F# will contine to be freely available

I asked on twitter if anyone knew if F# would still be available for free now that it is being integrated into Visual Studio. There was no answer as such but David Morton suggested I ask Don Syme directly and share the answer.

So here it is:

Hi Tore

Free options will continue to exist, most likely through the VS shell. For example, we'll be continuing with our VS2008 plugin until the plans around a VS2010 shell finalize

We're unlikely to have a dedicated VS Express version for a while.

Kind regards
Don

Good to know!
(I am not in a position to use F# at work since it is a Java shop, but it is comforting to know that I can use it for recreational coding without investing in a Visual Studio license.)