VS.NET is something of a special case, since Microsoft would like nothing more than to give it away for free. They don't, because if they did it would make too

VS.NET is something of a special case, since Microsoft would like nothing more than to give it away for free. They don't, because if they did it would make toolmakers like ReSharper and CodeSmith seem unjustifiably expensive. If you're a small shop, you can get in thru BizSpark and get a pack of MSDN licenses big enough for your whole team for something like $400, all in. So sure, you can pay $2500/copy retail if you're big enough to do so. Or if you're small, you can pay peanuts. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they go out of their way to take care of their developers.