP in adoption. The gap will continue to widen. Why? You need look no further than the wealth of open source Java and PHP libraries and components available to developers. Grab this library, those components, that app server—BAM!—I’ve got a product. Obviously, there is not a comparable rich ecosystem of open source .NET libraries, components and tools.

The cost of maintaining .NET as a viable development platform will only continue to increase for Microsoft as open source development platforms continue to attract the majority of college students and businesses due to the inherent lower costs of taking products to market. Moreover, for those of us who develop on .NET, e.g. – MindTouch, it will become increasingly challenging to be competitive should there not be an ecosystem of similar open source libraries and tools available.

In short, what I am explaining is that open source is winning. Evidence, the creation of the CodePlex Foundation. If you can’t beat them…

Disclaimer: the above commentary does not necessarily accurately reflect the intentions or opinions of Microsoft, Inc. or the CodePlex Foundation. Indeed, much of what you just read is my opinion. However, as an advisor to the CodePlex Foundation it does accurately reflect my (sometimes shrill) advice to the foundation and to friends at Microsoft.

To you, the reader, I advise reading the official message from the CodePlex Foundation and deciding for yourself the value of and motivations for the foundation. And then, if you like, you can again don your tin foil hat.

I am pleased to be included on the advisory board. Both the advisory board and the interim board include friends I trust and other’s I respect. This is why I am optimistic the foundation will have a positive impact on open source. In closing, I want to echo Miguel’s comments:

From Miguel de Icaza.

This is another step in the right direction for Microsoft. I have been working on open source software since 1992, and back then a world where open source played a major role was a dream to many of us. Microsoft adopting open source licenses, releasing some of their code under open source licenses and being a better community member was the stuff of fiction.

There are still many things that I would like to see Microsoft do, and many things that I believe Microsoft has to change to become a full member of the open source community, but it is encouraging to me to see Microsoft evolve. I hope that the CodePlex foundation will help us continue to build bridges between our communities.

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