There are several wiki applications you can download for free, including the original wiki program developed by Ward Cunningham and pmWiki, the one I’m using for the Employee Communications Manifesto. Now you can add FlexWiki to the list. What’s unusual about that is FlexWiki is a Microsoft program.

It’s not the first application Microsoft has made available as an open-source program, according to an article in ZDNet. And it’s not too much of a surprise that Microsoft is releasing its Wiki code, since the company employs Cunningham in its Prescriptive Architecture Guidance unit, which helps companies design systems based on Microsoft software.

FlexWiki has been used inside Microsoft to create sections of its “Channel 9” site for developers. The FlexWiki site, incidentally, has already been defaced (as of this writing).