Redmond, Washington — Barely a month has passed when Microsoft caused considerable rumble in the open source community when it declared that the free, Express version of its forthcoming new Visual Studio development software would no longer offer support for desktop-style applications, however, Microsoft did what appears to be an about-turn and said that a new, free-of-charge “Windows Desktop” version of the software–which has since been renamed Visual Studio Express 2012–will support desktop-style applications after all.
It appears, however, that after hearing objections from developers, and the uproar sounded across the internet over the matter has led Microsoft to change its decision to drop support ensuring that when Visual Studio Express 2012 launches this winter, desktop support will remain intact in the feature list, for both C++, C# and Visual Basic programming languages.
“As we have so far cooperated to deliver the best experience with Visual Studio for our platforms with Windows 8, Windows Phone, and for Web and Windows Azure, we heard the lamentable voices of our community that developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features at the Express level,” wrote S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, in a blog post over the weekend.
Had the software maker strictly implemented its decision, then the only way to write desktop apps for Windows 8 would be to cough up the $400–$500 needed to purchase Visual Studio 11 Professional. This gave rise to the speculation that Microsoft wants to push developers towards developing Metro apps for the upcoming Windows 8 tablets, for which it stands to gain 30 percent of net proceeds from each app sale.
“Today, I’m thrilled to announce that we will add Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop to the Visual Studio 2012 family,” Somasegar added. “This will cater to the Visual Studio Express family significant new capabilities that we have made available in Visual Studio 2012 for creating great desktop applications.”
As a result, developers will be able to use C++, C#, or Visual Basic to devise Windows desktop and dashboard applications, Somasegar noted; they will also get access to “the latest compilers and programming language tools, integrated unit testing, and the ability for small development teams to collaborate via Team Explorer and TFS Express.”
However, Microsoft may have temporarily compromised with the situation at hand, but it may not always be a friend to Linux and open source, but lately it seems to be taking a better approach, at least in these particular cases. So, let us hope this trend continues.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, it seems to be a good news for developers interested in making desktop apps for Windows 8 using the free version of Visual Studio.