Microsoft In OPEN-SOURCE .Net Love-In With New Foundation

Microsoft has opened its .Net programming framework to the developer community by releasing the code for a broad range of .Net-related software as open-source projects under the stewardship of a new, dedicated foundation. The surprise announcement came during the Thursday keynote at Redmond's annual Build developer conference, taking place this week in San Francisco.

Overseeing the open-source projects will be the .Net Foundation, an independent group composed of company representatives and community leaders. For now, the foundation will be led by a three-member board that will include representatives from Microsoft Open Technologies and Redmond's .Net development team, along with Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza.

De Icaza has long been one of the most vocal proponents of open-source development using Microsoft technologies, having previously created Mono – a cross-platform, open-source implementation of .Net – and served as a founding member of Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation...