Microsoft has announced during the ongoing BUILD 2016 keynote, that Xamarin developer tools will be open-sourced and made available for free to developers.

Last month, Microsoft finally acquired Xamarin after years of speculation and obviously the company had some major plans in mind for the cross-platform app development tools. With today's announcement, the company has done away with the multi-tier pricing plan that was holding many developers back from adopting Xamarin.

Developers using any version of Visual Studio can get Xamarin for free. However, it should be noted that enterprises will not be eligible for the free tools as per the Licensing Terms published by Microsoft.

Alongside this, the Redmond giant also made the tools open source, to further enable development from the community.

Xamarin's Miguel de Icaza says best part of iOS simulator in Windows is "no need to invest in chair that spins" to switch to your Mac. — Andy Weir (@gcaweir) March 31, 2016

Another major announcement related to Xamarin that has just come in, is that the tools will now feature the iOS simulator, for the first time on Windows.

Note: An earlier version of this article mentioned that Visual Studio purchase was required.