Can you install it [edit: the .Net 7/8 platform that sounds interesting, not the IDE] for free on a Linux server and get the same benefits? (This isn't advocacy, it's a literal question about something I don't know.)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux
Also VS Code, an open source IDE with first class support for .NET languages:
It turned me right off C# outside of work. There are plenty of other languages that are better suited for hobby development.
The cynic in me suspects all the drama was directly related to Scott Hanselman suddenly losing interest in bloggin.
I'm not sure why they do not open source the debugger. I suppose it is obvious to some extent that some companies (JetBrains) are able to charge for high quality tooling. Microsoft makes a trickle of money from Visual Studio professional.
Though the objective function and decision variables are somewhat opaque, this is clearly an optimization problem.