Open-source software veteran Paula Hunter has one of the more interesting jobs in the industry, as the executive director of the CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit, open-source organization that was established with Microsoft as its founding sponsor.

The CodePlex Foundation is a non-profit designed to encourage and educate commercial software developers to start or improve their own open source projects. And, even though Microsoft is the first sponsor of the Foundation, all of the projects are "platform and technology agnostic," Hunter emphasized in a recent interview.

As you may recall, the CodePlex Foundation indicated in January that it expected to name a permanent Executive Director within a few weeks' time. That has now happened...

The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation.

A few developers have tried to discern the goal behind Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation established just a week ago. A legal advisor for the Linux Foundation has made some recommendations to what he considers the foundation's faulty organizational structure.

Free Software Foundation's Richard Stallman recently brought Microsoft's newly instituted CodePlex Foundation to task in his blog. The CodePlex Foundation's Miguel de Icaza, also mentioned in the blog, has since mounted a defense.

Last week Microsoft unveiled (perhaps sooner than intended) its new CodePlex Foundation,with the mission of “enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities.” Does it stand a chance of gaining any community participation?

It may come as no surprise to some that GNU founder Richard Stallman has launched a stinging attack on Microsoft's open source motives with its Codeplex Foundation

After nearly two months of life, Microsoft's open source CodePlex Foundation is now gearing up to accept projects, but it still has some work to do.