When .NET broke onto the scene, Microsoft created GotDotNet.com, which promised to be the end-all stop for .NET developers. Since its inception, it has served a lot of purposes: as a list of links to the latest .NET articles around the Web, a list of the CodeWise Community sites, blogs from Microsoftees (which was eventually moved to weblogs.asp.net, and then to blogs.msdn.com), user samples, the GotDotNet Workspaces, and more.
The GotDotNet site describes its workspaces as follows: “Workspaces is an online collaborative development environment where .NET developers can create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle.” It contains bug tracking, message boards, source control, alerts, releases, and so on. My experience with the Workspaces is somewhat limited - I use them for skmMenu's messageboard and for RssFeed messageboards and release files.
GotDotNet Workspaces, in my experiences, leave a lot to be desired. The site is very often laggy, and a number of times is either down and out altogether, or results in assorted errors when I attempt to do various administrative tasks (such as approving members for the workspaces, deleting messages from the messageboard, working with the bug tracking module, etc.). What prompted this blog entry was the recent news that Microsoft has released FlexWiki as an open-source project. But here's the kicker: it's being released on SourceForge, just like Microsoft's other two open-source projects (WiX and WTL). Even though Microsoft is a company that dogfoods its own products, I can understand why these open source projects are not being hosted on GotDotNet Workspaces.
What I am wondering is what does the future hold for GotDotnet Workspaces? Clearly Microsoft knows that the Workspaces are not scalable and not user-friendly. People inside Microsoft have actively moved their projects from the Workspaces to other means (i.e., RssBandit). So what will Microsoft do? As I see it they have three options:
- Do nothing, leave the Workspaces as they are... (boo)
- Scrap the Workspaces altogehter. Basically say, “This sucks, there are better options out there, so we are taking this down.“ (Don't see this happening unless the “better option“ is a Microsoft controlled option.)
- Fix the Workspaces so that they are robust enough that not only will Microsoft employees gladly use them, but other folks as well, even non-.NET related projects. (fingers crossed)
All I know is that I need to move RssFeed and skmMenu from the Workspaces to some other medium eventually. (It's low on the priority list, but it's on the list...) Hopefully Microsoft will step up and greatly enhance the Workspaces so that I can leave the projects there, or will dismantle them, so I am sort of incentivized to hurry up and move the projects over to some other option.