Free Visual Studio

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News

July16th2008

Still looking for a free Visual Studio? Yeah, right, I am also looking for a free Porsche Carrera GT, but couldn't find any, so far, and if I ever find one, probably the police will also find me, probably before I fully enjoyed one of the cars of my dreams. Anyway, back to software, now - what would you say about a free Visual Studio that doesn't come from Microsoft? Well, read on to find out more!

First of all, let's see what Microsoft has to say about Visual Studio in a few words, just "for the record," shall we? "The Microsoft Visual Studio development system is a suite of development tools designed to aid software developers—whether they are novices or seasoned professionals—face complex challenges and create innovative solutions. Visual Studio's role is to improve the process of development and make the work of achieving breakthroughs easier and more satisfying."

OK, so we know all that mumbo-jumbo, but what about a free Visual Studio, like in "freedom?" I know it may sound like a dream, but some people are trying to make this dream come true, shaped as a open-source tool, all being started by two new members of the Eclipse Foundation.

The idea is simple - Sonatype is planning to offer a Java environment to fight Visual Studio, expected to drop by in mid-September. This company has been founded by the same team that built the Apache Maven Java build and release framework and repository, and they are going to lead the m2eclipse project, an Eclipse plug-in combining Maven and Eclipse.

According to Jason van Zyl, CTO and co-founder of Sonatype and developer of Maven, "Maven combined with the Eclipse IDE is, we think, a solution that is starting to approach the usability of Visual Studio." Unfortunately, there's a pretty long road from "thinking" and "turning a dream into reality" but, as ambitious as it seems to be the entire roadmap of the Eclipse Foundation, we may have the free Visual Studio closer than we think, although its developer and basics are completely different from Microsoft's product...