Microsoft is giving this away freely, Microsoft is attempting to build a community around it, Microsoft is attempting through it to establish itself as a player in the formerly despised Hobbyist marketplace.

All of which suggests that Microsoft may well be attempting to do this on the cheap, on the understanding that Hobbyists do not care about quality - which is of course a load of bovine excrement - Hobbyists do care quite a lot about quality.

A way of assuring Microsoft's community of Hobbyists would be to release the Visual [PL] Express community of its genuine interest in serving their needs, would be to release the source code, under a suitable Open Source Initiative-approved license - and since most of the Visual [PL] Express is entirely Microsoft-sourced, I can see no valid reason why it should not be done. It would also serve as proof that Microsoft is genuine, as far as the FOSS communities go, as well.