Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio has become free

The Microsoft Robotics Group division puzzled independent developers yesterday with an unexpected announcement that Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 (RDS), a large package for programming robots and 3D modeling, is now free and freely available to anyone.



This is a very unexpected step, which can make it difficult to spread some open platforms from the world of Open Source, such as the Robot Operating System, and the Willow Garage development, the engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum writes .

The screenshots at the top and bottom are 3D models that can be constructed in RDS.
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Previously, you could only download a version of RDS with reduced functionality for free. Now, Microsoft’s strategy is completely changing. They will no longer make money on the sale of tools, but are going to lure the developers of robotics to themselves. To help them in free access, the source codes of some programs and modules are also laid out in order to stimulate joint development and creation of the developer community around the Microsoft Robotics Group.

Estimated by Microsoft itself, since 2007, RDS has been downloaded about half a million times and now has about 60,000 active users.