The Microsoft founded Codeplex Foundation, which describes its mission as "enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities", has appointed Stephen Walli as its Technical Director

A few developers have tried to discern the goal behind Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation established just a week ago. A legal advisor for the Linux Foundation has made some recommendations to what he considers the foundation's faulty organizational structure.

Free Software Foundation's Richard Stallman recently brought Microsoft's newly instituted CodePlex Foundation to task in his blog. The CodePlex Foundation's Miguel de Icaza, also mentioned in the blog, has since mounted a defense.

Just as Microsoft has being accused of playing dirty over sales tactics and patents, the software company has launched its first open source organization. The CodePlex Foundation aims to act as a liason between commercial enterprises and open source developers and communities while increasing open source participation, says the foundation.

The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation.

The CodePlex Foundation is a non-profit designed to encourage and educate commercial software developers to start or improve their own open source projects. And, even though Microsoft is the first sponsor of the Foundation, all of the projects are "platform and technology agnostic," Hunter emphasized in a recent interview.

Open-source software veteran Paula Hunter has one of the more interesting jobs in the industry, as the executive director of the CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit, open-source organization that was established with Microsoft as its founding sponsor.

In this blog entry, I'll give my impressions of how the CodePlex Foundation is developing, and (as before) my opinions on how effective the decisions being made are likely to be in achieving the Foundation's goals.

Now comes his big chance to push Mono - the CodePlex Foundation will ensure that there are sufficient incentives for free and open source foftware developers who come on board.