An InfoWorld article suggests that Microsoft has opened up Visual Studio to third parties, allowing them to extend and redistribute it. Rational Software plan to integrate a new Java compiler to replace the existing J++ compiler. I don't envy any of the partners the task though - even Microsoft have failed to integrate their flagship development tool, Visual Basic, into the environment. I have to say that in my opinion Visual Studio is the biggest text editor in existence, just about every other feature it sports is either broken or simply a waste of space.