Today, the company released .NET Core 1.0, a version of its popular software development platform that will run not just on its own Windows operating systems, but on the Linux and Mac OS X operating systems as well. What's more, .NET Core is open source, meaning that any developer can not only use it for free to build their own applications, but also modify and improve the platform to suit their needs and the needs of others.

Microsoft first released .NET Core and its source code back in 2014, but previous versions of the software were only intended for testing purposes. Today marks the first time that Microsoft has officially supported using the platform for real-world applications on Linux and OS X, the two primary competitors to Windows. Red Hat, one of the world's primary Linux vendors, also announced that it will officially support .NET on its popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.