ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API, ASP.NET Web Pages v2 (Razor) All Now Open Sourced

ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API, ASP.NET Web Pages v2 (Razor) - all with contributions have been made available under the Apache 2.0 license.

You can find the source on CodePlex and all the details on Scott Guthrie's blog.

“We will also for the first time allow developers outside of Microsoft to submit patches and code contributions that the Microsoft development team will review for potential inclusion in the products,” Guthrie says. “We announced a similar open development approach with the Windows Azure SDK last December, and have found it to be a great way to build an even tighter feedback loop with developers – and ultimately deliver even better products as a result.”

You can now browse, sync and build the source tree of ASP.NET MVC, Web API, and Razor here.

In short, as Principal Program Manager Scott Hanselman notes in his blog about all this goodness:

Open Source = Increased Investment

ASP.NET is a part of .NET, it will still ship with Visual Studio. It's the same ASP.NET, managed by the same developers with the same support.

It is also very important to note, as Guthrie points out, that ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor will continue to be fully supported Microsoft products that ship both standalone as well as part of Visual Studio (the same as they do today).

“They will also continue to be staffed by the same Microsoft developers that build them today (in fact, we have more Microsoft developers working on the ASP.NET team now than ever before),” he says. “Our goal with today’s announcement is to increase the feedback loop on the products even more, and allow us to deliver even better products. We are really excited about the improvements this will bring.”

Get Started on ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, Razor

ASP.NET MVC gives you a powerful, patterns-based way to build dynamic websites that enables a clean separation of concerns and that gives you full control over markup for enjoyable, agile development. ASP.NET MVC includes many features that enable fast, TDD-friendly development for creating sophisticated applications that use the latest web standards. See ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework.

ASP.NET Web Pages and the new Razor syntax provide a fast, approachable, and lightweight way to combine server code with HTML to create dynamic web content. Connect to databases, add video, link to social networking sites, and include many more features that let you create beautiful sites using the latest web standards.

The links in the preceding section also point you to the free tools that help you get started building in ASP.NET>

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation