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.
