Dear Microsoft,
A few facts:
- I’m a competent Silverlight developer. I’ve even dabbled in XNA.
- I’m an owner of a iPhone 3GS.
- I would like a new phone.
- I’d like to buy a phone powered by the Windows Phone 7 OS when it’s made available.
- I’d like to make some free applications for my phone and others to use. A few for hobbies (like photography), and a few utilities for myself for work.
- I don’t however want to spend $99 a year for the privilege of doing so.
Why not open it up for people like myself?
Here’s a few alternatives:
- Make it free for those who make only free applications
- Make it free for those who agree to include a Bing-Ad placement component in the application, in a prominent position.
- Make it free for those who buy a copy of Visual Studio 2010 and Blend (like myself – I don’t use the Express editions).
- Make it free so that there’s no barrier to entry – that people and companies don’t need to worry about the extra fee – just jump on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon.
Without this change, I probably won’t buy a Windows Phone 7, and will start building more HTML 5 web apps, that will work just fine on my iPhone 3GS (powered by iOS4). 
.
It makes sense to make it free for those who want to develop free apps only so that they can only list their apps as free and before they can list paid apps they will need to activate that via payment.
I only know of one way to get on for free, if you are a student with a .edu email address. I still have my student .edu email address so I used it to enrol for free.