The problem is Microsoft is into the business of selling software licenses to make their billions. They don't have a billion dollar hardware business like Apple or a billion dollar ad business like Google that allows them to license their software for free/cheap. So if MS start licensing their software for free, they would stop making money (they do have the xbox and a few services but they're not enoough).

I think the middle ground would be to give away Professional. This would cost them 1.5k or so in license, but would get a lot of people in the door. The fact that I can't easily unit test in an integrated way with Express makes me not use .NET even though C#/F# are better languages than Java.

Well the issue that I see is that Microsoft has to attract more people to their platforms because their platforms are their "billion dollar" business.

I fail to see a better way of increasing the number of users of their platforms, then to release the entry point for free.

I don't know any recent numbers, but it used to be that VS and Windows were symbiotic profit centres, helping each other to generate profits, so I can see the reluctance in going all-free-all-the-time for one of them at the same time as the other is seriously at risk.

Hell, since they've got deep pockets, I'd consider purchasing Telerik too and bake their controls into the IDE and still give that shit away for free...

If they do that, they kill the commercial viability of alternatives, which among other things has anti-trust implications.

In what way? They already have Intellisense and controls built into the IDE. Red Gate and Jet Brains just make them better IMHO. Some people prefer CodeRush and JustCode, although with my scenario in purchasing Telerik, JustCode would become part of the deal... Some people prefer DevExpress and Infragistics to Telerik...

I'm not at all familiar with the current ecosystem, but the theory is that complete replacements for VS wouldn't be able to compete if VS was free.

Whatever the merits of the thesis, they'd certainly get sued, and almost certainly lose.