Microsoft is releasing the source code for its .net
development framework to streamline development, but users will not
be able to change the code.
Scott Guthrie, general manager of the .net Framework, said in
his
blog, "One of the things my team has been working to enable has
been the ability for .net developers to download and browse the
source code of the .net Framework libraries, and to easily enable
debugging support in them."
This ability will be provided with .net 3.5 and the Visual
Studio 2008 release later this year, he said.
Guthrie said, "We will begin by offering the source code for the
.net Base Class Libraries, ASP.net, Windows Forms, ADO.NET, XML,
and WPF. We'll then be adding more libraries in the months
ahead."
The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference
License (MS-RL).
Developers will be able to download the .net Framework source
libraries via a standalone install. Integrated debugging support
will be provided within VS 2008.