.NET is a member project of the .NET Foundation.
Source copyright is held by ".NET Foundation and Contributors", while binary distributions (and associated copyright) are provided by a variety of parties.
The .NET project primarily uses the MIT License for code and Creative Commons licenses for non-code assets, like documentation, swag, and brand content.
We use the following approach for code contributions:
- New code is licensed as MIT, per repo license and via file headers.
- Contributions (like ports) can be based on existing code or algorithms that are licensed with a permissive OSI-approved licenses (for example, MIT, Apache 2, and BSD) and should be ackowledged in the repo THIRD-PARTY-NOTICE file.
- Non-product contributions (like tests) can be based on existing code or algorithms that are licensed with any OSI-approved license (including GPL) and should be acknowleged in a local THIRD-PARTY-NOTICE file (for example, SciMark/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES).
- We will typically reject the use of product code licensed with Creative Commons or public domain licenses given their lack of universal acceptance.
- The .NET Foundation Contribution License Agreement (CLA) is used to license contributions from contributors.
References:
- https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero
- https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain
- https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1717/why-is-cc-by-sa-discouraged-for-code
- https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/104
- https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/blob/11a7b58ea6d92e1ae06d7d9e44e4a2f2257b687e/data/CC0-1.0.toml#L11
Microsoft distributes binary builds of .NET per the following description. Distributions from other parties may differ.
- Binary archives, installers, packages, and containers are licensed as MIT (same as the .NET source license).
- Windows-based distributions include closed-source assets, per License information for .NET on Windows
Microsoft has issued a Patent Promise for .NET Libraries and Runtime Components.