Microsoft has announced that they are making the Entity Framework (EF) source code available under the Apache 2.0 license. EF joins the Azure SDK, ASP.NET MVC4, Razor, and the ASP.NET Web API, which were all open-sourced within the last year.
The code for the EF Runtime, Code First, the DbContext API, and a few other items is currently available to the public, according to Scott Hanselman. He also says that the EF Designer code will likely be open-sourced in the future.
Microsoft states that EF will still be a fully supported product, both as a standalone offering and as part of Visual Studio:
It will continue to be staffed by the same Microsoft developers that build it today, and will be supported through the same Microsoft support mechanisms. Our goal with today’s announcement is to increase the development feedback loop even more, allowing us to deliver an even better product.
Along with this announcement, the EF team laid out the plans for their most important additions to EF6. Those include:
- Support for stored procedures and functions in Code First
- Task-based Async (using .NET 4.5)
- Custom-written conventions in Code First
The EF source code, more details about the EF roadmap and information about open source contributions are all available on the Entity Framework Codeplex site.