Since the last 12 years.NET framework which was developed by Microsoft was the tool for developers who want to build Windows only apps. At that time Windows dominated the computing landscape, but the rise of tablets, smartphones and cloud computing have completely upended the company’s business, .NET has long been the dedicated development framework and runtime for Windows, with 1.8 billion installations of .NET, by Microsoft’s count.But today Microsoft announced that it plans to take .NET to both the Mac and Linux soon and that it is open-sourcing most of the full server-side .NET core stack (not client-side .NET), starting with the next version.This will take its key software development technologies into areas that the company has long considered enemy territory — giving developers new ways to use .NET and Visual Studio to make software not just for Windows but also for Linux, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.
This will allow developers to build ASP.NET 5.0 applications that can be deployed and run on Windows, Linux and/or Mac environments. (Microsoft is still expecting most .NET developers to deploy their server-side apps on Windows and Linux, but is providing Mac compatibility mainly for the development environment choice, officials said.)
Microsoft is using GitHub for hosting the core framework porting and open-sourcing work.
Microsoft is also releasing a new, full-featured free version of Visual Studio 2013 that will be available at no cost to independent developers, students, small companies and others not making enterprise applications.
Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise group Scott Guthrie echoed this sentiment when I talked to him a few days ago. He also noted that developers often tell Microsoft that while they like .NET, many don’t use it because it’s closed-source and only supports Windows. But now it is going to change.