Microsoft Forms the CodePlex Foundation for Open Source Contributions

By Dawn M. Foster (91 posts) on September 22, 2009 at 8:00 am

Microsoft recently announced the creation of a non profit foundation, CodePlex, designed to "enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." Microsoft contributed $1 million to help get the organization started, and right now the board of directors has several Microsoft employees, but the CodePlex Foundation is an independent entity. The two non-Microsoft board members are Miguel de Icaza (Novell) of Gnome and Mono fame and Shaun Bruce Walker from DotNetNuke. They also have a board of advisors with many open source industry experts, including Larry Augustin, Aaron Fulkerson, Monty Widenius, and others. Microsoft has also announced that Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft and will serve as interim President of the Foundation in addition to joining the leadership team of a new California startup.

At this point, the organization is so new that we can't really tell how everything will work once they get started, but the industry analysts are already starting to weigh in on the announcement.

When looking at why Microsoft created this foundation, Stephen O'Grady at RedMonk says:

"Microsoft has clearly had issues with its employees contributing to various open source projects over the years. Consider that when the folks from Redmond decided to build an Open Document Format plugin for Microsoft Office, they turned to partners – Clever Age, Aztecsoft, and Dialogika – for the actual development rather than do the work themselves. As the contribution to the Linux kernel indicates, Microsoft has managed to conquer some of its concerns in this regard over the years, but they clearly felt that there were sufficient pain points in contributing – as a commercial organization – to open source projects that it made sense to address them via the formation of CodePlex."

According to Matthew Aslett at The 451 Group:

"We also think the CodePlex Foundation will have to work hard to ensure that it is not seen as a front for Microsoft, and the quicker an independent board is in place the better (such are the perils of starting up an independent foundation, however - as IBM and Nokia/Symbian have also discovered in the past)."

When a new organization spins out from an existing company, it is fairly typical for the first board of the organization to have a large number of members from the company. As the new organization matures, the board will become more balanced and less heavily weighted toward the original organization. I don't think it will take much time before they start to recruit additional board members from outside of Microsoft. They have a strong set of advisors, and if I had to guess, they will be getting more advice along these lines.

Categories: Open Source
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