OK, I admit the title of this post is a bit misleading. The SQL Server 2005 Express edition will be free. The other versions are going to cost you $$$.
The important thing, from my perspective, is that Microsoft has started to reveal prices for products that are being released later this year.
Tom Rizzo, SQL Server Director, has posted some useful information about the new editions.
From Tom:
No product family discussion would be complete without talking about both the Developer and Express Editions.
We will have a Developer Edition so that developers can build and test their applications before deploying them to their production servers.
Express Edition replaces MSDE and provides a new set of capabilities such as XCopy deployment, a very easy to understand licensing model, a graphical management tool, and also SQL Server Reporting Services controls so you can quickly build reports off your Express Edition data. Express Edition also gives partners the ability to embed a database into their applications at no cost to the partner. The Express Edition is free and completely redistributable.
I'm excited to try the new Express Edition. We tried to use MSDE in DbValidator but ran into a number of issues. From what I've read it seems that Microsoft has fixed most of the problems we encountered. I need to spend some time using Express next month.