From my understanding, .NET, C# F# are all open source. The main thing in the tool chain that isnt is Visual Studio but most people can get by with VS Code
Highly recommend using JetBrains Rider instead if you want the best IDE experience. It's not a Microsoft product & is used by a large percentage of .NET devs.
You are correct to mention that especially since theyve eased up on their licensing recently, I had in mind that it was still paid for software like Visual Studio. Rider is much better for .NET than VS code!
“Can the F# ecosystem survive losing the support of Microsoft?” Is not the kind of question that can be answered by looking at a GitHub repo.
The purpose of this website is conversion, particularly with experts. Asking a question shouldn’t be met with pithy links that don’t answer the question.
The F# ecosystem probably would not survive abandonment by Microsoft. F# the language would probably be fine, but without the .NET runtime and tooling, it probably wouldn't be compelling. It is not widely adopted in industry, so I think finding corporate sponsorship sufficient to keep it up at the level of the other languages is slim. I don't imagine a world where there is enough community support to keep it relevant.
F# has been a first-class language in .NET for at least 15 years and has lived on under Ballmer and Satya. It seems to serve as a useful R&D program for both the runtime's capabilities and for features that may go into C#, which will be the premiere language barring a cataclysm. I don't think it's quite as precarious as it might seem on the surface.
I don't think C# is going to be dropped in the foreseeable future. I don't really think F# will be either, for the reasons I just articulated, but the thought is experiment is "can F# survive if Microsoft drops it."
Theres also the danger of microsoft being required to switch it off over sanctioning to your geographic region so be aware of that if you live outside the US
