A new project that’s tied to the ASP.NET platform is underway, and judging from the information made available so far, this may be a very important effort. There’s an opportunity for interested ASP.NET developers to pitch in, too, as the small group of Microsoft developers that’s behind the project is seeking community feedback.
Let’s start with a basic description. According to the Orchard Project’s homepage, it’s “a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform.”
The official explanation then continued, “It will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals.”
Sounds nice, right? Services and products that simplify matters and help just about everybody are great in theory, at least.
And that takes us to making sure the Orchard Project is great in practice. The Orchard Project team has published a feature roadmap, some developer information, and docs and designs/specs so that onlookers can educate themselves and offer constructive criticism. Bug fixes, feature suggestions, and all other sorts of input are welcome, to boot.
What’s more, all of this feedback isn’t going to disappear into a black, did-they-ignore-me? hole. Open community participation is the name of the game, and the Orchard Project team is trying to fine-tune a proper contribution model.
As for when a downloadable release of Orchard might become available, well, that’s where a little bit of patience is required. It doesn’t look like there are going to be any big happenings in the near future.
Bertrand Le Roy, the project’s program manager, told Barb Mosher, “For the moment, we are focusing on three week iterations to deliver specific features. When we will have something ready for public consumption depends on our ability to maintain our current velocity. . . . At this point, we are very far from having something that you would reasonably build a public web site on and we’re not announcing a release date.”