Microsoft just made the VSIP program free of charge. Awesome.

[via The Scobleizer Weblog]

Now this is good news from Microsoft! This means that products like Virtuoso can now compete head-on with Yukon (on a level playing field when it arrives) as far as Visual Studio.NET integration goes. Hopefully I will no longer have to rant about any of the following:

  1. Missing Data Access Controls and Wizards for ODBC (we already have annbsp interesting Generic ADO.NET Provider en route to GA release)
  2. Tightly bound integration between Visual Studio.NET ("Whidbey" or "Orcas")nbspand Yukon (next release of SQL Server), it's up to us (OpenLink) to get the same degree of integration re. Virtuoso (via VSIP), but most importantly Visual Studio's future will not be inextricably linked to Yukon's (let's hope the same applies to IE and Longhorn)

I wonder if the same degree of openness could extend to Web Matrix? That would be something indeed!