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Demise Of The Premier .NET community site
Seems like something has horribly gone wrong at ASPFriends.com. The site is being closed as a result of a break down in negotiations with Microsoft over support for funding this developer community forum which has over 73000 members who post over 12 million messages a month regarding MS development. The primary reason for this break down seems to be do with the contract that had to be signed to receive funding. I'm no lawyer and I've not seen the entire contract but it seems like it contains clauses which basically state "at our discretion, with 30 days notice we can terminate this contract and take ownership of your site".
By the way I linked to the forums to remind people where MS is emphasizing, delibrately and calculatingly. It is not to be kind to MS it is to be kind to the users that need support in some form. Many of my users don't know there are forums that MS is emphasizing in favor of our support. I will add links to P2P and Developmentor mailing lists to not forget the users that need support. The users are why I started this, and they should not be forgotten. And a "one shot 6 month deal" won't satisfy. I just wanted people to know why I closed, and what MS thinks is better. It would take a lot for me to "put the genie back in the bottle" - they have already shown their true faces in "out competing" a site that is trying to helpthem instead of co-operating with the many support options as I do. MS presented a Draconian contract to the high tech equivalent of a soup kitchen helping their sers and opens a competing soup kitchen and refuses and delays to mention the other soup kitchen to needy coders. I am fine walking away, but I want PEOPLE to know where they need to get help from.