With Microsoft, the company that vilified the Open Source movement, running CodePlex, I was skeptical.  (I still am..)  Naturally the Free Software Foundation (fsf.org) is pretty curious about their intentions too.  See  my commentary, but make sure you read the whole article.

Many in our community are suspicious of the CodePlex Foundation. With its board of directors dominated by Microsoft employees and ex-employees, plus apologist Miguel de Icaza, there is plenty of reason to be wary of the organization. But that doesn’t prove its actions will be bad.

OK, so they are using the word apologist, thats a little bit nicer than traitor.  Stallman really made himself out to be a bit of an asshole.  He caused a pretty big schism in the Open Source world with that one, it was a very polarizing statement, and I’m pretty sure I’m siding with de Icaza.  The guy contributed a ton to the free software community, and the open source community, and is trying to create an open source community on the Microsoft side.  I am now a Microsoft developer by profession, not really by choice, but if someone is developing an open application on a Microsoft system, you cant ostracize them. (I’m actually developing closed source applications now, so you can rip away at me I guess..)

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Tags: CodePlex,Free Software,FSF,Microsoft,Open Source,Richard Stallman,WTF License
Categories: Technology
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