I just got ping'd by the very fine Jonathan Wanagel, about a very cool, and very early build of SvnBridge:

Project Description
SvnBridge allows you to use TortoiseSVN and other Subversion clients with Team Foundation Server. It converts the calls made by your Subversion client to the API supported by TFS.

SvnBridge works by running an executable on your local machine that acts as the bridge to TFS. You point SvnBridge at the TFS server, and point TortoiseSVN at the bridge running on your local machine. This allows you to use TortoiseSVN with any TFS server without needing to change the TFS server in any way (no need to convince your system administrator of anything!).

Current Status
SvnBridge is still under active development in early alpha stage and not stable yet. Click here to see the current status of individual commands.
While we don't yet recommend using SvnBridge for your critical development work, we do encourage you to try it out and provide feedback! Use the issue tracker to report any issues or feedback.

Future Plans
The target features for the completed version 1 is to have the following features fully functional:

• Checkout
• Update
• Commit
• Repository Browsing
• Show log
• Patch
• Revert
• Cleanup
• Anonymous Access to CodePlex source control servers

Post version 1 plans include supporting additional commands and creating a server version of SvnBridge. A server version would allow you to run a centralized SvnBridge so you don't need to run a bridge on each developer workstation.

This is fantastic news. I'm quite excited to see this start to make it's appearance, and those of you who prefer Subversion should appreciate this. 

Check it out, and start filin' bugs! (tell em' I said Hi!)

I got to my office this morning, and found that gettin' off the horse too quickly often means steppin' in a cow pie.

Ah well, like my cousin Teddy used to say : "Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back."  ... and he'd know... poor old Teddy got thirty some stiches from the cat when he tried.

So, when I said "Building an Open Source MVP Program" on Friday, I had meant of course, that I hadn't done so yet (hence the use of the future tense 'building', as opposed to 'running', 'maintaining', or even 'built'), and I'm going to work with the One And Only Microsoft MVP Program.

Having now fired off the email to the fine folks runnin' the program, let's hope that I can find a slough to clean my boots off.

Howdy!

I've recently moved from the Federated Identity group into the Open Source Software Labs at Microsoft.  I've been rather busy of late, finishing up things for the Identity folks, and getting things started over here in the OSSL, so I apologize for the silence.

Many folks have been askin' what this is all about, so I'll try to answer the common questions right now.

What's this new job?

I'm now the Open Source Community Lead here at Microsoft. 

I'm responsible for building and connecting an Open Source Communities around Microsoft Platforms.

This is a pretty wide reaching role, meaning that I touch a lot of ground. Some of the highlights:

• Seeking out Open Source projects we can assist (either by contributing code, MSDN licenses or whatever :D )
• Speaking/Presenting with companies, conferences, groups and people
• Building an Open Source MVP Program
• Enlightening Microsoft Product Groups about Open Source, and finding opportunities for them
• Facilitating communication between open source developers and Product Groups
• Building transparency into Microsoft and Open Source (believe it or not!)

There have been a lot of changes in Microsoft in the last few years, that folks can't yet see, and I'm hoping to expose that type of thing to the world, and bring the world of Open Source to Microsoft.

So, what about the digital identity stuff?

Well, I'm still touching that often enough--I'm still helping get the FireFox Identity Selector stuff completed,  I'm nearly finished the last of the text for the book I'm co-authoring Understanding Windows CardSpace and, I'm spinning up a project on CodePlex for open source identity frameworks. 

I don't get it... Microsoft and Open Source? Are you sure?

I know... I know. Y'all got some reservations about Microsoft with regards to open source.  Well, I'm not going to try convince you of anything. What I am going to do is to shine the light on the things Microsoft is doing to create communities in the Open Source world.

Add to that, I'm doin' some rustlin' inside of the company itself--as expected, there are a few tenderfoots 'round here who would just soon reckon' we didn't bother. Well, I got a cattle brand heatin' up just for the conversation.... We'll just see about that.

I remember what my pappy told me about tryin' to change the world: "If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there with ya".  Well, I'll keep checkin', but y'all gotta try to keep up.