I doubt Microsoft makes very much money off Visual Studio -- it is far more strategically important for them to have developers writing code on the various Micr

I doubt Microsoft makes very much money off Visual Studio -- it is far more strategically important for them to have developers writing code on the various Microsoft platforms. That's been reflected in MS giving away various tools, like Visual Studio Express, the MSVC compiler, etc. I'd think a major reason for why Microsoft still charges for Visual Studio at all is to avoid killing off ISVs who make development tools for Windows programmers.