Welcome .NET to the Open Source Space!
Yesterday was a huge day for .NET when S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft, announced the open sourcing of .NET at Visual Studio Connect. Make sure to read through the following blog posts for an overview of the announcements and releases:
Open sourcing .NET is a big deal because .NET is a truly cross-platform framework now, allowing you to run your applications on Linux and Mac OS as well. That includes applications written not only in C# but also in F#. I'm curious to see how that will affect Java and Scala in the future.
In terms of web development, this means your ASP.NET applications can now be run on the dominant server operating system, Linux, on an officially supported Common Language Runtime. While we're at it, here's what's new.
Also, the free Visual Studio Community Edition plays an important part in making .NET development more attractive to individual developers and startups who can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on licensing costs for the full-blown editions. Unlike the existing Express Editions, the Community Edition allows you to install extensions and add-ins such as ReSharper, which give you the top-notch development and tooling experience you'd expect.
An open source .NET stack can only benefit from contributions from the community that has been working with it for more than a decade. Now is the time to get your hands dirty and participate. The .NET Core and ASP.NET projects accept pull requests, but if you'd rather work on one of the programming languages, pick your favorite and lend a hand:
I've written about the state of modern web development before, but yesterday's announcement was a game changer. Development on the .NET stack just got a lot more attractive — 2015 should be an exciting year!