The.NET platform (pronounced as "dot net") is afree and open-source,managed computersoftware framework forWindows,Linux, andmacOSoperating systems.^[4] The project is mainly developed byMicrosoft employees by way of the.NET Foundation and is released under anMIT License.^[3]

.NET

Developer(s)	.NET Foundation and the open-source community
Initial release	June 27, 2016; 8 years ago (2016-06-27)
Stable release	9.0.3[1]  / 11 March 2025; 21 days ago (11 March 2025)
Preview release	9.0.0-rc.2[2]  / 8 October 2024; 5 months ago (8 October 2024)
Repository	github.com/dotnet/core
Written in	C++,C#
Operating system	cross-platform:Windows,Linux,macOS,Android,iOS
Platform	IA-32,x86-64,ARM,PowerPC
Predecessor	.NET Framework
Type	Software framework
License	MIT[3]
Website	dotnet.microsoft.com

New versions of the .NET platform are released annually, typically in November. The most recent version of .NET is .NET 9, released in November 2024, while the current long-term support (LTS) version is .NET 8, released in November 2023 and scheduled to receive updates until November 2026.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1990s, Microsoft began developing amanaged code runtime and programming language (C#) which it billed together as part of the ".NET platform", with the core runtime andsoftware libraries comprising the.NET Framework.

At the heart of the .NET Platform is the .NET Framework, a high-productivity, multilanguage development and execution environment for building and running Web services with important features such as cross-language inheritance and debugging.^[5]

Soon after the announcement of the C# language at theProfessional Developers Conference in 2000 and previews of its software became available, Microsoft began a standardization effort throughECMA for what it dubbed theCommon Language Infrastructure. The company continued development and support of its own implementation asproprietary, closed source software in the meantime.^{[citation needed]}

On November 12, 2014,Microsoft introduced.NET Core—an open-source,cross-platform^[6] successor^[7] to.NET Framework—and releasedsource code for the .NET CoreCoreCLR implementation, source for the "entire [...] library stack" for .NET Core,^[8] and announced the adoption of a conventional ("bazaar"-like)open-source development model under the stewardship of the.NET Foundation.Miguel de Icaza describes .NET Core as a "redesigned version of .NET that is based on the simplified version of the class libraries",^[9] and Microsoft's Immo Landwerth explained that .NET Core would be "the foundation of all future .NET platforms". At the time of the announcement, the initial release of the .NET Core project had been seeded with a subset of the libraries' source code and coincided with the relicensing of Microsoft's existing .NET reference source away from the restrictions of theMs-RSL. Landwerth acknowledged the disadvantages of the formerly selected shared license, explaining that it madecodename Rotor "a non-starter" as a community-developed open source project because it did not meet the criteria of anOpen Source Initiative (OSI) approved license.^[10][11][12]

.NET Core 1.0 was released on June 27, 2016,^[13] along withMicrosoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, which enables .NET Core development.^[14] .NET Core 1.0.4 and .NET Core 1.1.1 were released along with .NET Core Tools 1.0 and Visual Studio 2017 on March 7, 2017.^[15]

.NET Core 2.0 was released on August 14, 2017, along with Visual Studio 2017 15.3, ASP.NET Core 2.0, andEntity Framework Core 2.0.^[16] .NET Core 2.1 was released on May 30, 2018.^[17] NET Core 2.2 was released on December 4, 2018.^[18]

.NET Core 3 was released on September 23, 2019.^[19] NET Core 3 adds support for Windows desktop application development^[20] and significant performance improvements throughout the base library.

In November 2020, Microsoft released .NET 5.0.^[21] The "Core" branding was abandoned and version 4.0 was skipped to avoid conflation with .NET Framework, of which the latest releases had all used 4.xversioning for all significant (non-bugfix) releases since 2010.

It addresses the patent concerns related to the .NET Framework^{[citation needed]}.

In November 2021, Microsoft released .NET 6.0,^[22] in November 2022 released .NET 7.0,^[23] in November 2023 released .NET 8.0,^[24] and in November 2024 released .NET 9.0.^[25]

Alpine Linux, which primarily supports and usesmusl libc,^[33] is supported since .NET Core 2.1.^[34]

WindowsArm64 is natively supported since .NET 5. Previously, .NET on ARM meant applications compiled for the x86 architecture and run through the ARM emulation layer.^[32]

Linux .NET runs on PowerPC to some extent since .NET 7, officially no support is claimed by Microsoft but .NET does contain code for PowerPC compatibility for Linux systems and is able to be compiled for PowerPC systems specifically 64 bitLittle Endian variant.^[35]

.NET fully supportsC# andF# (andC++/CLI as of 3.1; only enabled on Windows) and supportsVisual Basic .NET (for version 15.5 in .NET Core 5.0.100-preview.4, and some old versions supported in old .NET Core).^[36]

VB.NET compiles and runs on .NET, but as of .NET Core 3.1, the separate Visual Basic Runtime is not implemented. Microsoft initially announced that .NET Core 3 would include the Visual Basic Runtime, but after two years the timeline for such support was updated to .NET 5.^[37][38]

.NET supports the followingcross-platform scenarios:ASP.NET Coreweb apps, command-line/console apps, libraries andUniversal Windows Platform apps. Prior to .NET Core 3.0, it did not implementWindows Forms orWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which render the standardGUI for desktop software on Windows.^[39] However, from .NET Core 3 on, it started implementing them along withUniversal Windows Platform (UWP).^[40] It is also possible to write cross-platform graphical applications using .NET with theGTK# language-binding for theGTK widget toolkit.

.NET supports use ofNuGet packages. Unlike.NET Framework, which is serviced usingWindows Update, .NET used to rely on itspackage manager to receive updates.^[39] Since December 2020, however, .NET updates started being delivered via Windows Update as well.^[41]

The two main components of .NET are CoreCLR and CoreFX, which are comparable to theCommon Language Runtime (CLR) and theFramework Class Library (FCL) of the.NET Framework'sCommon Language Infrastructure (CLI) implementation.^[42]

As an implementation of CLI'sVirtual Execution System (VES), CoreCLR is a completeruntime andvirtual machine formanagedexecution of CLI programs and includes ajust-in-time compiler called RyuJIT.^[43][a] .NET Core also contains CoreRT, the .NET Native runtime optimized to be integrated intoAOT compiled nativebinaries.^[45]

As an implementation of CLI'sStandard Libraries,^[46] CoreFX shares a subset of .NET Framework APIs, however, it also comes with its own APIs that are not part of the .NET Framework.^[39] A variant of the .NETlibrary is used forUWP.^[47]

The .NETcommand-line interface offers an execution entry point foroperating systems and provides developer services like compilation and package management.^[48]

.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI, introduced with .NET 6) is a cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps withC# andExtensible Application Markup Language (XAML),^[49] which also supportsAndroid andiOS.

The official community mascot of .NET is the .NET Bot (stylized as "dotnet bot" or "dotnet-bot"). The dotnet bot served as the placeholder developer for the initial check-in of the .NET source code when it was open-sourced.^[50] It has since been used as the official mascot.

• Arif, Hammad; Qureshi, Habib (2020).Adopting .NET 5: Understand modern architectures, migration best practices, and the new features in .NET 5. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1800560567.
• Metzgar, Dustin (2018)..NET Core in Action. Manning Publications.ISBN 978-1617294273.
• Price, Mark J. (2021).C# 10 and .NET 6 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1801077361.
• Price, Mark J. (2020).C# 9 and .NET 5 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1800568105.
• Price, Mark J. (2019).C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788478120.
• Price, Mark J. (2017).C# 7.1 and .NET Core 2.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788398077.
• Price, Mark J. (2017).C# 7 and .NET Core: Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1787129559.
• Price, Mark J. (2016).C# 6 and .NET Core 1.0: Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1785285691.
• Zimarev, Alexey (2019).Hands-On Domain-Driven Design with .NET Core. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788834094.

• Official website 
• .NET onGitHub