As commenter dwroth aptly put it, "a framework is just a bunch of code that the programmer can call without having to write it explicitly." In a perfect world, you wouldn't need .NET Framework.

.NET Standard is an API specification that defines what Base Class Libraries must be implemented. .NET Core is a managed framework optimized for building console, cloud, ASP.NET Core, and UWP appli ...

Building on the rapid growth in the refactored and reinvigorated .NET Core, Microsoft aims to have many existing .NET Framework 4.8 APIs and features run on .NET 5, along with new APIs and services.