[.NET](https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/) is a general purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on [GitHub](https://github.com/dotnet/core). It is cross-platform, supporting Windows, macOS and Linux, and can be used in device, cloud, and embedded/IoT scenarios.
.NET has several capabilities that make development easier, including automatic memory management, (runtime) generic types, reflection, asynchrony, concurrency, and native interop. Millions of developers take advantage of these capabilities to efficiently build high-quality applications.
- [C#](https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/csharp/) is simple, powerful, type-safe, and object-oriented while retaining the expressiveness and elegance of C-style languages. Anyone familiar with C and similar languages will find it straightforward to write in C#.
- [F#](https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/fsharp/) is a cross-platform, open-source, functional programming language for .NET. It also includes object-oriented and imperative programming.
[.NET](https://github.com/dotnet/core) is open source (MIT and Apache 2 licenses) and was contributed to the [.NET Foundation](http://dotnetfoundation.org) by Microsoft in 2014. It can be freely adopted by individuals and companies, including for personal, academic or commercial purposes. Multiple companies use .NET as part of apps, tools, new platforms and hosting services.
You are invited to [contribute new features](https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md), fixes, or updates, large or small; we are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to process them as fast as we can.
The [.NET Docker samples](https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/main/samples/README.md) show various ways to use .NET and Docker together. See [Building Docker Images for .NET Applications](https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/docker/building-net-docker-images) to learn more.
You can quickly run a container with a pre-built [.NET Docker image](https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-dotnet-samples/), based on the [.NET console sample](https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/main/samples/dotnetapp/README.md).
You can quickly run a container with a pre-built [.NET Docker image](https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-dotnet-samples/), based on the [ASP.NET Core sample](https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/main/samples/aspnetapp/README.md).
See [Hosting ASP.NET Core Images with Docker over HTTPS](https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/main/samples/host-aspnetcore-https.md) to use HTTPS with this image.
* We update the supported .NET images within 12 hours of any updates to their base images (e.g. debian:buster-slim, windows/nanoserver:ltsc2022, buildpack-deps:bionic-scm, etc.).
