Rubenerd

Microsoft is releasing Xamarin for free with Visual Studio, resulting in much joy on the part of Windows developers. Peter Bright summarised the feeling in Ars Technica:

This decision is arguably one of the main things that developers were hoping might come of a Xamarin acquisition. The tooling and its capabilities are well liked, but its pricing put it out of reach of some developers. That should change today.

Slashdot commentators were equally excited:

As much as I hate Microsoft, this is absolutely fantastic news.

I really wanted to learn Xamarin, but their pricing started at ouchy, and then went batshit ludicrous. (Their ‘free’ offering was such a joke that I pretend it doesn’t even exist).

Well played, Microsoft. Well played.

Meanwhile, our company got this licencing news:

Effective January 1, 2016, Microsoft will increase the price it charges for the following SPLA product. There might be slight differences (+/-) on the published price list, depending on any regional price list variances/currencies.

Visual Studio Professional Edition SAL - per user SAL

• 68%

It’s not just supermarkets hiking up cereal prices to subsidise milk.