Do I have to pay a fee to develop or deploy a .NET application?

Question

I have heard that .NET is not free and that I have to pay Microsoft if I develop a .NET application. Is this true? If so:

1. What do I have to pay?

Answer 1

.NET is free in the sense that you don't have to pay for it. The framework and the SDK, including the compilers can all be downloaded for no charge from Microsoft. .NET is not free, in the sense that you can not modify it and then re-distribute it like you could an open source framework. You also have to pay if you want to use a commecial IDE like Visual Studio. Although there are express versions that are free.