Microsoft is Shutting Down CodePlex

Apr 04, 2017

Microsoft's open source code hosting platform CodePlex will come to an end after a more than 10-year stint.

Microsoft has announced that it is shutting down its open source code hosting platform CodePlex, which allowed developers to host and share the source code of open source software. Microsoft created the site in 2006.

Microsoft is not the only vendor that has shut down an open source code hosting platform. In 2015 Google shut down Google Code.

Linus Torvald’s Git version control system is the reason behind the demise of Google Code and CodePlex. In a blog post, Microsoft engineer Brian Harry wrote, “Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of amazing options come and go but at this point, GitHub is the de facto place for open source sharing and most open source projects have migrated there.”

Even Google and Microsoft are now using the Git-based GitHub to host their open source code. “As many of you know, Microsoft has invested in Visual Studio Team Services as our ‘One Engineering System’ for proprietary projects, and we’ve exposed many of our key open source projects on GitHub (Visual Studio Code, TypeScript, .NET, the Cognitive Toolkit, and more). In fact, our GitHub organization now has more than 16,000 open source contributors – more than any other organization – and we’re proud to partner closely with GitHub to promote open source.”

Microsoft has disabled the ability to create new CodePlex projects. In October, it will be set to read-only, and by December 2017, plugs will be pulled on the service, bringing an end to an era.

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