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.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 24, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of the Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1 and Visual Studio® .NET 2003, the latest release of its award-winning ...