Some wonderful news from Microsoft.
First - from Microsoft:
Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform, adds new development capabilities with Visual Studio 2015, .NET 2015 and Visual Studio Online
On Wednesday, Microsoft Corp. reinforced its commitment to cross-platform developer experiences by open sourcing the full server-side .NET stack and expanding .NET to run on the Linux and Mac OS platforms.
More:
“With billions of devices in the market today, developers need tools that target many different form factors and platforms,” said S. Somasegar, corporate vice president, Developer Division, Microsoft. “Through Visual Studio and .NET we are committed to delivering a comprehensive end-to-end solution for developers to build and manage applications across multiple devices and platforms.”
.NET is their core package for writing stand-alone applications for Windows as well as web based apps - open sourcing this and making it available for Mac and Linux is an incredibly good move.
Second - from TechCrunch:
Microsoft Launches Free, Unrestricted Version Of Visual Studio For Small Teams
Microsoft today launched the Community 2013 edition of Visual Studio, which essentially replaces the very limited Visual Studio Express version the company has been offering for a few years now.
There is a huge difference between Visual Studio Express and the aptly named Visual Studio 2013 Community edition, though: The new version is extensible, so get access to the over 5,100 extensions now in the Visual Studio ecosystem. It’s basically a full version of Visual Studio with no restrictions, except that you can’t use it in an enterprise setting and for teams with more than five people (you can, however, use it for any other kind of commercial and non-commercial project).
“The simple way to think about this is that we are broadening up access to Visual Studio,” Microsoft’s corporate VP of its Developer Division S. “Soma” Somasegar told me in an interview late last month. Somasegar told me that the Community Edition will allow you to build any kind of application for the Web, mobile devices, desktop and the cloud. “It’s a full features version of Visual Studio,” he noted. “It includes the full richness of the Visual Studio extensions and ecosystem.”
Very cool - there are some premium enhancements that still require a subscription to MSDN but Visual Studio by itself is incredibly powerful - it is the default development tool for 99% of all Windows applications
