The only problem I see with this analogy is that Microsoft makes money when developers pull new users onto their platform ($50 per Windows license), which makes it a much more symbiotic relationship.

I am interested in seeing if these Twitter apps are still going to be pumped out in such a ferocious speed once Twitter starts to charge per use of their API.

$600 dollars for visual studio, yah Microsoft loves devs.

Free for personal use, I'm going to keep suggesting it until I turn blue in the face.

Actually that's for the PRO edition (actually it's currently $799 USD.) It's $299 USD for the standard one.

I absolutely defy you to come up with a better IDE with better support (MSDN, etc.) It is a joy to work with.

They DO take care of their devs and always have.

I still don't see a justification for charging the at home devs for this. The benefits of a more vibrant development community around MS software FAR outweigh the peanuts they get from charging us that 300 dollars.

On the bright side they can still charge their corporate customers for the seats which is where all the VS revenue's come from anyway.

Running around screaming about "It's the best IDE evar!" doesn't justify charging independent devs for it. Provide the tools so that devs can build your ecosystem.

FWIW they provide an almost completely functional Visual Studio Express edition for free (that is a relatively new thing) and have even started including things like JQuery. It's a pretty slow process but I think they have always listened to their devs.

Incidentally, I do think it's the best IDE out there but I'm not a MS fanboi, and have spent plenty of time in other IDEs and even vi :-)