Microsoft announces its own Open Source CMS...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1754

You beat me by 15 minutes : I came to post the same thing.

The good : Open source means any good ideas can be brought into DNN.  Creating of an official MS competitor brings validation to the model.

The bad : more options for open source just muddy the waters for prospective customers trying to work out which direction to go on

The ugly : NIH syndrome again rears it's ugly head in Redmond.  Do they not know that DNN is built from the IBuySpy portal, which was originally *their* open source project.   With a bit of assistance and recognition of the community effort, they could have put their name closer to DNN.

I get what they are trying to do, and I'm sure it will be a success on some levels as they'll probably throw 100 FTE's at it.  I don't know if it will gain traction in the marketplace though.  It will take a long time to build a community around an official MS product which appears to offer more of the same.

To me this is the difference between MacOS and Windows.  While MacOS has a strong company behind it with great UI, Windows continues to reign supreme because of the large number of applications which only run on Windows.  The same is true of DotNetNuke.  If and when developers start building add-ons to Oxite, then I would start worrying.  As with Windows it is the eco-system around the platform which will determine the winner.

Also, remember that Microsoft is not one monolithic company.  They are a collection of divisions and business units who all have their own priorities.  While Oxite may have the support of a few people in Microsoft, it does not mean that the level of support is very deep or even very broad.