Microsoft to release Expression web and blend on MSDN

For quite some time, Microsoft has been resisting placing the Expression series of products on MSDN, claiming that these are more of designer products rather than developer products and don't fit into a Development framework. One good reason would be that this ensures that people who want to buy this have to actually buy it, as opposed to people having MSDN just downloading and installing it.
This seems short-sighted since MSDN is one good way of proliferating a product across a wide range of target users. If they want to beat the products of their competitors such as Adobe which are well-entrenched to some degree, then they need to look at the bigger picture. There has been a wide degree of resentment among the developer community about a patently money-making move.
This feedback seems to have forced a re-think at Microsoft, and a course reversal seems to have happened. Expression Web is now available for MSDN Premium members immediately, and Expression Blend will be available for MSDN Premium members shortly after the Expression Studio release later in Q2 2007.
Expression Design and Expression Media are not included in this MSDN availability since they are not directly intended for application development. Read the blog entry here.