Is the .NET Framework free software? [closed]

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Is the .NET Framework free software, or not? It seems that the .NET Framework is freely available, so I want to create a program that requires the user to install the .NET Framework in order to use it.

Are there any licensing issues that I should be worried about in choosing to d开发者_JS百科o so?

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Free as in beer - yes, it costs nothing to install or download the .NET framework

Free as in speech - no, it is closed source, proprietary code.

It is gratis, not libre.

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Yes, .net is free in the sense that you can distribute programs built against .net without paying any licensing money to Microsoft.

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Everybody can install the .NET Framework without having to pay any fees to Microsoft. Also, you can develop applications with the .NET Framework and you don't have to pay fees, either. Neither do you have to pay fees when you release your applications.

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windows system contains .net framework, e.g. windows 7. but if you want to install the development tools: visual studio, Sql server... then you need to pay for them.

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Seven years later: Not all of it, but most of .NET has been released under the terms of the MIT license, and is available at https://github.com/dotnet . It officially supports "Linux, Windows, and macOS" (the order of that list is Microsoft's, at https://www.microsoft.com/net )

It was always freely distributable in binary form (for Windows), and linkable from your own software without restrictions (on Windows), otherwise nobody would have wanted to use it and Microsoft wouldn't have gained the users they wanted.