Microsoft Corporation announced that it will be open sourcing the full server-side .NET stack and expanding .NET to run on the Linux and Mac OS platforms (.NET 2015).
Microsoft will providing the full .NET server stack in open source (beginning with the next version), 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.
.NET is the software that millions of developers use to build and operate websites and other large online applications.
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.
However, there are no plans by Microsoft to open source the client side .NET stack, which basically means that the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Forms won’t be going open source.
In addition, Microsoft also announced the preview of ASP.NET 5.0, a streamlined framework and runtime optimized for cloud and server workloads. A new Connected Services Manager in Visual Studio 2015 makes it easier to connect applications to line-of-business API services such as the Office 365 API and SalesForce, among others.