Studio 11 has become Sun Microsystems' latest application development environment to break the price barrier and be given away for free.

Studio 11, released Wednesday, is Sun's C, C++ and Fortran development environment for building applications on Solaris and Linux, Sparc, x86 and x64 hardware.

Previous editions of Sun Studio sold for around $3,000 per copy and the move follows the release of an edition of Sun's Java Studio Enterprise, for Java development, along with Java Studio Creator for Java-based web applications and interfaces that are free to registered members of Sun's Developer Network (SDN).

John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun software, said in a statement that Sun was "enabling developers access to the highest performing, most productive suite of tools on the planet, without the burden of additional costs."

Sun is trying to increase the number of developers using its tools and runtimes by making the tools available for no cost or with conditions attached such as joining SDN.®