.Net Goes Open Source

Here's my rollup and take on the situation.

• Microsoft are serious about open source and cross platform.
  • .NET Core 5 is the modern, componentized framework that ships via NuGet. That means you can ship a private version of the .NET Core Framework with your app. Other apps' versions can't change your app's behavior.
  • They are building a .NET Core CLR for Windows, Mac and Linux and it will be both open source and it will be supported by Microsoft. It'll all happen at https://github.com/dotnet.
  • They are open sourcing the RyuJit and the .NET GC and making them both cross-platform.
• ASP.NET 5 will work everywhere.
  • ASP.NET 5 will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mac and Linux support will come soon and it's all going to happen in the open on GitHub at https://github.com/aspnet.
  • ASP.NET 5 will include a web server for Mac and Linux called kestrel built on libuv. It's similar to the one that comes with node, and you could front it with Nginx for production, for example.
• Developers should have a great experience.
  • There is a new FREE SKU for Visual Studio for open source developers and students called Visual Studio Community. It supports extensions and lots more all in one download. This is not Express. This is basically Pro.
  • Visual Studio 2015 and ASP.NET 5 will support gulp, grunt, bower and npm for front end developers.
  • A community team (including myself and Sayed from the ASP.NET and web tools team have created theOmniSharp organization along with the Kulture build system as a way to bring real Intellisense to Sublime, Atom, Brackets, Vim, and Emacs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Check out http://www.omnisharp.net as well as blog posts by team members Jonathan Channon
• Even more open source.
  • Much of the .NET Core Framework 4.6 and its Reference Source source is going on GitHub. It's being relicensed under the MIT license, so Mono (and you!) can use that source code in their .NET implementations.
  • There's a new hub for Microsoft open source that is hosted GitHub at http://microsoft.github.io.

Open sourcing .NET makes good sense. It makes good business sense, good community sense, and today everyone at Microsoft see this like we do.