Two companies decided to release their ides for free this week after having previously been charging for them. The first company is Sun Microsystems, which decided to release the Sun Java Studio Creator product. This does not mean much to me because my favorite Java IDE at the moment is Idea's IntelliJ product but I haven't found religion with it or anything. If I use JavaServer Faces (JSF) on a project in the future I might make the switch but not right now.

The other company, and story I found more interesting, was Microsoft and their release of Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions. I'm not sure if I would make the switch to .Net just because of this but I do find it interesting and mildly appealing. One of the major hurdles I've had in getting into .Net was that the IDEs for the platform actually cost money. IntelliJ costs money as well but after having already used Java I knew what I was getting into and it is a really really good IDE.

However, my second hurdle to commit my self to learning .Net has not gone away. That hurdle is the likelihood that Microsoft will release an entirely new platform in two years time that will not be backwardly compatible with .Net. At that point I will either need to learn an entirely new platform again of risk all the work I had put into the current .Net platform to be obsolete.

I solve business problems my using Information Technology. I do not want to jump on the Microsoft platform treadmill and learn things over again every few years. That isn't adding any value to me personally. I'm sure it would add value to Microsoft's bottom line but not mine.