Version 1.0 of .NET Core, the open source, cross-platform .NET runtime platform that was first announced in 2014, has been released today. .NET Core is arriving alongside ASP.NET Core 1.0, the open source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's Web development stack.

Microsoft picked an unusual venue to announce the release: the Red Hat Summit. One of the purposes of .NET Core was to make Linux and OS X into first-class supported platforms, with .NET developers able to reach Windows, OS X, Linux, and (with Xamarin) iOS and Android, too. At the summit today, Red Hat announced that this release would be actively supported by the company on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

After many years of non-cooperation between Microsoft and the largest of the open source commercial Linux companies, Microsoft and Red Hat announced a new partnership in November 2015. This union heralded official support for Red Hat virtual machines in Azure and closer cooperation on .NET. Full support for .NET Core 1.0 marks the next step in that partnership.

When .NET was open sourced, Microsoft created a separate organization, the .NET Foundation, to be the steward of its development. Red Hat joined the foundation in March of this year, along with Unity, maker of the popular Unity game engine, and JetBrains, which develops software development environments. Today, Microsoft announced another new member: Samsung. Samsung has been trying to position itself as a developer of software platforms, not just hardware, hosting developer days and offering SDKs for its smartphones, watches, and TVs running both Android and Tizen. With its most popular programmable products running the Java-using Android, however, the company's membership in the .NET Foundation is a little surprising.