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What am I talking about? Well, haven't you heard? Microsoft is releasing the source code for the .NET framework libraries!

I didn't say it, Scott Guthrie did.

Actually, this has been in planning for a couple of years now, and it has finally happened.

The code is being released under Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL), which is basically the equivalent of a "Do not touch!" sign in front of a painting in a museum. But, hey, that's fine with me. I just want to look at it, appreciate it, learn from it: it will be just like visiting the Louvre of source code... At first we'll get the Base Class Library (BCL), ASP.NET, Threading, Windows Forms, WPF, ADO.NET and XML. Other libraries, such as WCF, WF and LINQ will get there later.

Finally, as if getting the source code (comments included, by the way) wasn't enough, integrated debugging with Visual Studio 2008 will also be supported, which means that VS will be able to automatically download the code as needed when you debug your code. For more details on this, visit Scott's blog.

For more info in general, you might want to listen to this interview recorded by Scott Hanselman last week (working at MS has its perks).