Since its very inception, OpenNETCF has been all about community. That's where it all started and that's where we continue to focus today. For a long time I've been of the opinion that we need to do more to engage with the community and to really give something back. Until now, the way we've run our "shared source" projects is that we write the code, compile the code and then release to the community. There has been very little in the way of reciprocal contribution from the community and I wanted to change that.
A short while ago, I announced that we would relicense our shared source projects under the MIT X11 open source license. Since then, we've released a number of projects under the X11 license.
OK, that's a little more open, but what else are we doing? Well, for starters I've set up a Subversion server for hosting source code and it's public. You can even browse the source code online. Plus, I've integrated it with CruiseControl to provide continuous integration through nightly builds. Again, this is all public.
Also, we want you to contribute to help us make our projects better. For each of the projects, I've set up Google Groups discussion group and that will be the best place to ask questions, submit feedback, submit code and patches.
So far, we've got the recently released Mobile Ink library and the ol' faithful Desktop Communication library all set up on the server and there's more to come. This week, I will also be pushing out OpenTimeCE and zlibce.
In addition to all this, we're offering you the opportunity to host your embedded/mobile open source projects with us. We'll provide the Subversion hosting, the CruiseControl integration, the hard stuff; you provide the ideas, the code and the developers.
This is the first in a series of steps we're taking to build a bigger, better community around Windows CE, Windows Mobile, .NET Compact Framework and the .NET Micro Framework.