Microsoft Releases Source of .NET Base Classes

Disgruntled Fungus writes "A few months ago, we discussed Microsoft's intention to open source the .NET libraries. According to a developer's official blog, the source code is now available. The source to libraries such as System, IO, Windows.Forms, etc. can now be viewed and used for debugging purposes from within Visual Studio. Instructions for doing so have also been provided. The source code has been released with a read-only license and 'does not apply to users developing software for a non-Windows platform that has "the same or substantially the same features or functionality" as the .NET Framework.'"

Comments

you know what *that* sounds like..

[k-zed]

Microsoft has just begun killing Mono.

(Think "oh, that implementation really looks like ours! you must have read it! here's a lawsuit for you")

NOT open source

[LarsWestergren]

A few months ago, we discussed Microsoft's intention to open source the .NET libraries.

Yes, and as one of the first posters pointed out, unlike Java for instance, this is NOT being published under an open source licence, Microsoft even says so. So why do you keep using the term?

Reflector

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, anyone doing serious development with .NET has been looking at the source for years now in any case by using Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector, which is a C# (etc) decompiler (not just a disassembler). It's the only way to reliably discover and work around the horrible bugs and misdesigns in MS's libraries. (Yes, WSE, I'm looking at you.)

Reflector is downloadable from http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/. And it's obfuscated, so it won't run usefully on itself :-)