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Introducing Microsoft .NET 6
Microsoft is unveiling its road map for the next major release of .NET, along with a first preview download.
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With the release last year of .NET 5, Microsoft switched its platform development away from the 20-year-old .NET Framework to the newer, cross-platform, open source .NET Core. The .NET Framework has moved into maintenance mode, while the new .NET completes its separation from Windows release cycles with a new cadence of annual releases.
In that new cadence, .NET 5 is what’s referred to as a current supported release, with 2021’s .NET 6 intended to be the first long-term support version of the new platform. That gives .NET 6 three years of support, as opposed to .NET 5’s support which ends sometime early in 2022, three months after the .NET 6 release. You can think of current releases as pioneering new features for developers who produce regular updates, mainly for consumer applications. Long-term support fits better with enterprise product lifecycles and support models.