The (now abandoned) Spring.NET project[1] was started in 2004, not too long after (Java) Spring started.
It's easy to criticize Java Spring, but it's a good example of a long-lived successful Open Source project. It's also easy to argue that Spring isn't as useful in .NET as in Java.
But I can pull up many, may other examples (the .NET Lucene port etc).
My point is that the .NET OSS ecosystem is NOT a new thing, but it keeps getting killed off. The typical example is that a .NET project starts to solve a problem, gets it 30-40% solved, then Microsoft releases a project that solves a different 30-40% but sucks all the oxygen out of the ecosystem.
While I agree with you that Microsoft was getting in the way of the ecosystem, I believe that since last year this is no longer the case.
I tried, and couldn't find exact date when Microsoft officially endorsed Newtonsoft.Json as THE way to handle json in .net. But I believe that this happened just last year. Look, in 2011 Scott Hanselman blogged about this library [1] and the comments (esp. the first one) are pretty interesting. Here, .NET tried to solve a problem and community did a better job, and just recently Microsoft recognized it.
It's been abandoned? (serious question) That really is too bad. It was a solid project used on several .NET projects in which I participated "back in the day."
BTW, I completely agree with your summary point. There appears to be a cultural rejection of .NET OSS projects.
It slowly fell behind. I made the mistake of using it for a product pre-MVC. When MVC came along they jumped the shark and we ended up ripping it out and replacing bits with Autofac and some light weight abstractions we put together ourselves.
The (now abandoned) Spring.NET project[1] was started in 2004, not too long after (Java) Spring started.
It's easy to criticize Java Spring, but it's a good example of a long-lived successful Open Source project. It's also easy to argue that Spring isn't as useful in .NET as in Java.
But I can pull up many, may other examples (the .NET Lucene port etc).
My point is that the .NET OSS ecosystem is NOT a new thing, but it keeps getting killed off. The typical example is that a .NET project starts to solve a problem, gets it 30-40% solved, then Microsoft releases a project that solves a different 30-40% but sucks all the oxygen out of the ecosystem.
[1] http://springframework.net/news.html