Help Support Open Source Software – I Mean You!


 

 Go Vote for this feature on the Codeplex website.

Although the company I work for is a consulting company and not a product company, we have dedicated hundreds of hours to Open Source Software projects in the Microsoft .Net Framework space.  I am telling you this not to brag or get some sort of special award, but rather to set the context for this post.  We have dedicated this much effort into Open Source projects because, we see value in sharing what we do and collaborating with others who believe in developing software that promotes a frictionless development processes.

Part of my job is to help get a handle on how we are supporting open source and to show that there are some benefits to our company by supporting these project from a business point of view.  I am currently trying to figure out ways that we can promote some of what we do by leveraging the project websites as a way of promoting our training classes and other services which we could offer. 

This brings us to the reason for this post, the Codeplex website does not support some pretty simple mark up in their wiki. I am talking about being able to make a simple banner for our project sponsor(s).  Am I asking for too much? At a time when the economy is struggling, we all need to work together to help do our little part to make the eco-system work.  The great part about the team that works on codeplex is that they are pretty transparent.  If this feature has enough votes on their tracking system, than it will get prioritized sooner.  It is pretty cool of them to be open and honest about how their process works.  The other project hosting sites have not been as easy to access as the codeplex team, so I am on a mission to get this feature prioritized. 

If you use an open source project as part of your daily work, than I ask you to do a favor for people like myself who helper run, code, and blog about open source software.

If you want to support open source projects here is your call to action.

 Go Vote Now!

Come see me speak at the Austin .Net Users Group Tomorrow! 3/9/2009 5pm