Microsoft goes Open Source!!
Well – some of it anyway !!
Today Scot Guthrie, Corporate Vice President in the Microsoft Server and Tools Business announced in a blog that some of the ASP.NET technologies that are used by web developers, including me, were to be made available under an open source license.
ASP.NET MVC has been available under a permissive license since its first release, but today that was extended to the new Web API Framework and to the ASP.NET WebPages/Razor Framework as well.
But that isn’t all.
In addition to being made available under an open source license (Apache 2.0), the code repository on codeplex.com (http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/) is actually the live repository that the Microsoft development team will be using for their own source control, so we can watch as they fix bugs and make code changes.
And further, they will be taking some commits from the Community. The team are using the new Git repository support that codeplex.com introduced a few days ago, and Scott Hanselman demonstrated live on stage at DevConnections accepting a pull request from Miguel de Icaza (of mono fame). Now, don’t expect every pull request to be accepted – there will be careful review of every request and each request will need to meet a high quality bar and meet Microsoft’s goals for the platform, as the product will still be fully supported by Microsoft.
So congratulations to the ASP.NET team. Keep up the good work.