Microsoft is making .NET open-source, bringing it to Mac and Linux

For more than 12 years now, the .NET framework has been the programming model for developers who want to build apps for Windows. But in its efforts to take many of its developer tools cross-platform, Microsoft today 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, starting with the next version.

Satya Nadella’s rapid reinvention of Microsoft continues. In yet another bid to make up lost ground in the long march to the future of computing, Microsoft is now open sourcing the very foundation of .NET—the software that millions of developers use to build and operate websites and other large online applications—and it says this free code will eventually run not only on computer servers that use its own Windows operating system, but also atop machines equipped with Linux or Apple’s Mac OS, Microsoft’s two main operating system rivals. “We want to have a developer offering that is relevant and attractive and valuable to any developer working on any kind of application,” says S. “Soma” Somasegar, the 25-year Microsoft veteran oversees the company’s wide range of tools for software developers.