Visual C++ has been available for free, for at least 20 years now, first with the language specific express editions, and now with full community edition.
Indeed, however before the express editions, the only way Visual C++ was available for free, was via piracy.
Naturally depending on the country culture that was hardly a problem, with endless list of software catalogs on street bazaars, but that wasn't what I was refering to.
There was a short phase before express when you could get a free command line visual C compiler with some SDK. I think the intention was to enable users of other compilers to create C bindings to msvc C++ ABI DLL or something like that, perhaps related to the dawn of .net. I wanted to make Buzz plugins that are tied to msvc ABI and had just recently lost my "cultural compatibility with piracy" to the availability of gimp, djgpp and friends. "Pay or pirate" had been displaced by "pay or the challenges of freedom". Of course just when I had my routine somewhat going, express appeared and my adventures in frugality imploded.
ps: long dead thread, but my memory just chimed in with the suggestion that express might have already been available, but only that command line version did not have all optimizations disabled.
Plus I think the express editions came with some strings attached. I could be wrong, because I already had the gcc ports (djgpp, mingw) and didn't care much about Microsoft's breadcrumbs.