NETMF features a subset of the .NET base class libraries (about 70 classes with about 420 methods), an implementation of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), a GUI framework loosely based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and a Web Services stack based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL).

[3] Announced at the Build 2014 conference, the foundation was created as an independent forum to foster open development and collaboration around the growing set of open-source technologies for .NET.

For example, the platform does not support symmetric multiprocessing, multidimensional arrays, machine-dependent types, or unsafe instructions.

The CLR is an interpreter rather than a just-in-time compiler, and uses a simpler mark-and-sweep garbage collector instead of a generational method.

[7] It is a common platform for Windows SideShow devices and has been adopted in other markets, such as energy management, healthcare, industrial automation, and sensor networks.

[8] In November 2009, Microsoft released the source code of the Micro Framework to the development community as free and open-source software under the Apache License 2.0.

[11] On 3 August 2010, Secret Labs announced the Netduino, the first all-open-source electronics platform using the .NET Micro Framework.

[13] On 23 January 2017, after numerous attempts ([14] and [15]) to revive .NET Microframework project and bring it to community governance and a period of work "in the dark", a group of embedded systems developers publicly announced .NET nanoFramework as spin-off of .NET Micro Framework.

[16] A major rework on the build system, an easier way of adding new targets, a modernized API following UWP, a Visual Studio extension with all the tools required for managing targets, full development experience from coding to debugging on the native code and support for ARM Cortex-M and ESP32 were the key differences at that time.

Multiple vendors make chips, development kits, and more that run the Micro Framework.

[33] STMicroelectronics, creators of the microcontroller family STM32, make low-cost discovery boards to showcase the controllers, and provides ports of the Micro Framework to run on them.