Microsoft has confirmed that its Visual Studio 2005
Express development software will remain permanently free of
charge.
The Visual Studio 2005 Express editions would join the SQL
Server 2005 Express editions as a “no-cost offering”, the company
said. It was previously expected to be offered free for a year.
Since the launch of the Visual Studio and SQL Server Express
editions in November, they have been downloaded more than
five million times.
“By making the Visual Studio 2005 Express editions available
free of charge, we’re putting the power of programming into the
hands of an exploding community of recreational programmers,” Soma
Somasegar, corporate vice-president of Microsoft’s developer
division, said.
Last month, Microsoft finally released its Visual Studio 2005
Team Foundation Server, after a four-month delay. The
company released the rest of the Visual Studio 2005 package in
November, but failed to ship the server component that allows
Visual Studio to be used by development teams.
