
Microsoft to Give Free Software to Startups - ksvs
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Microsoft-Launches-Effort-to-Spark-Startups/
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mdasen
Microsoft is acting in its best interests. By giving away that software, it
means that those startups might use it rather than Linux. So, when they become
larger, Microsoft gets money from them.

As someone who works at a non-profit, we get Microsoft stuff for next to
nothing. It means that everyone who comes through our IT department gets
familiar with MS stuff and prevents FOSS from getting as much of a foothold
due to cost concerns.

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socratees
Like RMS said, its like giving free packs of cigarettes to children till they
get addicted. And then its done. Why don't people recognize the evil?

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tomjen
Because unlike cigarettes nobody dies, and a company (thankfully) has the
right to make money.

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trezor
_and a company (thankfully) has the right to make money._

That you actually have to point this out on a site largely populated by people
running _startups_ is pretty sad.

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nailer
He doesn't have to point it out. RMS' issue isn't that Microsoft make money.
It's the way in which they make it.

Similarly, I support and enjoy capitalism yet that doesn't mean I support
Rockefeller murdering his competitors.

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azharcs
I really think Adobe should start doing the same now, why don't they
understand most of its users can't afford $700 softwares.

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mattmaroon
The fundamental difference is that Adobe has no competitors who are better.
Many people use Linux and various other languages/frameworks not just because
they're free, but because they think they are better for what they're doing.
That's not true of most Adobe products (except maybe Premier and InDesign).

Adobe doesn't have to deal with this. Some people might use GIMP, but just to
save a couple bucks. I don't know if there are even substantial competitors to
Illustrator. There are weak ones to Acrobat and Flash.

Adobe really just doesn't have open source competitors with any shot of eating
their lunch. Microsoft does.

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caustic
From my experience I can tell that it's almost always possible to find better
alternatives for Microsoft products and technologies. It seems like the only
people who use MS stuff are those who don't care about what they have at hand.

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briansmith
Let's say you have $200 a month to spend on email and collaboration. You have
no IT staff, no programmers, and you have no IT experience of your own. What
is better than (hosted) Sharepoint + Exchange?

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alecco
If you are in that amount of money you are better off with Google Apps free
hosting. One day of Exchange expert for setup or problems is in the hundreds.

~~~
briansmith
Google Apps isn't even close to being better than Office+Exchange+Sharepoint.
You can get hosted Exchange and Sharepoint for $15/user/month, with no setup
fees.

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siculars
well we all kinda saw this comin... the problem is that the people who read
this site and others like it are not starting up companies based on .net and
other microsoft technologies. companies nowadays start in the basement,
garage, grad school project with zero funding and no software costs.

beyond the economy of it all there is the cool factor. microsoft is just not
cool and all the cool kids play with the cool toys like ruby, python, erlang,
memcached and on and on. this creates a neat little ecosystem of
interconnected like minded people who chat with each other on irc and twitter.

the only coolish tech that i see from microsoft is silverlight... but guess
what? the backend for any forward facing silverlight app will most likely be
done with non microsoft tech :)

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greyman
Maybe this will change, since nowadays one can develop for free using Visual
Studio 2008 Express Edition + .net and MSDN.

~~~
johns
With the BizSpark program, you can skip the Express Edition and go right to
Pro or even Team System

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socratees
Why don't they let the computing industry grow?. $$$$ means everything to
M$SFT. It irritated me so much with they offered XP back on the OPLC laptops.
How lame. They want small children to use their lame software, so that the
children don't even turn to the open source community. It sucks.

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ryan-allen
My problem with running XP on OLPC is that XP doesn't come with anything even
half-useful to someone who may or may not speak English in a developing
country.

OLPC's software was for learning and working that was language agnostic
(mostly, as far as I could see) and offering stimulating applications for
developing minds.

What the f __k does XP come with? Minesweeper? Notepad? F __k nothing! I hate
to swear but damn XP is so useless to _anyone_ new to computers out of the
box.

So I care that the kids don't get the OLPC learning and fun stuff. This is why
I can't bring myself to recommend to anyone of my friends that they get a
computer with XP for their toddlers, coz there is f __k nothing for them to do
on it.

An OLPC for a toddler in any country would be useful on the other hand... Man
this makes me angry (if you can't tell) :)

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apgwoz
The title here is definitely misleading. Is Microsoft just giving away the GNU
userland on cd? Now, that'd be newsworthy!

(/sarcasm. yes, I'm aware "free" here refers to the price of Microsoft's
proprietary software)

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caustic
I bet PG would sign up for this program for Viaweb if he had to start it these
days!

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fallentimes
What should we get?

~~~
sachinag
You know what would be helpful? Discounts on Office, One Note, Project, and
some of the other tools to run our business. We use Google Docs and 37signals
products and the like instead of some of the great MS Office tools - isn't
this the franchise MSFT needs to protect more?

Stuff for us to build the site - that's less attractive since we want to
explode and we won't be buying Windows Server licenses any time soon.

Problem for MSFT is that only startups need the stuff they're making free; all
small businesses are looking for free Office alternatives.

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ggruschow
Am I reading this wrong? It seems like it includes that:

"All the software included in the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System Team
Suite (VSTS) with MSDN® Premium subscription"
[http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSpark/Pages/What_Do_I...](http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSpark/Pages/What_Do_I_Get.aspx)

"In addition to Developer tools and licenses limited to Development & Test,
MSDN subscribers may also install and use one copy of Microsoft Office for any
purpose." [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/subscriptions/aa718661.aspx#...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/subscriptions/aa718661.aspx#licenses)

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ram1024
i say we all hold off on this offer until they sweeten the pot a bit more.

~~~
johns
What more do you want?!

