I got a chance to talk with the GotDotNet team about the future of Workspaces as well as the whole GotDotNet platform. And I got a free shirt. I think I mentioned that before!

It was surprising to see how apologetic they were for the software, even though they didn't write it. They called it a prototype in production, and when you look at how slow it currently is, that's probably pretty accurate. None of them are happy about the performance, but it does seem to be getting better.

Not many know this, but we used to host all of Tourney Logic's source on there, but left because performance was an issue, which they completely agreed with us about, and said they were working on it.

I knew that Jim Newkirk was working on the team, but hadn't seen much in the ways of updates of what is coming. The good news is that it's still early enough that we have the opportunity to shape it's future! Yeah, they have some stuff worked out - it looks like they'll be using a version of Team System on the back end, rather than the "roll your own" they use today - always better to use something that's been tested and proven, right? It's still up in the air as to what exactly will be exposed, but I told them we would definitely be interested in an easy way to set up continuous integration, as well as integrated bug tracking. Right now, they have bug tracking and source control, but they aren't integrated. If the interface for integrating those was simple to use, it would be great!

The other major change that was talked about - and this isn't official, so if you read this and it's not true, then I had bad information. If it does turn out to be true, well, you know where to come for all the inside information! Anyway, it probably won't be closed source anymore. Why? Well, what purpose does a closed source project serve to the community GotDotNet serves? None really. And if the project is abandoned, well, then no one gets benefits - and GotDotNet gets punished by having to use space for it. Not to mention that if a lot of the features of Team Server are exposed, and you could run it for free on GotDotNet, why would you purchase it?

Anyway, it looks like the first release will include better support for upload/download of releases, so those who just load up zips of source (ala .Text), they should see a big improvement in speed and stability soon. But if you have suggestions for the GotDotNet team, head over there and send some feedback. That's the only way they know what we want - and wouldn't it be great to have a true .NET-based answer to Sourceforge?