rebuild the .Net assemblies at home! [closed]

Question

as microsoft has made .Net framework an open source library, is there any chance that i can make a project of their source code files, and build it again, for example, can i create a solution for the DataGridView control, and build it ?

the reason why is i want to be able to see how it works in run time.

is that legal just for home use :) ??

or may be the question is : is that possible ?

Answer 1

You could try this, however the Mono project has beaten you to it by about 6 years! And their code is legal to use, after Novell had a lot of toing and froing with Microsoft requesting their work would not cause legal issues in future.

Large portions of the Mono implementation of the .NET framework are now used for .NET on the iPhone in the form of Monotouch, the Unity game engine (also on the iPhone and Wii) and fairly shortly on Android devices.

Answer 2

IANAL, TINLA, talk to a lawyer. Everything in this answer is my opinion.

Most of the MS .NET Framework class libraries are not open source. It is "shared source" -- MS grants you the right to view the source (not modify it) provided that you are not developing .NET software on a non-Windows platform [1]. I'm sorry, but the license grant is incredibly restrictive, and does not come anywhere close to open source.

Answer 3

I haven't dabbled with the source of the .NET framework myself - but if you are interested in discovering how the framework hangs together - then I recommend downloading and using Lutz Roeder's Reflector tool - it's excellent for disassembling any DLLs. http://reflector.red-gate.com/download.aspx