http://blogs.msdn.com/b/netmfteam/archive/2013/10/22/netmf-4-3-document-update-and-issue-fixing.aspx
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For the .NET MF 4.3 QFE 1 release, I’m wrestling with our legal team to get this update approved for publishing on Codeplex since early December. Seems legal is shuffling people around, and new faces with no history of past .NET MF releases is causing hiccups. Needless to say I’m trying other avenues to jog legal’s memory of past releases to get this update approved.
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Trust a bunch of useless lawyers to screw things up.
Since when does “wrestling with our legal team” sound promising? 
This is exactly why NETMF should become its own open source project that Microsoft simply contributes to rather than leads. There’s no reason for lawyers to be involved at all.
Who else would lead the project, then? What would their authority be, to decide in cases of diverging interests of different contributors? Who is able to ensure architectural integrity? Who would be willing to focus on the backlog of “uninteresting” issues, rather than chasing off for the next supposed “killer feature”, or other feature that is so useful in the full .NET framework? Who is the spoilsport, the benevolent dictator, and generally accepted as such?
As always with open source projects — Somebody, Who Takes the Lead.
Let me nominate godefroi for that role 
@ Simon from Vilnius - hahahaha
I’m OK with having Microsoft lead this and eventually they will throw a bag of money at the lawyers and distract them long enough to release the software. Frankly I often feel like there are far too many Lawyers and so we should be allowed to hunt them in order to cull the herd as really they add nothing but expense and delay to any project and its a form of extortion in that I need to have my Lawyers protect me from your Lawyers, but they are all buddies working the system for far too much money.
What do you think about a new startup, working from Community investors funds like us, and in charge to update and manage the Framework for the community ?
I’m afraid NETMF community is not big enough for this startup to survive entirely on donations…
Recently I read an article dealing with the Internet of thing, that said it will be around 80 Billion of devices in 2020…
Let me imagine that only 0.1 percent of those devices would be in NETMF, representing about 80 Millions of devices…(I think it should be much more in fact 
!)
I think you now understand where I’m going…
Imagine now that any contributor accept to give a donation of 50 cents on each sold productn not very dangerous I think…Hummmm…How to say…Let me just take on second to compute… :think:
Whaou ! What can we do with… 40 Millions of Dollars in the next 6 years ???
Let me tell you that if I had 5 Million of Dollars of Donation per year to play with innovation and technologies, and with the described perspectives, I would be able to leverage wih other investors to follow me on 5 more millions !
Microsoft has open-sourced a lot of the .NET frameworks, e.g., MVC. The difference is that they take the lead whereas the major Linux/Java open source projects are funded by others.
That’s a good thing for us (.NET developers) because most .NET developers I’ve met are actual working developers, rather than aspiring or “would be” developers. The Linux/Java world has a much bigger following by the latter, which makes open source a viable business model.
Take a look at Codeplex and outside of Microsoft led projects, there’s very few commercially viable projects.
Even if someone else was “leading” the NETMF project, Microsoft’s contributions would still have to be cleared by the lawyers. They’re not hanging them up because they’re leading the project, they’re hanging them up to make sure no valuable IP accidently gets committed to an apache-licensed project.
That won’t (can’t) change.
Lets hope that Microsofts new CEO Nadella’s ideas for devices and IoT includes moving forward with their current .net mf platform.
He didn’t mention NETMF/Gadgeteer but briefly mentioned IoT again in interview in a customers & partners webcast. (starting at around 2:40). Nadella pushes Mobile & Cloud first strategy - the mobile part is not just cell phones & tablets but also IoT.
Throughout he interview he talks about software being key for MS, as that defines experiences.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/feb14/02-04webcast.aspx