Microsoft’s own SourceForge-like repository of open source projects, CodePlex, celebrated its third anniversary recently. According to Sara Ford, CodePlex program manager, the site is accepted and welcomed among the fans of open source and Linux software.

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.

Microsoft is posting code to its much-trumpeted CodePlex open-source projects site using licenses and conditions that go against the principles of open source.

Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation calls software freedom not capitalist

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.

t seems we’ve arrived upon Microsoft open source. In the last couple of years, whenever there was discussion of Microsoft’s open source projects and efforts such as CodePlex or Port25, there was typically the standard open source response: it’s not OSI-approved; it’s not real open source.

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.

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.