CodePlex Foundation Takes Orchard Web CMS Under Its Wing

By Barb Mosher | Published Dec 10, 2009

New Orchard Open Source CMS Moves to CodePlex.org A little update on Microsoft's open source Web CMS project, Orchard (news, site). Well, it wasn't actually Microsoft's project before and it's definitely not now.

Orchard has officially moved in CodePlex.org as the second project in the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery (the first was the ASP.NET AJAX Library). An official announcement on the new foundation's website says that Orchard is now licensed under the OSI-approved New BSD license.

Orchard Web CMS

Microsoft has made a three year committment which includes a full development team to the Orchard Project, which you can now follow on a new website.

There is still no set date for a beta release or a code release of any kind. You can view some of the code and documentation on the CodePlex website. But if you want to comment or contribute, you now have to follow the rules and guidelines of the CodePlex Foundation.

Interesting to note that the Orchard website is making it clear that Orchard is not competition for SharePoint or other open source .NET web content management systems like DotNetNuke. With Shaun Walker, Chief Architect and co-founder of DotNetNuke on the Board of Directors for CodePlex Foundation, we may very likely see some synergies arise sometime down the road.