I find it kind of confusing that anyone attempts to make money building developer tools for MS platforms. The behavior described here is MS's standard operatin

I find it kind of confusing that anyone attempts to make money building developer tools for MS platforms. The behavior described here is MS's standard operating procedure. Their goal is to control everything. They want to provide a fully integrated MS software development platform that's slightly easier to use than open source, supports legacy code, and comes with legacy users. If there is ever an opportunity for building a tool that augments / integrates with the MS platform, that opportunity only exists because MS either 1) lacks the vision, or 2) has not chosen to place engineers on that idea. It is a transient condition. If the idea is worth a lot of money, MS will eventually try to replace the third-party tool with their own.