That’s what I did today when I wrote about .NET’s moves to share source with developers.

The reason I made the mistake? I saw all these headlines saying that .NET was being open sourced. It fit into the story I wanted to hear. After all Java is open sourced. Flex is open sourced (although someone just pointed out that Adobe isn’t yet accepting submissions).

But I didn’t really do my homework before posting this morning.

Truth is .NET isn’t being open sourced. Microsoft is not taking source code submissions from the developer community. No sirree.

Also, I didn’t really grok the impact on Microsoft developers. Over and over I’ve been getting hate mail today (and hate comments).

So, to correct my mistakes here’s a few things:

1. .NET is NOT being open sourced. It’s being shared sourced. So developers can see the code but can’t change it like they could on true open source projects.
2. For developers on Microsoft’s toolset this is a huge deal because it’ll help them figure out what’s going on inside .NET much better than before.
3. This isn’t the first time that .NET source was opened up, either. Developers, in my comments, have been making that point all day long.

Anyway, since I’m a .NET idiot you might want to check out what other experts are saying about these moves over on TechMeme.

I’ve also been posting the smarter .net posts over on my link blog.