The release of a .NET Core compatible SDK by Couchbase marks a significant development for the .NET community, providing an open-source, cross-platform implementation of the .NET framework. This developer preview version supports both .NET Framework 4.5 and .NET Core 1.0, offering backward compatibility with existing projects unless converted to .NET Core. The version bump to 2.4.X introduces new features such as cluster-level authentication and a data structures API, although these are still under development. The SDK is primarily geared towards asynchronous methods, aligning with Microsoft's shift away from synchronous APIs, though synchronous calls can still be made using Task.Result. The preview was developed with significant community contributions, notably from Brant Burnett, and users are encouraged to contribute or report bugs through the provided GitHub repository and Jira. The SDK can be installed via NuGet, and a step-by-step guide is available for setting up a simple console application on Ubuntu.