What's Owin got to do with WCF?

Question

I have a WCF Service project. It builds with no error and runs in Visual Studio (2015). When I attempt to access the service page via the Browser, for example, http://localhost:59007/MyServiceEndpoint.svc it shows a yellow screen of death with references to Owin.

Hello ?! Whats OWIN got to do with it? I've used WCF before OWIN was invented, did not use OWIN before and don't intend to use now. I checked my Proj References, and there is no reference to Owin Dll's anywhere. What's going on?

Answer 1

It turns out even though I was not referencing OWIN anywhere in my WCF project, somehow the OWIN DLL's (Microsoft.Owin.dll, Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb.dll, Microsoft.Owin.Security.dll, Owin.dll, Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll) were present in the /bin of my WCF project.

I deleted all of them manually and now the yellow screen of death is gone !