The most of the questions or comments I have received recently are related to the acquisition of SpecFlow by Tricentis. I’ve got congratulations, although I was not involved in this deal at all (it was between my former employer, TechTalk and Tricentis) and I’ve been asked questions related to the future of SpecFlow and generally about how an open-source project can be bought.

The acquisition of SpecFlow fits into the line of the Cucumber acquisition by SmartBear. Just like in the case of Cucumber, such a change does not impact the users of the open-source tools negatively. These projects are open-source and all the people who contributed to them made their efforts under the open-source license that these projects have. This practically guarantees that source-code of these projects remains free and freely usable. The acquisitions are more related to the name, the branding and the team working on the maintenance of these tools. So basically we can say that SpecFlow (and Cucumber) got another project sponsor, who finances the ongoing efforts of these projects. In return they have got the knowledge and experience of the team plus the marketing benefits of the well-established names and community. Both companies are tool-vendors, so obviously we can expect their tools will better support the BDD methodology.

Actually we can see this as a sign that BDD has reached a new level of maturity. Both open-source projects got into the stage a few years ago where maintenance efforts could not be covered anymore by voluntary work only. For now, BDD has become popular enough so that more resourceful companies can overtake the responsibility of these efforts. These companies can reach enough people through these tools that compensates the costs. We have seen the fruits of the Cucumber acquisition (more free content, boosted development), I think we are going to see the same with SpecFlow and Tricentis. So it is a win-win situation.

Obviously I feel strange, because I still think of SpecFlow as my baby. Seeing it dating with a “stranger” is odd. But SpecFlow has grown up. I hope it will be treated with respect.

I will keep watching the SpecFlow project and although it’s been a few years now that I am not involved in the daily routine, I keep on helping in strategic questions or tricky problems. As you might have heard, I concentrate my active open-source contribution to Deveroom, which is an alternative Visual Studio extension for SpecFlow, Here the aim is to make the support of the new Visual Studio, Gherkin and .NET features easier available for all SpecFlow users. My secondary goal with Deveroom is to provide an open-source BDD showcase, because as you would expect it is being developed driven by BDD scenarios.