ASP.NET Open Source Projects: What the Outercurve Gallery Was and Where to Find Them Today

ASP.NET open source projects are freely licensed web frameworks, CMSs and libraries built on .NET that anyone can read, use and contribute to. The Outercurve Foundation once hosted an ASP.NET Open Source Gallery for such projects. Today, the best places to find them are the .NET Foundation, GitHub and nuget.org.

What are ASP.NET open source projects?

An ASP.NET open source project is a piece of software built on ASP.NET, Microsoft's web framework for .NET, whose source code is public under a license that lets others use, modify and usually redistribute it. The category covers content management systems, e-commerce platforms, libraries and developer tools.

The framework follows the same model. Microsoft's overview calls ASP.NET Core a cross-platform, high-performance, open-source framework for building modern web apps.

What was the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery at Outercurve?

The ASP.NET Open Source Gallery was one of the project galleries the Outercurve Foundation hosted. The foundation was founded on September 10, 2009, as the CodePlex Foundation, led mostly by Microsoft employees and affiliates. It took the name Outercurve in September 2010, according to Wikipedia's article on the Outercurve Foundation.

Its stated goal was to "enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." A gallery was the unit for that work: a themed home where related projects shared governance and legal support. Besides the ASP.NET gallery, the article's references name the Research Accelerators gallery, the Data, Languages, and Systems Interoperability Gallery and the Innovators Gallery. The board was expanded and the bylaws changed in November 2010.

The rename also separated the foundation from CodePlex, the Microsoft-owned hosting site that launched as a beta in May 2006, according to Wikipedia's CodePlex article. For the wider background, see from CodePlex to Outercurve, the historic impact of Outercurve and CodePlex and how CodePlex hosting worked.

Which projects did the gallery host?

Two projects are documented as part of the ASP.NET gallery's story: Orchard CMS and NuGet.

Project	What it was	Where it lives today
Orchard CMS (Orchard 1)	A CMS on ASP.NET MVC, first released in January 2011 under the New BSD License	Under the .NET Foundation; development moved to Orchard Core, a re-development on ASP.NET Core
NuGet (first called NuPack)	A .NET package manager, first released on October 5, 2010 under Apache 2.0	Developed by Microsoft and the .NET Foundation; packages are served from nuget.org

Wikipedia's Orchard Project entry names Microsoft Oxite as Orchard's predecessor and says it was delivered as part of the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery. Development began in 2009, so the CMS was already under way when the foundation took its final name.

The NuGet article on Wikipedia records that Phil Haack announced the NuPack rename on October 21, 2010. A NuGet package is a single ZIP file with a .nupkg extension holding .NET assemblies and a manifest. The rename story is told in NuGet and its contribution.

What happened to the gallery and its projects, year by year?

Outercurve's projects moved to the .NET Foundation, and Outercurve itself dissolved in 2017.

Date	Event
September 10, 2009	The CodePlex Foundation is founded
September 2010	The foundation is renamed Outercurve
October 5, 2010	First release of NuGet
November 2010	Bylaws change and the board is expanded
January 2011	First release of Orchard CMS
November 12, 2014	The .NET Foundation announcement covers NuGet, Kudu and the ASP.NET AJAX library, which moved over from Outercurve
March 31, 2017	Microsoft announces it will discontinue CodePlex and partners with GitHub for migration
April 22, 2017	Outercurve's directors file articles of dissolution in Washington
October 21, 2021	Microsoft shuts down the read-only CodePlex archive

How do classic ASP.NET projects differ from ASP.NET Core ones?

Classic projects target the .NET Framework and run on Windows, while ASP.NET Core projects run cross-platform. The difference matters because most gallery-era code belongs to the first group.

Orchard is the clearest example. The original Orchard was written in ASP.NET on the .NET Framework and ran on Microsoft Windows. Its successor, Orchard Core, is based on ASP.NET Core and is a re-development, not a direct port. It splits into a multi-tenant, modular application framework and a library of reusable packages. The two live in separate GitHub repositories, OrchardCMS/Orchard and OrchardCMS/OrchardCore, so check which one you are reading before you file an issue.

Where can you find ASP.NET open source projects today?

The three main places are the .NET Foundation's project pages, GitHub and nuget.org.

Source	What it offers	Best for
.NET Foundation	A directory grouping projects as current, alumni (former projects that continued independently) and inactive	Checking whether a project still has an institutional home
GitHub	Public repositories searchable by language (C#), topic and stars	Reading code and sending a first contribution
nuget.org	The central package repository for .NET	Finding libraries you can trace back to their source

Orchard Core describes itself as an open-source, modular, multi-tenant application framework and CMS for ASP.NET Core, with a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the repository. nopCommerce is a free, open-source shopping cart on ASP.NET Core that runs on .NET 10 and supports SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL.

A practical route is to start on nuget.org, open the package's project URL and land on its repository. That path leads from a library you already use to the code behind it, and its issue tracker is often the easiest place to start contributing.

How do you choose a project to use or contribute to?

Check five things in the repository before you invest time:

1. Recent activity. Recent commits, a latest release and maintainers who answer issues mean the project is alive. A repository whose last commit dates from years ago is a candidate for study, not for contribution.
2. License. Read the LICENSE file. A guide to choosing an open source license explains the main options.
3. Beginner-friendly issues. Labels such as "good first issue" mark tasks suited to a first pull request.
4. Documentation. A clear README and a CONTRIBUTING.md show how much maintainers care about newcomers.
5. Size and requirements. A small library is easier to understand than a full CMS; a shop like nopCommerce needs a database and a .NET runtime first.

Which licenses do these projects use?

There is no single license: each project chooses its own.

Orchard Core uses BSD-3-Clause, the original Orchard used the New BSD License, and NuGet uses Apache 2.0. nopCommerce is the exception: its LICENSE.md is the nopCommerce Public License Version 4.0, a project-specific license.

BSD-3-Clause and Apache 2.0 are permissive licenses: they let anyone reuse the code with few conditions, mainly keeping the copyright and license notices. A copyleft license goes further and requires derivative works to carry the same license. The difference shows up when you ship a product, so read the terms before you copy code into one. This is general information, not legal advice; for a commercial product, have a lawyer review the terms.

FAQ

Where can I find open source ASP.NET projects for beginners?

Search GitHub for C# repositories, then filter issues by the "good first issue" label. Projects listed by the .NET Foundation are also a safe starting point. Read the CONTRIBUTING.md file before you open a pull request.

What was the Outercurve Foundation?

It was a non-profit organization founded on September 10, 2009, as the CodePlex Foundation and renamed Outercurve in September 2010. It hosted open source projects in thematic galleries, including the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery, until its directors filed articles of dissolution on April 22, 2017.

Is ASP.NET Core open source?

Yes. Microsoft's documentation describes ASP.NET Core as a cross-platform, high-performance, open-source framework for building modern web apps with .NET.

What happened to CodePlex?

CodePlex, the project hosting site that the foundation was first named after, was shut down in 2017. Microsoft announced the discontinuation on March 31, 2017 and partnered with GitHub so projects could be migrated there. A read-only archive stayed online until October 21, 2021.

Sources

Wikipedia (Outercurve Foundation, NuGet, Orchard Project, CodePlex), the .NET Foundation's current projects page, Microsoft Learn's overview of ASP.NET Core, and the GitHub repositories of Orchard Core and nopCommerce.