I published the Ajax Sprite Toolkit as a Codeplex project today, which was my first experience using Microsoft's open source hosting.

It wasn't a hideous experience, but it wasn't perfect either.

After requesting a new project, I only had to wait a few days for an approval email which included login and some other basic information. Not bad considering they are limiting the number of new projects and I submitted the request right around the holidays!

I was surprised to find out that Codeplex uses VS Team Foundation Server as a Source Control Provider. So what does an open source developer do if he doesn't own VS Team System? Well, Microsoft provides a free Team Explorer Client which can be used for developers wanting to contribute to a Codeplex project. But the download is an immense 246 MB .img file. ugh.

On a positive note, I have so far found the Codeplex project management functionality to be pretty good. They provide basic Forums, Issue Tracker, License, and Wiki pages which (aside from some less than intuitive interface design) all worked as advertised.