The company says that CodePlex was originally created as there was a need for a platform to share software. GitHub has since grown to be the repository of choice for millions. Microsoft says it has already shared and migrated most its open source projects to GitHub. Of course, GitHub is not a Microsoft service, but the company also has its own place for proprietary projects. Visual Studio Team Services is that solution. As for Microsoft’s support of the GitHub platform, the company has launched diverse services on the repository. These services include .NET, TypeScript, Visual Studio Code, and Cognitive Toolkit. These and more have been open sourced on GitHub. Indeed, Microsoft is the biggest contributor to GitHub: “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.” At the same time, the popularity of CodePlex has waned. The company says less than 350 projects have been open sourced on the platform over the last 30 days.
Moving on from CodePlex
Microsoft has wasted no time in shuttering CodePlex. The company says it has already disabled the ability to create a new project. The shutdown process is now under way. In October the platform will become read-only, before being closed permanently and completely on December 15, 2017. For users wanting to migrate, Microsoft has offered two alternatives. The company has partnered with GitHub to offer a “streamlined” import tool that help bring code from CodePlex (licensing and documentation) to GitHub. Alternatively, users can download and archive fine from CodePlex. This will feature a project’s source code releases, documentation, issues, and license, all in common formats like Markdown and JSON.
