A dedicated community site for productive work within .NET embedded applications has been planned since the end of January. The associated SDK family is partly covered by Apache licensing.

Peter Galli, open source community manager in Microsoft's Platform Strategy group, called attention to the new community platform in the Microsoft open source blog. As he reported to the current Microsoft product managers, "This site is designed to be open just like our product is." After their announcement of the .NET Micro platform in November 2009, the Redmond firm released parts of the family under the Apache License 2.0. The announcement also introduced the community development site for the .NET Micro framework.

For a glimpse of the Windows software, the community site is not where to look, but rather on Microsoft's download pages. The company is hoping with its new community site that many people will download the .NET Micro Framework 4.0 SDK and its associated software, describe their own creations and provide them (either free or commercially-based) in the Showcase. Microsoft will be releasing the program material for the framework, but external interested parties will have a choice of which code will flow into the versions.

So that everyone understands clearly, Microsoft's concept of the new community model is geared to the .NET Micro framework. (Source: Microsoft, Netmf.com)

The open source license applies to the Micro SDK and the Framework 4.0 Porting Kit that allows adapting the runtime to specific hardware. Excluded from the Apache licensing are the two libraries for the TCP/IP stack and cryptography. The SDK functionality and license restrictions are described in the Micro team announcement blog. The individual .NET Micro components are best described in Michael Schwarz's Netmicroframework blog.

A dedicated community site for productive work within .NET embedded applications has been planned since the end of January. The associated SDK family is partly covered by Apache licensing.