Microsoft develops open-source content-management system: This is probably going to be huge, just by having the stamp of approval from Microsoft.
Microsoft is positioning Oxite as more than just a blogging engine, claiming it can support even large Web sites. The company also is positioning the platform as customizable, allowing users to swap out Microsoft technologies, like database and search providers – specifically, SQL Server and Live Search – for non-Microsoft ones.
Notably, the platform is ASP MVC, not Web forms. Via Seth who notes:
From poking around a bit, Oxite seems to be a project introduced by some MSDN developers who needed a platform on which to build MIX Online (Microsoft’s big developer conference. Here is their description of Oxite). We all know that Microsoft’s mainstream content management offerings would not be up to the task for this kind of open community site. I am guessing that the code was first released under the auspices of developer network education and code sharing.