I have been using VB 6 for a couple of years now and I am thinking of upgrading to .NET. My question is this. Many people around the world do not have or have even heard of the .NET framework, obviously this would present a problem when distributing applications. Is there an option in any of the .NET languages to compile the source code into native code, which does NOT require the .NET framework to run? I heard that VC .NET had the ability to compile into .NET code or standard Window code, is this true for all the other languages, specifically VB .NET?

Thanks for your help!