Microsoft is marking the 20th birthday of .NET with the first preview of the next version of the platform. Credit: Getty Images In the midst of celebrating the 20th anniversary of its .NET software development platform, Microsoft said it plans to release an initial preview of .NET 7 this week. In a bulletin published February 13, Microsoft said .NET 7 Preview 1 would be released this week, but did not provide details on what to expect in the new version. .NET 7 is due to be published as a production release in November, one year after the release of .NET 6, which Microsoft noted was the fastest adopted version of .NET yet. .NET 6 provided a unified set of base libraries, an SDK, and a simplified development experience, along with enhancements for C# 10 and minimal APIs. Microsoft’s .NET MAUI (Multi-Platform App UI) development framework, meanwhile, is due “very soon,” according to the company. MAUI allows developers to build native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android using a single codebase. February 13, 2022, marks 20 years since Visual Studio .NET launched and the first version of .NET was released. In noting the 20th anniversary of the platform, Microsoft said there were now five million developers using .NET, which is today a free, open source, software development platform for building web apps, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and desktop applications for Windows, MacOS, and Linux computers. Microsoft .NETLibraries and FrameworksSoftware Development