Changes everywhere we look

There have been some big and exciting changes in the DNN community recently. In addition to some bittersweet personnel changes, DNN Corp has been working with the community to increase the ownership of the DNN Platform, bringing in community members to commit code directly into the project and to be part of the discussions of where the project is headed, as well as being more open in general about discussions and decisions. It's a very exciting time to be involved in the project. It's probably going to take a while for the community members to understand what it means that the community as a whole, and not just DNN Corp, own this project now, and for us to really behave like that's true, but I honestly believe that it's a real game-changer for where this project is headed. Let us know (via Twitter, DNN Chat, Community Voice, GitHub, JIRA, or the forums) what you're looking for, and how you expect it to happen, and we're going to work with you to make sure that the community is served by the platform as best as we can.

One of the big questions in front of the platform is where to go from a technical perspective, because Microsoft is in the business of changes as well. In May they announced the next version of the ASP.NET platform, which is a very ambitious project to rewrite the whole stack, to clear some of the cruft that has built up over the years, and which is getting in the way of having a lean & modern development experience. One of the really cool parts of that process is that Microsoft is letting the community in very early in the process. Their announcement included making the project sources public on GitHub, where the team is working directly day-to-day, while the project is still in (pre-)alpha readiness.

In addition to having access to the code, they're also engaging with the community in a number of channels, one of which is through the "ASP.NET vNext Community Standup," a weekly, public, live meeting where they discuss what's happening in the last week and answer questions from the community. I caught it for the first time yesterday, where they were talking about what's been happening with the Entity Framework rewrite (and they explained a bit about why that's included in the ASP.NET rewrite). One of the pieces that they emphasized was that this new stack is truly a new stack from the group-up, and should be considered version 1, even though it's a conceptual continuation, and so will be marketed as the next version (i.e. ASP.NET MVC 6, Entity Framework 7) to try to lessen confusion. That said, they're still expecting to have customers who don't want to be on the v1 stack (either because it's new, or because they haven't yet implemented a needed feature), and are planning to fully support the current stack "for the forseeable future." So, while the future is a world without WebForms, and, at the least, developer mindshare is going to be headed in this new lightweight, cleaner direction, the future of our current stack still has some long-term vision and direction.

So, the world may be melting, but there's no need to panic, so long as we're investing in a plan.  And the great part is that, with DNN, the whole community is able to invest in that plan together.