Microsoft Delights Devs By Freeing Its Xamarin Coding Tools

When a tech giant acquires a company that makes software you like or depend on, it's hard not be nervous. Those were surely some of the questions on the minds of developers last month when Microsoft announced that it would acquire Xamarin, a company that makes tools that help coders build applications that can run on multiple systems, including those made by Microsoft's rivals, namely Android and iOS. In fact, just the opposite: It's making Xamarin's platform free for all users of Microsoft's popular Visual Studio coding tool, including those who use the free "community" edition of the product. "We're releasing the Xamarin runtime and all the command line tools you need to build apps," Xamarin co-founder Nat Friedman said in a comment on the Hacker News forum. But for today at least, Xamarin users can be grateful that their favorite product's new corporate overlord doesn't appear to be mucking things up.