MS may think sharepoint is an alternative but that is definitely not the case. Many developers work independently and need to offer clients simple solutions when building a website. Sharepoint is not simple or cheap. It's a beast for enterprise systems.

As a programmer dealing with a client, how can I suggest the client use asp.net over php? MS needs to address that question. Enterprise systems aren't the only animals out there.

But in this case Microsoft actually paid a third party to develop this POS and they both decided to make it open source. People, like me, want to contribute but the project has been abandoned so our changes/upgrades wont get integrated.

Grow a pair and fork it. You could even /GASP/ write your own!

You're not Jeff Atwood, you haven't built up a persona of being a proud idiot that can't code his way out of a paper bag without getting a blessed library from on high. You can do it yourself. You are a big boy with real tools. Do it.

It is just not difficult to poke a webserver over HTTP, especially when you have a documented and widely used interface provided to you on a silver platter.

Yes, writing Facebook api is easy but keeping up with it is hard. Facebook constantly makes little changes to the site and monitoring that while doing everything else is hard. I use MS tools to try and save time. That's why I pay for their software and that's how they market their software.

If MS didn't agree then why did they make the API in the first place? A main part of my issue is that MS got the project started (never mind how half assed), people depended on the library and then it was just abandoned.

It's not like it wasn't being used either. It's a popular toolkit. Like you said, it's not difficult to poke a server so why do they abandon a project people depend on?

No need to refer to someone more successful than you as an "idiot".

What does that even mean?