This is the point in the discussion where I'll point out that .NET started out as ".NET Passport", e.g, what people now think of as a Microsoft Account.

See also Apple, who, after a relatively brief dalliance with the name iTools, rebranded its online service as ".mac".

Sigh...

I miss early Internet names like these, although I suppose the fact that the original dot com era didn't last and a bunch of early startups got wiped out - Pets.com, anyone? - gave it a stench that marketers were all too willing to run away from at the first possible opportunity.

.NET was terrible. .net already meant something else.

Obligatory Wikipedia article[0].

For the curious, MSDN is now called Microsoft Docs.

To the surprise of many, much of the documentation on the site is also open-source[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Developer_Network [1]: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs

What's the surprise about documentation being open source? The overwhelming majority of the source is going to consist of the text of the documentation, which is open anyway.

Your information is a little out of date, Microsoft Docs became part of Microsoft Learn, so MSDN is actually now Microsoft Learn, or part of it at least.