As far as focus goes though, you know Microsoft, they try to be in all places at once, so they could well be gunning for the whole caboodle. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

As for the belief and dedication around open frameworks like Rails I, like you, find it an unlikely commitment for Microsoft, more likely it would be as I have hinted in the post, a thinly disguised cloud hug that could just turn out to be a familiar old Microsoft play called ‘Embrace & Extend’. That of course brings up possibly their biggest hurdle trust. Will web dev folks trust them in the wider community

So, it would take a hell of a lot to convince me that M$ offer something better than Google in this area.

I think M$’s real problem is that they lack any kind of leadership or vision. Of course, the cloud is coming. But M$ just seem to be playing “me too” and trying to copy everyone else, all at the same time.

I mean … maybe they can get Rails running. But are they committing to Rails? To the whole philosophy? Seriously?

In one sense, I’d be *more* impressed if they just made a great, scalable cloud solution for ASP. At least then you’d get the idea that they had something they believed in.

Now you don’t know at what level they’re working at … a generic operating system to host the language + framework of your choice? Does that make them like Amazon’s new Windows option? Or are they trying to be more like Application Engine : tightly integrated but restricted?

What they can’t be is everything at once : general enough to run anything you want AND a comfortable, seemless experience AND “leveraging” your existing knowledge of M$ tools and technologies. They seem to be hinting at all three, but they’ll never deliver more than one.

Github is news to me, glad to see a a code depository using git.

I am forever running up this learning curve.

Geoff

regards
Al

Alexis suggested we may have some similarity of goals, not sure yet as I am unfamiliar with your work. Anyway take a look at Einstein if you get chance and let me know if you think there’s any similarity.

All the best
Neil

regards
Al

My plan for web framework integration is via Yaws to start with. Obviously ErlyWeb will be straightforward as it’s native Erlang. On my radar next would be Python, via a Yaws Yapp supporting WSGI and mixing in Twisted for the Erlang/OTP calls. Also I have been looking at Fuzed as a starting point for a potential Ruby integration along with erlectricity.

Nothing set in stone though, and I haven’t yet paid enough attention to implementation on the web framework side yet, really looking for some help here.

I have had a look at Launchpad it looks cool, I’m also looking at GoogleCode and GitHub. At the momemnt GitHub is edging ahead with it’s Git support

I will be getting the repository sorted this weekend so you can check it out. Although don’t expect much in the way of documentation yet, thats a whole lot of work I haven’t yet embarked on. Gradually I hope to start adding documentation over the next few weeks as well as a bug system.

Glad your interested lets talk.

regards
Al

Have you considered launchpad.net for hosting this community? (disclaimer: i work on launchpad). I think it woulld work well for this type of thing, contact me if you want any help setting up a test project.