NTeam Press

I was rather surprised when I ran across this article on eWeek about the recently announced NTeam project. NTeam, intended as an open -source alternative to Microsoft's Team System platform, is currently about a vaporous as they come - the GotDotNet workspace was created just 3 days before the article was posted. Isn't it a little early for major press coverage? I mean, SourceForge and GotDotNet are littered with with literally thousands of ambitious projects that are now defunct.

Now, I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the project. I think it's a great concept, and the NTeam development team seems to be heavy into planning discussions already. As a small ISV who will likely be priced out of the Team System platform, I would certainly welcome an affordable (ok, free) alternative. But waiting until there's something concrete to talk about before running stories in trade journals seems appropriate here. NTeam got quite a bit of coverage in the blogosphere this week - could that be the reason that eWeek picked up on it? If so, I find that a little worrisome.

3 Comments

  • I think its impressive that eWeek came across the story. At least they're paying attention to the blogosphere. But then again I guess a tech journalist could generate a lot of stories by just reading weblogs.asp.net and Slashdot and filling in the blanks.



    Maybe the eWeek coverage was premature. But the project is *really* serious and there are a lot of very committed people working on it. There is no code yet but there are discussions in the forums on the workspace which indicate that a lot of the people on the team have some brilliant and concrete ideas.



    eWeek is hardly "major press coverage" as in CNN or MSNBC but I guess in the tech industry it's pretty significant. Although I think its probably more relevant to MBA types who like to know lots of acronyms and buzzwords to harrass their technical staff with (real developers read Slashdot!)

  • I'd assumed the publicity put out by NTeam was an attempt to put pressure on Microsoft to reconsider the MSDN pricing issue, at least with regard to smaller development shops and consultants who just can't afford to suddenly double their subscription rates just to learn about the bit of Visual Team System the don't get in their 'free' upgrade.

  • Also given that NTeam is built on existing successful projects like NAnt and NUnit it hopefully has a bit of a head-start compared to your average defunct sourceforge project. I guess time will tell.

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