Comments on: With Eye on Future, Microsoft Offer Startups Freebies

By: Free Microsoft software & services for startups « Phil Derksen

Free Microsoft software & services for startups « Phil Derksen — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:54:40 +0000

[...] Additional coverage: TechCrunch, GigaOM [...]

By: Ajay

Ajay — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:18:09 +0000

this will help microsoft to get some open source market because people don’t use ms technologies due to the cost but with this more and more developers will use ms technologies

By: Triple T

Triple T — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:02:24 +0000

I always have my disbelief when a total commercial corporation give something ‘free’. Vote Microsoft for Open Source? Too good to be true.

By: OStatic

OStatic — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:42:00 +0000

Microsoft's Biz Spark is Another Direct Shot at Open Source...

GigaOm has an interesting post up today on Microsoft's effort to woo startups and combat the open source movement. Its new Biz Spark initiative is being rolled out in 82 countries, and offers many types of incentives to developers and startups. It als...

By: Microsoft offre des logiciels aux startups | ReadWriteWeb France

Microsoft offre des logiciels aux startups | ReadWriteWeb France — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:43:41 +0000

[...] où la plupart construisent leurs technologie sur des bases open source, quoi qu’il arrive. Comme le souligne Om Malik, l’idée d’utiliser une solution Microsoft ne lui était même pas venue à [...]

By: Microsoft Offers Free Software to Startups :: Blogku.Wimos.Info ::

Microsoft Offers Free Software to Startups :: Blogku.Wimos.Info :: — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:19:03 +0000

[...] a consideration, as they are already building their software on top of free software anyway. As Om Malik points out, the idea of using Microsoft software often didn’t even cross his mind when he [...]

By: Grant

Grant — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:04:19 +0000

I took a look at what was on offer, as our start up is still under the US$1m mark (6 months in). We are not anti-MS and happily use MS Office on XP & Vista, but pretty much develop on a LAMP stack & non-MS dev tools. We use Photoshop for graphics and Google Apps for mail.

Even if we got all this software, something like Expression Blend has no value as the cost of training to use something different is more expensive than Adobe CS. We can use Express versions of MS tools if we need something like a small C# app.

So this announcement helped focus my attention that surprisingly, we really don't need MS tools even if they are free. And remember that they are not entirely free; if we switched from MySQL to SQLServer, then rewriting code costs, and deployment for our customers gets more expensive and complex.

By: BizSpark - Crack or a Crutch? | CloudAve

BizSpark - Crack or a Crutch? | CloudAve — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:01:55 +0000

[...] thoughts on the announcement below; GigaOm ReadWriteWeb [...]

By: Microsoft’s BizSpark Offers Free Tools to Startups » The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:40:03 +0000

[...] ever harvest on their own. If you want to read more commentary, I suggest you check out TechCrunch, GigaOM or VentureBeat. They each had great write-ups on the [...]

By: juliejulie

juliejulie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:47:04 +0000

Can they offer free counseling for people who have to make their apps work on IE6?

By: Rob Adler

Rob Adler — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:03:38 +0000

Obviously, this is a good idea for MSFT. They have the opportunity to lock in potential large customers without much risk of revenue cannibalization.

But the the phrase, "the first taste is always free" kept running through my mind as I was reading this post.