Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft

billhilf — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:47:00 GMT

It's been a while since I made an appearance on Port25. I felt it was important to provide some thoughts to the Port25 community on Sam Ramji's impending departure from Microsoft.

After many years helping to carry the open source software banner for the company, Sam is leaving Microsoft at the end of this month. You may have also heard that he has accepted the position of interim President of the CodePlex Foundation as well as a leadership position at a startup in California. (I'll let Sam and his new company share more details there.)

Sam joined my team three years ago to drive open source technical strategy. I have eagerly supported him as he passionately articulated a vision that Microsoft could coexist - and even thrive - in a heterogeneous IT world.

The perspectives on OSS at Microsoft have evolved to the point where Microsoft's open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab' on campus - now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company. We have become increasingly clear on where we work with open source - development methodologies, projects, partners, products and communities - and where our products compete with commercial open source companies or platforms. Today, there are engineering and business leaders across the company, myself included, looking at how to drive interoperability for customers and as a lever for new growth.

And, because we recognize the importance of having that strong internal advocate for open source, we are actively seeking someone to fill Sam's shoes at Microsoft.

We will not waver in our commitment to open source.

To my friend Sam: Best of luck to you and your family as you move on to your next great adventure, and THANK YOU for all of your efforts and passion.

An interview with Codeplex's Sara Ford

Sam Ramji — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:20:00 GMT

It has been a month or so since the Codeplex announcement of server support for SVNBridge, which enables TortoiseSVN to talk to Team Foundation Server, and the team is looking for feedback now this has been out for a while. I also recently interviewed Codeplex's Sara Ford on this, and wanted to share her responses with you.

Sam Ramji: So, Sara - this has been a top request for some time. What are the most interesting comments you've received requesting this feature?

Sara Ford: There have been countless requests and comments for this feature, but one of the more memorable ones when we first announced the SVNBridge project last year is "It's so crazy it just might work," was one.

Many of our users view CodePlex, when compared to other open source hosting sites, as Team Foundation Server (TFS) versus Subversion (SVN). Now, our users can use either TFS or SVN clients against any of our projects. It's like soccer fans and American football fans are unexpectedly findings themselves in the same arena, conversing for the first time.

Sam Ramji: What made it hard to deliver this feature?

Sara Ford: When we first started investigating this, we were skeptical that it could be done, since TortoiseSVN and Team Explorer are so different. But once we began comparing the protocols used for Subversion and Team Foundation Server, we were surprised by how much of it could easily be translated. So a lot of things started working quickly, but there were a couple of areas that didn't map directly, and those represented the bulk of the effort to get all the kinks worked out.

Sam Ramji: What can Subversion fans expect next from Codeplex?

Sara Ford: Well, as always, we look at the features users have voted the highest on the CodePlex Issue Tracker. Now that we're closing our number one most requested feature, we're asking our Subversion fans to visit our Issue Tracker and start voting for what they want to see next!

Sam Ramji: It's interesting that now we have Subversion support in Visual Studio through the AnkhSVN project, and SvnBridge support from Codeplex on the server side. You can probably do round trips via SVN from Visual Studio to Codeplex. Interesting? Or just plain strange?

Sara Ford: VisualSVN and AnkhSVN are both popular plug-ins for Visual Studio that provide integrated IDE support for Subversion, and several users have mentioned they've tried them against CodePlex and they work great! We really like the idea of providing the broadest support for different clients and tools, so users can pick the tools they prefer.

Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Codeplex, Port 25 News

Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft

An interview with Codeplex's Sara Ford