What? Microsoft releasing the source code to the .NET Framework? Won’t this help Mono achieve their goal of duplicating the API on other operating systems?

I’m very happy to see this happening. I think it’s a major help for the growth of the framework in general.

I personally think they are doing this because of things like Silverlight 1.1. By creating a browser plug-in that enables the execution of CLR code written in C# on multiple platforms, they are already putting effort into multi-platform support for their development tools. Opening the source to the public eye will only help in the long run as the community finds problems and blogs about them, allowing Microsoft to get more feedback on their work.

The biggest push I get to design systems in Java is the multi-platform issue. Corporations often times don’t want to have their hand forced into relying on Microsoft for their back-end server systems. Words like scalability and uptime and typically thrown around when .NET is discussed. Having the ability to run CLR-based applications on multiple platforms would help drive some of those discussions towards real issues like developer skill sets instead of the bullseye on .NET’s head.

I’m glad to see this announcement, I definitely see it adding value to VS2008.