Stephen Walli becomes Codeplex Foundation Technical Director

The Microsoft founded Codeplex Foundation, which describes its mission as "enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities", has appointed Stephen Walli as its Technical Director. He reports to executive director, Paula Hunter at the Foundation which appointed its board in March.

Walli, who most recently was VP of open source development strategy at eCommerce vendor Optaros, was a founder and VP at Softway systems which developed Interix, a UNIX to Windows migration tool, before being acquired in 1999 by Microsoft. Walli stayed with Microsoft, first working on Interix, then becoming program manager for Rotor, and moving on to becoming a business development manager at Microsoft working on communities, standards and intellectual property issues.

Walli said in a blog posting, "My responsibility is to set the strategic technical direction of the Foundation" adding "My first order of business will be to meet with the existing gallery managers and project leads to begin to put in place any process and services they urgently need".

Currently the Foundation has two Microsoft sponsored Galleries, the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery and the Systems Infrastructure and Integration Gallery, which in total contain six projects. Walli says that once he has met with the gallery managers and leads he will "help define and shape the rest of the project". He says that he expects there will be more sponsors and participants over the coming year "and my goal is to enable them all"

(djwm)