Well, after 2 years of work and nearly 25,000 lines of (mostly) Silverlight code, I’ve come to several conclusions that lead me to put myOSity into open source mode very soon:

Too little time, too little time…

I just can’t spend enough solo hours coding this project to bring it to the place where I envisioned it to be.  I’m hoping that the Silverlight community will find at least some value in the effort.

Technology moving too fast for a single programmer to keep up…

As Google so plainly put it recently, the desktop computer will be a thing of the past in a few years, in terms of the average user’s primary access point to the magical Internet.  Though I did have some longer term plans for myOSity to bring it to smaller form factors (Smartphones), I realize that I will not be able to keep up with current trends.

When?

My plan is to release myOSity into open-source soon after .net 4 and Visual Studio 2010 are both released RTM.  The reason for this is rather technical.  Basically, myOSity is utilizing various “cutting edge” frameworks from Microsoft (Silverlight v4, RIA Services, Reactive Framework [Rx], just to name a few).  Rather than release the code into the wild with these platforms in their various “pre-VS2010” states, which is already very confusing and difficult to manage, I’ve decided to release it post-VS2010 with all the frameworks (hopefully) in their standardized form.  Doing so will require me to do a bit of recoding.  I also need to make some changes so that myOSity will compile locally against a local database instance (.mdf) for easier use by the open-source community.  This will also take some time.

I’ll post another entry when the actual release happens.  I’ll be publishing the project to Codeplex.

If you are a fan of myOSity, you probably know that it runs on top of Microsoft’s excellent Silverlight platform.  We’ve been with Silverlight since version 2.0 and remain committed to it for many reasons which I won’t get into here (plenty of blogs out there with “Silverlight vs. Flash” posts…).

Silverlight 4 (beta 1) brings a host of new enhancements that will, in turn, allows us to add some really cool features to myOSity in the near future.  Check out this list:

• myOSity on your desktop!  Technically we could give this to you now with SL3, but there isn’t really a compelling reason to do so.  With SL4, we’ll be able to add a whole host of new capabilities that we can’t offer in the browser…
• Printing.  SL4 now supports the ability for printing, an oft requested feature from the Silverlight developer community.  Thanks to Microsoft for listening!
• Html support.  We’ll be able to give you a mini web browser/RSS experience in myOSity without hacks and workarounds.
• Local file system access.  You’ll be able to drag and drop your local files right into myOSity, and access them from any other computer if you upload them to your myOSity file system.
• Cross-domain support.  This is a technical term that means we’ll be able to write better mash-up applications, like Twitter clients, Facebook integration, etc.
• Webcam/microphone support.  Voice & Video-chat anyone?  Don’t expect this feature right away, but eventually we’ll be able to let you chat with your friends with voice and video through myOSity.

And much more!  Too many to list really, but you get the idea… good things are coming!  I should also mention that, at this time, Microsoft hasn’t licensed SL4 for public use yet, but rest assured, we’ll be moving quickly to take advantage of the new version as soon as it becomes publicly available.

If you want all the nitty gritty details, you can click here to check out the official announcement regarding SL4 Beta.

Henry (from the myOSity project team) has recently introduced “localization” support for myOSity, which basically means support for displaying multiple languages.  In fact, he has already started creating the translation file for Chinese.

Below is a screenshot of the myOSity welcome dialog with Chinese localization.

I've adapted the Microsoft Silverlight demo of chess, the original verison of which can be found over at silverlight.net in the community gallery, to work as a myOSity application.  It ain't pretty (yet) but it works.  Check it out and make a post in the discussion thread of Garbo Chess (see this post for details the new Discussion System) to request features and provide feedback.

In this third installment, I demonstrate how you can use the myOSity Discussion Framework to have your say regarding just about anything (people, applications, files, and more).

Link to video (WMV format)

I am pleased to announce that myOSity was recently accepted into the Microsoft BizSpark program.  For those of you who don't know what BizSpark is all about:  It's a program specifically designed for small-business startups and provides software, support, and exposure - all courtesy of Microsoft.  A good program that myOSity is proud to be a part of.

In the second installment of this video series, I demonstrate the myOSity Interop framework, which allows applications to communicate with each other and pass information.

Link to wmv file

Over the next several days, myOSity will be relocating to a new server and hosting provider.  The current host has been good to us during early development, but it's time for myOSity to find a home where scalability is not going to be an issue down the road.  So over the next week, expect a few random disruptions to both myOSity and this blog.

This is actually really exciting news, because it means that myOSity is getting closer to v1.0!

The myOSity project is getting big.  So big in fact, that I’m beginning to have trouble troubleshooting issues in a reasonable timeframe.  I’ve decided that it’s best at this point to spend a little time writing some unit tests, rather than move forward on features.   Once I have all the unit tests written, I’ll begin moving forward again in a test-driven mode, which should help me save time in the long-run.

I put together a little screen cast (my first ever) which highlights the main features of myOSity.   Subsequent videos will dive into different aspects of myOSity in more detail.

Link to WMV file