Microsoft will shut down software hosting site Codeplex in December

Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue Codeplex in December. The platform allowed developers to share open source software projects. It is currently no longer possible to create new projects on the site.

Microsoft writes that the site will become read-only from October and will shut down completely on December 15. Codeplex has existed for eleven years. Microsoft argues that various alternatives have emerged over time, with GitHub being the largest party. Not only others have started using that site, but also Microsoft itself. For example, it has hosted several of its own open source projects on GitHub, such as Visual Studio Code and the Cognitive Toolkit.

The development of migrating projects from Codeplex to GitHub, according to the Redmond-based company, came with problems that arose in 2015 due to spammers misusing the domain. In addition, commits were made on only 350 projects in the past 30 days.

Microsoft says a full backup will be performed before taking the site offline. After closing, an archive of the website remains online, so that users can, for example, still save their projects in Markdown or JSON.

The company recommends existing users move their projects to GitHub. To this end, it has set up a migration process in collaboration with the site, which should facilitate the transition. In addition, there is the option of notifying a Codeplex project that it has moved to GitHub.