Earlier today, Soma (VP for Microsoft Developer Division) announced some big news for VSIP partners and folks doing VSX:

• Visual Studio 2008 is almost ready for release, and will RTM this month!
• "As a response to our partners’ request, we are going to remove license restrictions with Visual Studio and the Visual Studio SDK to enable you to use the Visual Studio IDE and build applications that target the platform of your choice." (i.e. non-Microsoft platforms)
• "For our premier VSIP customers, we are going to provide access to the Visual Studio source code to enable you to better design and debug your add-ins to Visual Studio."

Woo hoo!!! While not explicitly mentioned in the announcement above, we also plan on shipping the Visual Studio 2008 SDK at the same time. We're working hard to put the finishing touches on the SDK and do our final testing right now, so stay tuned for RTM announcements for both Visual Studio 2008 and the SDK in the coming few weeks.