Ted Neward laments over the perceived lack of strength of the .Net open source community (compared to Java) and also mentions 15 points to help the community embrace an open source project. For the record, I’ve participated in a bunch of open source .Net projects (under various roles), and I am very happy with the .Net open source community. Could we always use some more volunteers, sure what volunteer program couldn’t? But I think the .Net side of the open source community is just as strong as the Java side. I’ll even contend that the .Net open source community is even stronger that the Java community, because, for the most part, the .Net community does its thing without the support of large companies, which gives the community more of a grass roots feeling. Since .Net is a relatively new framework, and it isn’t always easy to gain .Net experience at the workplace, I’ve always suggest to people that want to learn .Net that they should volunteer on an open source project that interests them. It is a great way to learn .Net (from experienced .Net developers), without the cost of going to a training school, and their new experience in .Net will be with something that they find interesting to them. The final result is that they will have experience in a segment of the industry that they enjoy, and should help guide them into employee positions that leverage that new knowledge.
Where can you go to find open source .Net projects? The 2 big locations are SourceForge and GotDotNet Workspaces.
Here’s a list of open source .Net projects that I know of, or have worked on:
- SharpVectors - SVG rendering engine
- Mvp.Xml - XML library developed by MS MVPs, to supplement the .NET framework features
- Saxon.Net – Conversion of the Java Saxon 8.0B to .Net (including XSLT2 and XPath2)
- NUnit - xUnit-testing framework for all .Net languages
- NAnt - Ant like build tool for .NET
- NDoc - Extensible code documentation generation tool for .NET developers
- MS Patterns & Practices – About 16 different pattern implementations
- .Text – Multi-blog hosting application
- DasBlog – Single blog hosting app
- RssBandit – RSS desktop feed aggregator
- SharpDevelop – IDE For VB.Net and C# projects
- Log4Net - Log management and configuration framework
- WiX - The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code.
- nGallery – Web base image gallery
- Community Server: Forums – Web based community forums
- DotNetNuke – Web portal application
- Asp.Net Starter Kits – 5 Example Asp.Net applications
I know that there are more then just these. If there is a good one that I missed, leave a comment with the url and description.