Microsoft today announced that it is furthering its commitment to cross-platform development with an expanded open source program for its .NET platform and additional support for operating systems outside of Microsoft Windows.
"With billions of devices in the market today, developers need tools that target many different form factors and platforms," said S. Somasegar, corporate vice president, Developer Division, Microsoft. "Through Visual Studio and .NET we are committed to delivering a comprehensive end-to-end solution for developers to build and manage applications across multiple devices and platforms."
After releasing several .NET libraries earlier this year to the open source community, Microsoft confirmed it would open source the full server .NET stack, making it available to developers via Github. The company also is expanding .NET to run on third-party platforms such as Linux and OS X and is working with the open source Mono project to ensure these cross-platform operations are ready for enterprise-level applications.
As part of its Connect() event, Microsoft also unveiled its next generation Visual Studio 2015 developer suite with expanded cross-platform support. Additionally, the Redmond company announced the immediate release of Visual Studio Community 2013 and Visual Studio 2013 Update 4.
This open source initiative is part of a broader campaign to support platforms outside of Windows and Windows Phone. The company now offers Office on the iPhone and iPad and is continuing its support for Apple's OS X platform. An updated version of Office for Mac is rumored for release sometime in 2015.
Top Rated Comments
In Microsoft-speak, "cross platform" means it will run on different versions of Windows. I'm not joking.
.NET is actually a joy to work with. Being able to write apps in C# for OS X has been a dream for a lot of developers. It's a very lovely language and supporting framework.
I don't mind Objective-C. I like Swift (a lot). Though being able to use C# on OS X and have first-party support and tools from Microsoft would make me a very happy camper.
How much more "open source" than the MIT license can they possibly go?
It seems like most of you should have first read the actual MS announcement.
This announcement says that their server-side .NET framework will be eventually able to run on Linux and OS X. Linux matters for servers, but OS X is not all that relevant. This announcement has nothing to do with desktop GUI apps. It's all about the server and enterprise. Relevant quote:
There is also nothing in this announcement about allowing you to write .NET software using a Mac. MS does not have a Mac IDE and I don't expect them to create one either.
This is a good direction for Microsoft and .NET, but unless you are an enterprise software developer using .NET, this announcement will not affect you in any way.