It could be a lot of things. Would you like to argue that it is some specific thing that couldn't possibly lead to the sort of oligopoly or monopoly position that Microsoft has eagerly sought and maintained in the past? If so, which exact thing?
I'm arguing that the premise of non-free software and services being somehow better because there must be a catch is just ludicrous. So no, I don't want to argue "it is some specific thing".
I don't think MS is very charitable company and dislike many things about them, but sometimes a deal is just mutually beneficial. Better at times than with paid products.
And if Microsoft has something terrible planned, the community would just fork the project and go in a different direction.
Moreover I want to add that people, and companies, change. Just like a nation isn't the same it was 100 years ago, Microsoft too might have toned down its malicious practises. Just as a thought to you. We don't anymore blame Germans for being Nazis either.
I'm not saying paid IDEs are necessarily better. But I am saying that in practice, commercial IDE vendors have been making superior products to the free-as-in-speech ones, and have been for 20 years at least.
You blow a lot of smoke here, with "sometimes" and "might". Sure, Microsoft could have been taken over by angels straight from heaven, and is now only intent on doing charitable works until the money runs out. Many things are possible. But possible doesn't mean true. If you'd like to argue something's true, by all means do it.
I think the only substance is "the community would just fork". One, there's no particular proof that a bunch of volunteers can make something like that. Two, that's an enormous effort. Look at how much work and time it took between MS using a free IE to kill Netscape and the emergence of Firefox. And that only worked because Mozilla found a revenue model that let it afford the large number of full-time engineers needed to produce a browser.
So if you're serious about your argument, why don't you explain exactly how "the community" will afford to do that fork. And why your imagined destruction of paid developer tool vendors like JetBrains and handing MS a monopoly in the market is ok as long as you're getting something free right now.
