I read this InfoWorld article and my reaction was, “Well, Duh!”.  The quick recap...  Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst was lamenting the fact at the Open Source Business Conference that enterprise IT departments do not seem to contribute back to the open source software that they are more than willing to deploy and use for free (i.e., they are not buying support).

I only read his comments, so I can’t comment on the tone he used to deliver that observation, but to have expected anything different seems to be near delusional.  Corporations, predominately, look at software development as a necessary evil and one that they really wish they could do without.  There are exceptions to the rule, but that is the attitude of the majority of companies I interact with.  The huge shift to offshore development is just one example of how they want to minimize the costs associated with software dev.

If a company feels that way bout developing software for their own bottom line, why is it surprising that they are not contributing back to open source software?  It has been my experience that few if any companies even look at the code behind open software, much less modify it.  This is more true with things like Linux, but it applies to other solutions as well.  If I managed an IT department, contributing back would be low on my list of priorities, as well.  When the CIO/CFO/CEO comes to me and asks to show the RIO for the work my developers are doing, it will be a heck of lot easier to show that for software supporting in-house systems than work that goes back into the open source community.

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t find the lack of corporate participation all that surprising.

I'm very pleased to announce that we'll be hosting a two day free training event called XamlFest at the Bloomginton, MN Microsoft offices from Tuesday, April 14th 2009 to Wednesday, April 15th, 2009. This will be a classroom style event led by fellow Microsoft’s very own John Pelak.  This event will be going in depth on the XAML markup language and how it is used in both WPF and Silverlight 2.0 applications. We will also go deep on how to use Expression Blend to visually design application interfaces.

Here's all the information on the event:

Dates
The event will take place on Tuesday, April 14th 2009 to Wednesday, April 15th, 2009.

Attendees
This event is targeted toward software developers and designers who want to learn more about XAML, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight 2 and Expression Blend 2. We can accommodate 60 people for this session and registration will be accepted on a first come/first served basis.

Agenda

Tuesday, April 14th

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM - Introduction to WPF, XAML, Expression Blend

10:30 AM – 10:45 AM - Break

10:45 AM – 12:00 PM - Building Visually Rich Applications: The role of the Integrator in building "designable" applications

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM - Lunch, Mingle, Prizes

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM - Instructor-led WPF walk through and assisted development

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM - Assisted development

Wednesday, April 15th

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM - Introduction to Silverlight, Data Binding, LINQ

10:30 AM – 10:45 AM - Break

10:45 AM – 12:00 PM - Platform Centric Design Best Practices: Creating WPF and Silverlight XAML for Web and Local Client Solutions

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM - Lunch, Mingle, Prizes

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM - Instructor-led Silverlight walk through and assisted development

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM - Assisted development

Venue
Microsoft Office
8300 Norman Center Drive, Suite 950
Bloomington, MN 55437

Registration
To register for XamlFest, send an email with your contact information to xamlfest-msp@live.com. Only 60 seats are available, so be sure to register early if you want to attend. Also, we ask that, if you find you can't make it for the session, please let us know so we can let someone else come in your place.

Please register early, because we anticipate the seats filling up fast. I look forward to seeing at XamlFest at the end of this month.

Yep, the rumor is now fact.  Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/ for all the details, but the key takeaways for SDS are:

• SDS will not support all of the “traditional” database features developers have come to know and love “inside the walls”
• Tables
• Stored Procedures
• Triggers
• Views
• Indexes
• SDS will be compatible with Visual Studio and the traditional “.NET ways” of accessing data
• Support ADO.NET connection strings
• Supported inside Visual Studio
• ADO.NET compatible
• ODBC compatible

This is a really big deal as it know makes lifting an existing app and provisioning it in the cloud via Azure and SDS a lot easier. Still some things to be done to make it friction free (much of which is really design vs. code oriented IMHO) but good news none the less.

Spaghetti Code is joined by guests from New Horizons to talk about all of the different developer community groups and activities and why developers should get involved in their community.  We talk about TechFuse, Code Camps, User Groups and a whole lot more.

I recently gave a presentation on “Velocity” – Microsoft’s Distributed Cache technology for use by .NET applications.  It is a very cool piece of technology that should probably be getting much wider attention that it is.  It has a broad range of applicability to any large scale application that could benefit from any sort of caching.  If you are building large applications that need to scale, make sure you check it out.  I have posted my overview presentation in the Downloads section of SlickThought.  You can go VFR direct here.

Spaghetti Code reconvenes the Minneapolis Developer Roundtable for an interesting conversation about what Microsoft can do for .NET developers to make 2009 a good year.  Topics range from community involvement to technology, along with a little “airing of grievances”.  All in all, it’s a great conversation that produces some interesting insights and opinions.  Make sure to leave your comments on what Microsoft can do to make 2009 better for .NET developers.