Microsoft open sources more of its ASP.NET technologies

Microsoft has announced it is open sourcing more of its ASP.NET programming-framework technologies -- and that it will allow developers outside of Microsoft to submit patches and code contributions for potential inclusion in these products.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie blogged about Microsoft's latest ASP.NET moves on March 27, noting that Microsoft already had made the source code of ASP.NET MVC available since it released version 1 (in 2009 under the MS-PL open source license). Microsoft is making the two new pieces -- ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages (originally codenamed "Razor") available under the Apache 2.0 license.

All three ASP.NET projects will be hosted on Microsoft's CodePlex site with newly-annouinced Git support, Guthrie said. He added:

"We will also for the first time allow developers outside of Microsoft to submit patches and code contributions that the Microsoft development team will review for potential inclusion in the products. We announced a similar open development approach with the Windows Azure SDK last December, and have found it to be a great way to build an even tighter feedback loop with developers – and ultimately deliver even better products as a result."

Guthrie emphasized all three of these ASP.NET technologies will remain fully supported Microsoft products that ship both standalone as well as part of Visual Studio. They all will "continue to be staffed by the same Microsoft developers that build them today," he added. The goal of open-sourcing these technologies, Guthrie said, "is to increase the feedback loop on the products even more and (to) allow us to deliver even better products."

Update: The folks at Xamarin are saying they plan to incorporate the newly-open-sourced ASP.NET code into Xamarin's products and the open source Mono runtime. Xamarin also plans to integrate the Razor Engine and Entity Frameworks into its mobile products.