In every discussion on this topic (and there have been many) one of the most salient points seems to be continually missed.

Of what possible relevancy is any .NET language if the company that issues you a paycheck specifically dictates that VB6 is going to be used for all development?

Many of you know this story, but for those who may have missed it, the one and ONLY reason my place of employment even has a copy of VB.NET is because I told the IT management people none of their VB6 programs would run on Vista...in other words, I had to lie just to get .NET in the door.

Now that Vista is no longer in the picture, my rewrite of their VB6 apps into .NET has been cancelled, and all development is back in the VB6 house (in fact, rather than moving forward with VB.NET, I'm actually moving backward into VBA ).

This is the very important point that everyone seems to miss, or overlook: I would love nothing better than to ditch VB6 and move on. However, I have no control over that. Unless you own your own software development business you, as the programmer, have no control over what language you use either. That is dictated by the people that pay your salary. If you don't like that, then my experience has been that your only option is to find another job.

On topic, to transform VB6, which is still, and will continue to be, a money maker for Microsoft, into open source would be tantamount to a car manufacturer giving away free automobiles to anyone that wanted one.