If not him, maybe others. OSS projects compete with each other for mindshare and developers. So they do the same type of thing, but on a smaller scale.

I completely agree with you that we need to be more and transparent in what we do. I’d also say we’re making tremendous strides in that direction. In the last year alone, .NET Framework 3.5 source, ASP.NET MVC, Dynamic Data on CodePlex and soon MEF are all indications of this.

At the same time, i would disagree that having groups like the insiders is contrary to this. Being open is not mutually exclusive with the fact that you can’t have private discussions with a group of individuals that play more an advisory role. As long as those advisors are a good representation of the community, then what is the problem?

We can and will continue to push the bar on openness, but that doesn’t eradicate the need for having a focused group of advisors which you can turn to to make sure you are not going off a cliff.

Compare the development process of the MVC Framework, which is one of the most open and transparent products right now, with that of the Entity Framework. Which has had more success and is looked upon favorably by developers?

What competitors? Java? The STL? Delphi? Telerik and DevExpress? Again, I’m not talking about making the source available to Visual Studio or Windows. But certainly showing potential features to a wider audience won’t hurt. It works reasonably well with Ubuntu and Rails. The quality of Linux distributions has risen even as more people have become involved in the process, both in development and in usage. Accepting comments from everyone doesn’t mean you have to convert every idea into code, as DHH could tell you, and it doesn’t have to mean you are committing to build a feature if you float it by the general public. What I’m talking about is a modification of the “with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow” idea. With enough eyes, new features get hammered out quicker.

In this particular case, the ASPInsiders got to see more than just MVC I’m guessing. Stuff from other teams who aren’t being as open, but who could probably benefit from more eyes seeing their features.

I can agree that a small, independent group of passionate volunteers can be useful. But why put them under NDA? Why not let them speak about what they saw, gather feedback from a wider, more diverse group, and filter the feedback to you?

Paul Litwin pointed out to me that the big OSS companies like MySQL probably use focus groups too. But I wonder if the focus groups are under NDA.

Consider your own company (not knowing anything about it), do they give away every idea as soon as they consider it? Can you publish your company’s source code online?

Even so, I think we are still being very transparent and getting involved in the hard discussions. As you pointed out, we’re shipping the freaking source code while there’s still time to make a difference. And I think we’re doing it early enough to make changes. Just look at the evolution of MVC thus far.

But that doesn’t negate the need for hosting a small group for more intimate discussions. For example, I’m completely overwhelmed by the tsunami of feedback I get. I try hard, I really do, but I’m drowning. So even without the insiders, there’d be a de-facto insiders. I can only subscribe to so many blogs. I’m commenting on your blog because I know you and respect your opinion (well some of them). What about the person whose blog I’m not commenting in?

I think forums and such are great for being expose to breadth of issues, but what about depth. What about the type of feedback you get from a person to person conversation? We need that. Feedback has more impact when it’s person to person, especially when sharing the pain you have with some tool.

So if not the insiders, what’s the better alternative?

Should we have random drawings on asp.net “Hey! Register here to win a chance to pay your own room and board to Redmond to give Microsoft feedback!” I’m not saying we shouldn’t. If we do, it was my idea first. Do you have a specific suggestion in mind?

To be clear, I never thought of the group as “elitist” or that they believed themselves to be better than other developers.

“we want to be able to talk openly without getting involved in quasi-religious discussions / veering off in tangents and partly because, frankly, we have bad ideas sometimes.”

Right, I get that. But why shy away from those situations? Perhaps a better approach would be to expose the bad ideas right away so that you don’t end up converting them into features.

The debate about how much transparency and openness is a separate issue though, as Damien and others continue to make great points.

And I think the team and management probably does get nervous showing functions that they are still debating internally and that aren’t fully baked. Developers in general don’t like to show unfinished products to people