Read this:
Orchard is a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform. […] In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through module extensions and themes.
I discovered today that Orchard is built by Outercurve Foundation, which was created by Microsoft.
Orchard is gaining momentum and for good reasons: it seems like a really good piece of software. The point is, if Outercurve’s goal is to enable exchange of code and understanding among companies and open source communities, perhaps, just perhaps, building a product that is a direct competitor of other existing open-source products, like Umbraco, does not seem like a good way to improve karma.
There are a few other cool projects by Outercurve, like NuGet, that make sense because there are no competitors and no alternatives, either free or commercial (I’m talking about the .NET world here). That said, both projects (Orchard and NuGet) have been built and promoted by top Microsoft developers.
I can see only two alternatives:
- if Microsoft needs a Foundation as a way to act in stealth mode in the open source community, without raising too many eyebrows, then perhaps that’s a bad move as everyone would love Microsoft to be even more open to open source (ASP.NET MVC is open-source, for example) – even so, it’s a giant failure because I was convinced Microsoft was officially endorsing both Orchard and NuGet until today
- if Outercurve is really an independent entity (but I doubt it) then they have failed too because their work seems like Microsoft’s.
All of that said, it should be noted that Microsoft is giving us a lot of highly-appreciated support for ScrewTurn Wiki and so is doing for other open source projects. They are committed to making open source a part of their business, but I believe they should be more aggressive and transparent. I’m still puzzled by open-source business models (e.g.: giving a product away for free and then selling support feels like, uhm, ransom), but I also think that Microsoft doesn’t really need a business model other than putting money in open source and get a better karma in return.
In the end, it’s all about developers and karma. In IT, new things emerge from the low levels. From individual developers inventing new ways of doing things, releasing tools as open source, adopting concepts from other fields (or technology stacks). So far, ASP.NET MVC, which we use in Amanuens, is the only notable answer to this movement from Microsoft. It’s a giant step for a company with the agility of a frozen mammoth, but it’s not yet enough. I guess they know that, but an half-assed attempt like Outercurve is not exactly a good start.