.NET also comes with "telemetry" built-in that sends your data to Microsoft without asking for your consent:
https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145
I wouldn't want to run software from someone who thinks taking such liberties with my machine and my data is OK.
> so pleasant you don’t even think about it
I'm sure Microsoft would prefer that people don't think about Microsoft is doing to them. But when do you think about it, you might reconsider using Microsoft software.
In Some more things about Django I've been enjoyingdotnet
sdk
C#2020–2026
dotnet / sdk
sdk
Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI
46Distinct people
61Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145 My favorite part is when someone figures out "telemetry" includes the MAC address, and the dev team just goes completely silent.
craftinator used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- dotnet/runtime · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year61 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-05-21 14:25:34 UTC to 2026-07-27 09:32:34 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 30 | 4 | 26 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Welcome to dotnet sdk
This repository contains core functionality needed to create .NET projects that are shared between Visual Studio and the .NET CLI.
MSBuild tasks are under /src/Tasks/Microsoft.NET.Build.Tasks/.
See dotnet/project-system for the project system work that is specific to Visual Studio.
See the dotnetup documentation
for work on the .NET toolchain manager. Dotnetup changes should target the
release/dnup branch rather than main.
Common project and item templates are found in template_feed.
Build status
Visibility
All jobs
Public
Microsoft Internal
Installing the SDK
You can download the .NET SDK as either an installer (MSI, PKG) or a zip (zip, tar.gz). The .NET SDK contains both the .NET runtime and CLI tools.
Official builds
.NET SDK latest builds table
Looking for dotnet-install sources?
Sources for dotnet-install.sh and dotnet-install.ps1 are in the install-scripts repo.
How do I engage and contribute?
We welcome you to try things out, file issues, make feature requests and join us in design conversations. Be sure to check out our project documentation
This project has adopted the .NET Foundation Code of Conduct to clarify expected behavior in our community.
How do I build the SDK?
Start with the Developer Guide.
How do I test an SDK I have built?
To test your locally built SDK, run eng\dogfood.cmd after building. That script starts a new Powershell with the environment configured to redirect SDK resolution to your build.
From that shell your SDK is available in:
any Visual Studio instance launched via & devenv.exe
dotnet build
msbuild
How do I determine the timeline I must follow to get my changes in for a specific version of .NET?
Please see the Pull Request Timeline Guide.
How we triage and review PRs
With the SDK repository being the home for many different areas, we've started trying to label incoming issues for the area they are related to using Area- labels. Then we rely on the codeowners to manage and triages issues in their areas. Feel free to contact the owners listed in that file if you're not getting a response on a particular issue or PR. Please try to label new issues as that'll help us route them faster.
For issues related to the central SDK team, typically they are assigned out to a team member in the first half of each week. Then each member is asked to review and mark those needing further discussion as "needs team triage" and otherwise setting a milestone for the issue. Backlog means we will consider it in the future if there is more feedback. Discussion means we have asked for more information from the filer. All other milestones indicate our best estimate for when a fix will be targeted for noting that not all issues will get fixed. If you are not getting a quick response on an issue assigned to a team member, please ping them.
The example query used for triage of .NET SDK issues can be viewed here
For PRs, we assign a reviewer once a week on Wednesday, looking only at PRs that are green in the build. If you are contributing:
Get the PR green.
Include a test if possible.
Mention @dotnet-cli if you want to raise visibility of the PR.
License
The .NET SDK project uses the MIT license.
The LICENSE.txt and ThirdPartyNotices.txt in any downloaded archives are authoritative.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
4 sourcesYou can make it statically linked using musl. (This is underdocumented because Microsoft thinks it's usually a bad idea: https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/37643#issuecomment-1873...)
In Just Use Go>It starts by not looking into Windows through UNIX developer glasses.
People don't need any UNIX biases to just want multiple versions of MSVS to work the way Microsoft advertises. For example, with every new version of Visual Studio, Microsoft always says you can install it side-by-side with an older version.
But every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects. It doesn't break for everybody or for all projects but it's always a recurring bug report with new versions. VS2019 broke something in existing VS2017 installs. VS2022 broke something in VS2019. etc.
The "side-by-side-installs-is-supposed-to-work-but-sometimes-doesn't" tradition continues with the latest VS2026 breaking something in VS2022. E.g. https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/51796
I once installed
Read the rest
VS2019 side-by-side with VS2017 and when I used VS2017 to re-open a VS2017 WinForms project, it had red squiggly lines in the editor when viewing cs files and the build failed. I now just install different versions of MSVS in totally separate virtual machines to avoid problems.
I predict that a future version VS2030 will have install bugs that breaks VS2026. The underlying issue that causes side-by-side bugs to re-appear is that MSVS installs are integrated very deeply into Windows. Puts files in c:\windows\system32, etc. (And sometimes you also get the random breakage with mismatched MSVCRT???.DLL files) To avoid future bugs, Microsoft would have to re-architect how MSVS works -- or "containerize" it to isolate it more.
In contrast, gcc/clang can have more isolation without each version interfering with each other.
I'm not arguing this thread's msvcup.exe tool is necessary but I understand the motivations to make MSVS less fragile and more predictable.
Python has an elected steering council and core team. The governance process explicitly tries to avoid conflict of interest by disallowing more than two steering council members working for the same employer. See PEP 13 [1].
By contrast, .NET is controlled by Microsoft (with veto over board decisions [2] and code changes [3]), integrates Microsoft's telemetry to send your data to Microsoft by default [4] and deliberately hobbles features to benefit Microsoft [5].
[1] https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/
[2] https://dotnetfoundation.org/about/policies/.net-foundation-...
[3] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
[4] https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145
[5] https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/22247
In The history of C# and TypeScript with Anders Hejlsberg [video]