Microsoft to open source core Xamarin technologies and release for free in Visual Studio

Microsoft is planning to open source the Xamarin software development kit, runtime, libraries and command line tools.

Microsoft also plans to make Xamarin's enterprise capabilities as part of Visual Studio Enterprise and Visual Studio Professional for no additional cost, company officials said on March 31, during the Day 2 Build 2016 developer conference keynote. And Xamarin Studio for OS X will now be free as a Community Edition for individual and small teams, officials said today.

The announcement got a huge applause at Build today.

Microsoft bought cross-platform, mobile development tool vendor Xamarin on February 24. The purchase price wasn't disclosed, but Bloomberg estimated it to be around $400 million.

Rumors had been circulating for the past couple of years that Microsoft planned to buy Xamarin.

Xamarin's tools allow C# developers to build apps for iOS, Android and Windows. Many developers have complained in the past about Xamarin's cost.

Microsoft execs said they plan to release the core Xamarin SDK components to the .NET Foundation.