Signs on the Sand

Microsoft decided to shut down GotDotNet site by July 2007. The official announcement goes like this:

Microsoft will be phasing out the GotDotNet site by July 2007.

Microsoft will phase out all GotDotNet functionality by July 2007. We will phase out features according to the schedule below. During the phase-out we will ensure that requests for features or pages that are no longer available will render enough information for you to understand what has changed. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the GotDotNet Support team.
We are phasing out GotDotNet for the following reasons:

Microsoft wants to eliminate redundant functionality between GotDotNet and other community resources provided by Microsoft

Traffic and usage of GotDotNet features has significantly decreased over the last six months

Microsoft wants to reinvest the resources currently used for GotDotNet in new and better community features for our customers

If you still hosting anything at the GotDotNet - here is your moving deadlines:

Phase Out Schedule
The GotDotNet phase out will be carried out in phases according the following timetable:

Target Date
Areas to be Closed

February 20
Partners, Resource Center, Microsoft Tools

March 20
Private workspaces, Team pages, Message Boards

April 24
GDN CodeGallery (projected date)

May 22
GDN User Samples (projected date)

June 19
GDN Workspaces (projected date)

Well, obviously that was inevitable. GotDotNet sucked big despite any efforts made. Looks like Microsoft was learning how to do open source  project hosting on the web and GotDotNet was first that first pancake that is always spoiled. CodePlex definitely tastes better.

There are couple of projects still hosted at the GotDotNet that I care about:

• Chris Lovett's SgmlReader. Awesome tool for reading HTML via XmlReader. I suggested Chris to contribute SgmlReader to the Mvp.Xml project, let's see if he likes the idea.
• XPathReader. Cool pull-based streaming XML parser supporting XPath queries. I'm admin there actually, so I think we are going to move XPathReader under the Mvp.Xml project umbrella real soon.

Well, the GotDotNet is dead. Long live CodePlex!