Microsoft Offers Virtual Open Source to CodePlex

Microsoft Offers Virtual Open Source to CodePlex

Microsoft is putting up code to CodePlex, an open source project hosting website, employing licenses and conditions that oppose to the tenets of open source. The company has been posting designs under Microsoft licenses that prevents users from operating CodePlex projects on non-Windows platforms or impedes access to code.


The system has floated up as it appeared Microsoft altered the license of Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) to the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), subsequent to  complaints from a leading open-source representative Miguel de Icaza. The free software programmer had originally pushed for the removal of ASP.NET along with MEF and "all together with platform-limiting software" from CodePlex and encouraged developers to avoid MEF before the change to Ms-PL.



CodePlex  allows shared development of open source software projects. Its features include wiki pages, source control based on Team Foundation Server, discussion forums, issue tracking, project tagging, RSS support, statistics, and releases.