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[James Talbot]

MITrecognizes that the value in published scholarship originates in the labor of authors, peer reviewers, and editors, and the institutions that support them. The benefits to society are greatest when this scholarship is freely and immediately available to the entire world to access, read, and use; without restriction and for any lawful purpose.

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The MIT Libraries seek to provide services that enhance the use, reuse, analysis, discovery, curation, and preservation of those outputs. In a rapidly evolving scholarly communications landscape, such services may be offered by commercial, non-profit, or community-owned platforms and resources. We will strive for a portfolio of services that meets the needs of our scholars, reflects core MIT principles and values, and advances the public good and the progress of science.

The MIT Framework creates a mechanism for ensuring scholarly research outputs are openly and equitably available to the broadest and most inclusive audience possible, while also providing valued services to our community. The vision we seek to advance through the application of this framework is one in which enduring, abundant, equitable, and meaningful access to scholarship serves to empower and inspire humanity.

MIT intends to rely on this Framework as a guide for our relationships with publishers regardless of the actions of any of our peer institutions or other organizations. We are, however, delighted that the following institutions have decided that that these principles will advance open scholarship and the public good, and have therefore decided to endorse this Framework:

Cross-border capital flows provide significant benefits but may also generate or amplify shocks. Small open economies can be particularly vulnerable to swings in international capital flows. How should they respond? The traditional answer has been to use flexible exchange rates as a shock absorber. But flexible exchange rates may not offer full insulation from external shocks, for example, when financial markets do not work perfectly.

As a result, policy makers often reach for a mix of tools including intervention in the currency market, and macroprudential and capital flow management measures. These policy responses vary substantially across countries and over time. A significant shortcoming of this eclectic approach is the lack of clear frameworks.

To support and reinforce institutional capacity to intentionally serve, Excelencia developed a framework that integrates essential components of transformation into a comprehensive institutional strategy for SERVING students. This framework represents learning from over 20 years of working with higher education institutions.

Excelencia is committed to working in partnership with institutions to share and learn strategies that align data, practice, and leadership as a community of learners to accelerate Latino student success. Further, we recognize that developing the ability to serve Latino students enhances the capacity of institutions to serve all students.

The .NET Framework (pronounced as "dot net") is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until being superseded by the cross-platform .NET project. It includes a large class library called Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment (in contrast to a hardware environment) named the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR is an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called "managed code". FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.

FCL provides the user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. Programmers produce software by combining their source code with the .NET Framework and other libraries. The framework is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. Microsoft also produces an integrated development environment for .NET software called Visual Studio.

.NET Framework began as proprietary software, although the firm worked to standardize the software stack almost immediately, even before its first release. Despite the standardization efforts, developers, mainly those in the free and open-source software communities, expressed their unease with the selected terms and the prospects of any free and open-source implementation, especially regarding software patents. Since then, Microsoft has changed .NET development to more closely follow a contemporary model of a community-developed software project, including issuing an update to its patent promising to address the concerns.[2]

In April 2019, Microsoft released .NET Framework 4.8, the last major version of the framework as a proprietary offering, followed by .NET Framework 4.8.1 in August 2022. Only monthly security and reliability bug fixes to that version have been released since then. No further changes to that version are planned. The .NET Framework will continue to be included with future releases of Windows and continue to receive security updates, with no plans to remove it as of November 2023.[3]

Microsoft began developing .NET Framework in the late 1990s, originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS), as part of the .NET strategy. By early 2000, the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released.

In August 2000, Microsoft, and Intel worked to standardize Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and C#. By December 2001, both were ratified ECMA standards.[4][5] International Organization for Standardization (ISO) followed in April 2003. The current version of ISO standards are ISO/IEC 23271:2012 and ISO/IEC 23270:2006.[6][7]

While Microsoft and their partners hold patents for CLI and C#, ECMA and ISO require that all patents essential to implementation be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". The firms agreed to meet these terms, and to make the patents available royalty-free. However, this did not apply to the part of the .NET Framework not covered by ECMA-ISO standards, which included Windows Forms, ADO.NET, and ASP.NET. Patents that Microsoft holds in these areas may have deterred non-Microsoft implementations of the full framework.[8]

On October 3, 2007, Microsoft announced that the source code for .NET Framework 3.5 libraries was to become available under the Microsoft Reference Source License (Ms-RSL[a]).[9] The source code repository became available online on January 16, 2008, and included BCL, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Windows Forms, WPF, and XML. Scott Guthrie of Microsoft promised that LINQ, WCF, and WF libraries were being added.[10]

The .NET Compact Framework and .NET Micro Framework variants of the .NET Framework provided support for other Microsoft platforms such as Windows Mobile, Windows CE and other resource-constrained embedded devices. Silverlight provided support for web browsers via plug-ins.

In November 2014, Microsoft also produced an update to its patent grants, which further extends the scope beyond its prior pledges. Prior projects like Mono existed in a legal grey area because Microsoft's earlier grants applied only to the technology in "covered specifications", including strictly the 4th editions each of ECMA-334 and ECMA-335. The new patent promise, however, places no ceiling on the specification version, and even extends to any .NET runtime technologies documented on MSDN that have not been formally specified by the ECMA group, if a project chooses to implement them. This allows Mono and other projects to maintain feature parity with modern .NET features that have been introduced since the 4th edition was published without being at risk of patent litigation over the implementation of those features. The new grant does maintain the restriction that any implementation must maintain minimum compliance with the mandatory parts of the CLI specification.[11]

On March 31, 2016, Microsoft announced at Microsoft Build that they will completely relicense Mono under an MIT License even in scenarios where formerly a commercial license was needed.[12] Microsoft also supplemented its prior patent promise for Mono, stating that they will not assert any "applicable patents" against parties that are "using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing Mono."[13][14] It was announced that the Mono Project was contributed to the .NET Foundation. These developments followed the acquisition of Xamarin, which began in February 2016 and was finished on March 18, 2016.[15]

Microsoft's press release highlights that the cross-platform commitment now allows for a fully open-source, modern server-side .NET stack. Microsoft released the source code for WPF, Windows Forms and WinUI on December 4, 2018.[16]

Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) provides a language-neutral platform for application development and execution. By implementing the core aspects of .NET Framework within the scope of CLI, these functions will not be tied to one language but will be available across the many languages supported by the framework.

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