No clear decision on Microsoft .NET Micro Framework's new business status

Granted, Microsoft's not accustomed to scaling back operations as drastically as it has had to this year, so it's understandable when a company gets the first-time jitters. But as of this morning, not even the people who direct the development of .NET Micro Framework -- Microsoft's innovative development platform for small devices -- can give a definitive answer with regard to what's happening to the project, shedding only selective rays of light on already fuzzy explanations.

On Wednesday, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley was first with a story saying Microsoft had made the decision to release the .NET MF project to "the community," though the company left the true definition of that term to the rest of the world to ponder. Foley's original source for her story -- as is typical for the veteran journalist -- was Microsoft itself, whose spokesperson had told her and others in the press, "Microsoft also intends to give customers and the community access to the source code," She also quoted portions of the statement saying the business model for .NET MF was changing to "the community model."

That sounded like a scaling back to Foley; but other portions of the spokesperson's statement were unclear as to what was going on. As she now reports, she was asked to correct her characterization, although she sticks by her story.

Others who had gotten a hold of the announcement reported that Microsoft was phasing out .NET MF, and that turning it over to "the community model" was merely a euphemistic way of saying it was dumping the product. Meanwhile, however, the man in charge of the unit responsible for the product found himself in the no-longer-unusual position of correcting absolutely everyone on the story, including and especially the company's spokespersons.

"First, the product is moving into the Developer Division (Server and Tools)," wrote Unit Manager Colin Miller yesterday. "This is a great fit for the technology and we are really looking forward to it. The move means that we will be fully aligned with the rest of the .NET groups and tools in building the uniform programming model from the sensors to servers. The announcement that we are moving to some form of community direction and development including code access is accurate. We will investigate how to do that in the near term so stay tuned. For now however, the current products are available and continue to be supported as before."

That may mean Microsoft has the intention to discontinue charging royalties to companies whose devices were programmed using .NET MF, and that include parts of Microsoft's code in their ROMs. That much was implied by the spokesperson on Wednesday, although the statement was interpreted to mean it was already happening.

Developer Manager Lorenzo Tessiore followed up later yesterday with this notice: "We are currently in the process of framing the rules of engagement and we hope to be able to offer both a process for a regulated development effort and a broad license, so that it will be possible to take advantage of the code base without necessarily contributing to the community. The details and the rules of this engagement will be defined over the near term with your involvement as well." That phraseology only talks about not owing royalties to developers, but does not directly imply that royalties won't be owed to Microsoft.