If you read the article, you will find that MS is currently declining to ship compilers as part of the Windows 8 SDK, which is why Ars is so concerned. But I'd also point out that Visual Studio Express 2010 is indeed free, and far more flexible than its 2011 replacement. This represents a massive policy shift.
The Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment. The Windows SDK now requires a compiler and build environment to be installed separately.
Below that they also list a dozen tools and a bunch of documentation and samples that they also no longer include in the SDK. My guess is that they're just trimming down their SDK downloads. Their SDK has been getting more and more bloated over the years with utilities and samples and stuff that most devs don't need.
Completely dropping their command line tools doesn't make sense for anyone who runs build servers; it doesn't make sense for their Powershell tools; and it really doesn't make sense when you consider their recent moves in Open Source. My guess is that the command line tools will be separate downloads from the basic SDK and you'll still be able to write C# code in Notepad++ if you like. The basic SDK will be targeting people writing Metro apps (which they want to encourage by default), but they aren't going to just drop everything else. This is a company that lives and breathes backward compatibility, after all.
It's just a case of poor messaging by Microsoft. Remember last year when everyone thought that all Windows 8 apps were going to be Javascript/HTML 5?
That's also my guess, which I indicated elsewhere in the thread. I'm definitely withholding judgment until we get a wee bit closer to the release date and have a better idea what Microsoft's actually trying to accomplish here. The lack of simple compilers in any capacity is bizarre, if taken as a final statement, since it'd really throw the wrench in pretty much every Windows build farm ever. I suspect this is simply that, right now, given that VS.NET 2k11 Ultimate beta is free anyway, they don't yet have the compiler or doc downloads. I expect them to show up soon.
