I think the implication is that any languages built into Visual Studio get an automatic stamp of approval from corporate management, which is why we get millions of lines of code written in C# and VB.net and not, say, Boo or IronPython. Thus, F# will have something previous ML dialects do not: mainstream credibility.

Of course, one could make the same argument for J# -- which shipped in Visual Studio but is now being discontinued for lack of popularity.

historical debugger

If IBM or Oracle announced their official commitment to Scala, that would be a comparable scenario. It's not just F#, which has been available for a while now. It's that it's now a first-class citizen in all respects.

Do you have any more data about this? I mean, the Standard edition included an optimizing compiler, libraries like ATL and MFC, etc.

Are you sure they will be free?

I knew about the free Express editions but Community... never heard of it.