Sandcastle Removed from Codeplex

by Sam Ramji on June 06, 2008 04:48pm

A number of people have alerted me in the last 24 hours that a Microsoft project called Sandcastle, located on Codeplex, used the Ms-PL and called itself “open source” yet never posted the source code.

This is unacceptable and represents a violation of Microsoft’s Open Source policy.  I take it extremely seriously.

I have directed the project to be unpublished from Codeplex immediately, including removal of the project’s use of the Ms-PL.  If the team chooses to publish the source code and follow Microsoft policy, then the project may be re-published in the future.  If not, we will remove all references to Sandcastle from Codeplex.

I apologize to the OSI on behalf of Microsoft for this mistake.

We are strengthening our controls on Codeplex projects and the governance process that we use for Microsoft-led external projects to ensure that this type of error does not happen again.

Our policy regarding use of the term Open Source is clear:  Open Source refers to projects using OSI-approved licenses.