I agree it seems odd to suddenly be charged for Xcode -- so odd I wondered if there was some regulatory reason. I don't understand anything about Sarbanes-Oxley, though, so that could be a total nonsense idea. And it doesn't seem to stand to reason that they could give Xcode away before but they can't now. And if that was the reason, why charge $5 and not $1 like for FaceTime?
I doubt this is a significant revenue source. The only other reason I can think of is that it (slightly) deters non-developers from downloading Xcode out of curiosity and wasting Apple's bandwidth and their own time on something they won't need. Previously there was a (slight) deterrent in the form of having to register as a developer, but now anybody can buy it with a single click. Maybe this isn't a sensible reason. It's all I can think of offhand.
We've enjoyed free dev tools from Apple for years and years. I'm not going to condemn Apple for charging five lousy bucks. For changing the Find interface in Xcode? I'll damn them to hell. But not for five bucks.
--Andy
