Microsoft open sources .NET server stack
Microsoft open sourced the full server-side .NET stack and expanded .NET to run on the Linux and Mac OS platforms. The company also released Visual Studio Community 2013, a new free edition of Visual Studio that provides easy access to the Visual Studio core toolset.
Delivering on its promise to support cross-platform development, Microsoft is providing the full .NET server stack in open source, including ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework and Libraries, enabling developers to build with .NET across Windows, Mac or Linux.
Through this implementation, Microsoft will work closely with the open source community, taking contributions for future improvements to .NET and will work through the .NET Foundation.
“Today’s open source announcement means that developers will have a fully supported, fully open source, fully cross platform .NET stack for creating server and cloud applications – including everything from the C#/VB compilers, to the CLR runtime, to the core .NET base class libraries, to the higher-level .NET Web, Data and API frameworks,” explained Scott Guthrie, Executive VP of the Cloud and Enterprise group in Microsoft.
“We are releasing the source under the MIT open source license and are also issuing an explicit patent promise to clarify users patent rights to .NET.”
Microsoft also released Visual Studio Community 2013, a free, fully featured edition of Visual Studio including full extensibility. Targeting any platform, from devices and desktop, to Web and cloud services, the community edition provides developers with easy access to Microsoft’s Visual Studio toolset for all nonenterprise application development.
Developers can get started with Visual Studio Community 2013 here.
To further support cross-platform mobile development with .NET, as part of their strategic partnership, Microsoft and Xamarin announced a new streamlined experience for installing Xamarin from Visual Studio, as well as announced the addition of Visual Studio support to its free offering Xamarin Starter Edition — available later in the year. In addition, for Web developers interested in building cloud-powered apps that target mobile devices, Microsoft delivered the final release of Apache Cordova tools.
Developers can get started Visual Studio 2015 Preview here.