The core repository is the starting point to engage in and learn about the .NET Core stack.
If you're new to .NET Core and have 10 minutes to try it, start here:
If you have some more time and want to go deeper:
The .NET Core platform is made of several components, which includes the managed compilers, the runtime, the base class libraries, and numerous application models such as ASP.NET.
All projects accept contributions:
You are also encouraged to start a discussion by posting on the .NET Foundation Forums or filing an issue in the corresponding GitHub project. See the contributing guides for more details.
The .NET Core platform is part of the .NET Foundation.
.NET Core platform projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
See specific projects to understand the license used.
.NET Core and the .NET Framework have (for the most part) a subset-superset
relationship. .NET Core is named "Core" since it contains the core features from
the .NET Framework, for both the runtime and framework libraries. For example,
.NET Core and the .NET Framework share the GC, the JIT and types such as
String and List<T>.
.NET Core was created so that .NET could be open source, cross platform and be used in more resource-constrained environments. We have also published a subset of the .NET Reference Source under the MIT license, so that you and the community can port additional .NET Framework features to .NET Core.
Mono is an important part of the .NET ecosystem, particularly for client scenarios (e.g. Xamarin). We will look for ways to collaborate with Mono developers and encourage them to take our code to improve Mono. We will also look for opportunities to improve .NET Core with MIT-licensed Mono code.
An important collaboration opportunity is making .NET Core NuGet packages (produced from this code) work on Mono. The SIMD NuGet package is a perfect example.
ASP.NET 5 is a new cross-platform version of ASP.NET that is designed for the cloud, and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. It uses the .NET Framework to run on Windows, and can also run on .NET Core for greater deployment flexibility on Windows. It currently uses Mono for Linux and Mac support but will move to .NET Core for those platforms when they are supported.