The .NET Framework source is being released under a
read-only reference license. When we announced that we were releasing the
source back in October, some people had concerns about the potential impact of
their viewing the source. To help clarify and address these concerns, we made a
small change to the license to specifically call out that the license does not
apply to users developing software for a non-Windows platform that has "the
same or substantially the same features or functionality" as the .NET
Framework. If the software you are developing is for Windows platforms, you can
look at the code, even if that software has "the same or substantially the
same features or functionality" as the .NET Framework.